Prevent,
Reduce, Reverse Burning
is widely used in Central America
to clear land for planting, but it has
decidedly
negative environmental impacts. |  |
An aggressive initiative in the war against land degradation
Over
the past year, CIAT and partner organizations have designed a strategy for combating
the degradation of agricultural land in the humid and subhumid tropics. Although
the extent and intensity of this problem vary widely between regions, it is estimated
that one-quarter of the world’s agricultural land is now degraded. And the
overall situation is getting worse.
Land degradation is the reduction of
a terrestrial ecosystem’s capacity to perform ecological functions and deliver
economic and social benefits, often resulting in diminished system resilience
or ability to adapt to change. For example, deforestation may curtail the landscape’s
capacity to capture and purify water, regulate peak and base stream flows, store
carbon, and support suitable habitats for plants and wildlife. The effects depend
in part on how the land is used after the trees have been removed. Soil erosion
due to poor cropping or grazing practices may undermine local agricultural production,
at the same time clogging downstream water reservoirs with silt. Soil nutrient
depletion, besides causing a long-term decline in yields, may increase plants’
susceptibility to pests and diseases, forcing farmers to stop cultivating certain
species or even to abandon land altogether. Worldwide, the damage from these
and other forms of land degradation is so serious that, in October 2002, the Global
Environment Facility (GEF), a multilateral financing organization dedicated to
improving the global environment, added this theme to its mandated portfolio.
Less than a year later, it announced plans to allocate more than US$500 million
to fight land degradation between 2003 and 2006. At present about 35 percent
of agricultural land in Asia, 45 percent in South America, and
65 percent
in Africa are thought to suffer some form of degradation. Although Central America
accounts for only a small fraction of the world’s agricultural land, it
is considered a degradation “hot spot,” with an estimated 74 percent
of its land affected. Pastures in hilly areas are the most vulnerable (see box,
page 13). To date, land degradation in the humid and subhumid tropics has
received less international attention than that afflicting dryland areas. A United
Nations convention that entered into force in 1996, for instance, focuses specifically
on desertification, a severe threat to many dry agricultural zones. There is no
such international instrument for the humid and subhumid tropics, even though
these zones harbor much of the world’s biodiversity and serve as a large
repository of carbon that might otherwise end up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Addressing land degradation in these environments—especially the destruction
of vegetation and soil—is therefore vital, not merely to their 2 billion
inhabitants but to all people on earth. Wealthier farmers, healthier landscapesPast
R&D has concentrated mainly on reducing degradation rather than reversing
it, which implies restoring the productivity of the existing systems that support
local livelihoods. Many interventions have thus had little to offer farmers in
the way of immediate, tangible benefits. Although numerous projects have tried
to provide farmers with sustainable land management and crop alternatives, the
majority of these alternatives remain unattractive, because the technologies don’t
fit or work, the initial costs are beyond the means of smallholders, and underlying
market assumptions are ill-informed. For many farmers, then, proposed options
have been seen not only as too costly a step forward, but also too big a leap
of faith. For promoters and beneficiaries alike, the overall impact of past responses
to land degradation has been, in a word, disappointing. The new CIAT strategy
aims to prevent, reduce, or reverse land degradation, depending on the extent
of the problem in a given location and the needs expressed by the target community.
It will be implemented through a multipartner, 6-year R&D program spanning
three regions. By integrating biophysical, socioeconomic, and policy research,
the program will ensure that proposed interventions—from the farm level
through to the national policy-making level—are both relevant and feasible,
thereby increasing the chances of positive and widespread impact. The bulk
of program resources and effort, some 60 percent, will be directed to reversing
the degradation of land and restoring its productivity. This specific strategy,
which overlaps with the reduction strategy, is the most comprehensive of the three
broad types of intervention. It will target the poorest people in the most vulnerable
farming systems—in the highly stressed traditional agroecosystems of sub-Saharan
Africa, the eroded hillsides of Central America and Asia, and the degraded pastures
of South America’s Amazon and savanna zones. The strategy for reducing
land degradation, to which about 30 percent of program resources will be allocated,
will target moderately degraded crop-livestock systems in certain hillside areas
of South America and Asia. The aim here is to maintain or boost farming system
profitability by introducing improved crop varieties and management practices. The
remaining 10 percent of resources will be devoted to the prevention of land degradation,
particularly in the tropical forests and wetlands of South America. This work
will focus on risk analysis and support to policy making. In the past, unsound
government policies have often been a driving force behind land degradation. Policy
analysis and reform—in areas such as resource pricing, land tenure, settlement
schemes, credit, and the creation of protected areas—are central to both
the prevention and the reduction strategies. Placing the emphasis on the
reversal and restoration strategy recognizes that the primary stewards of agricultural
land in the tropics, small-scale farmers, won’t invest in the long-term
health of their land unless there is a short-term economic benefit. In fact, poor
rural people often view the degradation of their own land as the unavoidable price
they pay for their survival as farmers. “Mining” the natural resource
base may be the only way to earn enough cash to buy the food they can no longer
produce themselves and to pay for other necessities like clothing and medicine. “One
thing that’s novel about our approach is the division of farm-level improvements
into two steps,” says Carlos Lascano, who manages CIAT’s Multipurpose
Tropical Grasses and Legumes Project and coordinates the Center’s collaborative
research on land degradation. “First, we need to help farmers get their
production back on track so they can make some money in a relatively short period.
