A quantitative appraisal of selected agroforestry studies in the Sub-Saharan Africa.

The multiple ecosystem services and livelihood assets development challenges facing the world, including climate change, land degradation, and high poverty levels, have necessitated cross-cutting solutions. Such includes agroforestry technologies, where trees are integrated with crop and pasture lands to yield multiple ecosystem goods and services. Though an ancient approach to land management, agroforestry faces a modern and urgent demand for expansion to counter ecosystems-livelihoods imbalances in most regions across the globe. This paper sought to synthesize the dynamics and characteristics of agroforestry technologies in sub-Saharan Africa by adopting the systematic review approach. Eighty-six (86) agroforestry studies were reviewed, analysing variables such as the dominant agroforestry technologies, production systems, types of studies, and ecosystem services generated by different agroforestry technologies. It established that majority of the agroforestry studies are multiple (undefined) in nature at 36%, have moderately changed over the years, the dominant agroforestry study type is journal articles (59%), and they are mostly scientific in nature (57%). Further, income generation was the dominant provisioning service (31%), greenhouse gas emission reduction was the main regulatory service (31%), and soil fertility management was the key support service. Tradeoffs associated with agroforestry technologies, including increased deforestation rates, tree-crops competition, increased pests and diseases, and potential food insecurity due to reduced crop production were also identified. Barriers to agroforestry such as insecure land tenure systems and inadequate research development are discussed. Pathways towards increased agroforestry technologies adoption, such as creating a conducive institutional and policy environment, as well as developing business support services for agroforestry-related goods and services were identified. The study reiterates the need for increased agroforestry technologies adoption to create the ecosystems-livelihoods balances, with sufficient measures to minimize the potential tradeoffs.

Incentives for landscape restoration: Lessons from Shinyanga, Tanzania.

Owing to high rates of land and forest degradation, there is consensus that forest landscape restoration is a global priority with the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests committing to restore about 350 Million hectares by 2030, globally. However, there is a need for incentives that motivate these restoration efforts and disincentives aimed at restricting activities that result in further land degradation. We provide insights and understanding of the incentives and disincentives measures applied within the forest restoration systems through a case study in the Shinyanga region of Tanzania. Incentives that have promoted forest landscape restoration in Shinyanga include; conservation benefits, education and information, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), well-defined property rights & increasing land prices and awards while disincentives include; penalties, quotas and permits. Intrinsic incentives that are derived from self-desire within