The second step, over a longer timeframe, is when the real improvements to the
land and the more profound shifts in farm structure take place. The rationale
is that poor farmers need higher incomes before they can afford to turn their
attention to environmentally friendly resource management.” Thinking
globally, acting locallyThe program targets humid and subhumid tropical
zones in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Target countries and subregions are
Malawi, Uganda, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Amazon, and Central America. The first
phase comprises the main R&D program, in collaboration with selected pilot
communities and partner organizations, mostly universities and national agricultural
research institutes. Researchers will design biophysical, economic, and
social indicators of land degradation, as well as impact indicators for later
use. These yardsticks will provide a common language for diagnosis, measurement,
analysis, and evaluation, allowing problems and solutions in different regions
to be compared and contrasted at various geographic scales and administrative
levels. Researchers will also match technical problems with potential solutions.
Ex ante economic analysis will allow researchers to estimate the probable costs
and benefits of different technology options from a farmer’s perspective
so as to target options more accurately and increase the chances of adoption.
The powerful tools of spatial analysis will support this work. Researchers and
land-use planners will use geographic information systems (GIS) to identify, for
example, those sites whose climate and soil favor the available germplasm-based
solutions, and to identify and target areas where extreme poverty and land degradation
coincide. At the community level, major activities in the first phase will
be problem diagnosis; selection, adaptation, and testing of promising solutions;
and monitoring and evaluation of the outcomes. To help communities carry out this
work, researchers will draw on CIAT’s substantial experience with community
empowerment and participatory research methods. In addition, lessons learned from
all aspects of the program and its pilot sites will be used to influence and inform
policy making. The program’s second phase will be dedicated to replicating
or adapting results in neighboring communities (scaling out) and at higher organizational
levels such as national or regional projects (scaling up). Since solutions to
the problems of land degradation are site-specific, local stakeholders will again
play a central role. In recent months CIAT managers have been talking to
potential donors, including the GEF, about funding for this program. We believe
our comprehensive and integrated approach to fighting land degradation merits
serious attention and international support. While avoiding the pitfalls of past
land rehabilitation efforts, it will directly contribute to the UN Millennium
Development goals of eradicating poverty and hunger and ensuring environmental
sustainability.
Bridges to a better future in Central America’s
pasturesCIAT’s new program on land degradation envisages a set of
projects in various subregions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including a
major degradation hotspot—Central America. Three-quarters of the agricultural
land in this drought-prone subregion is degraded, and of that, 60 percent, or
9 million hectares, consists of pastures of low and often falling productivity.
The alarming dynamics of the problem are clear from two juxtaposed facts: the
region’s cattle population is growing at less than 1 percent per year, but
the area devoted to pastures is expanding at 4 to 9 percent per year. Reversing
degradation and slowing the expansion of pastureland are now R&D priorities
for Central American governments. In CIAT’s view raising the productivity
of forages grown by the subregion’s 11 million small- to medium-scale livestock
producers is a logical entry point for rapidly improving local livelihoods, while
simultaneously protecting the natural resource base. By adopting improved
grasses and legumes that CIAT and national programs have developed over the years,
farmers can make better use of existing pastures and avoid expanding their operations
into forested areas. Deep-rooting African grasses in particular are highly productive,
resist the stresses of Central America’s long dry season, and increase soil
carbon stocks. They also protect soil from erosion and animal compaction. Using
improved pasture forages to restore and intensify production from existing livestock
production systems will serve as a bridge between today’s destructive practices
and the longer term aim of shifting to fully sustainable, diversified, and market-responsive
farming systems. In effect, intensification “prepares the ground,”
both economically and environmentally, for diversification. In contrast, earlier
strategies of trying to “turn the desert into Eden in a single quantum leap,”
as one CIAT scientist put it, just don’t work. The Núñez
family in Yorito, Honduras, illustrates the value of CIAT’s progressive
approach. For years they grazed their 12 cows on low-quality pasture, including
a forested area in the environmentally sensitive uplands above their village.
Milk production was just 35 liters per day. With technical support from CIAT,
they rehabilitated their entire production system. They planted Brachiaria grasses
and a high-protein, environmentally friendly forage legume, Cratylia argentea.
They also introduced a cut-and-carry feeding system for their animals, as well
as silage. Today the Núñez’s herd is giving three times
the milk output on less than half the land used earlier. Animal weights have improved,
as has the herd’s reproductive rate. While the family income has gone up,
so have the prospects for their local environment—especially since they
have been able to free up 47 hectares for reconversion to forest.
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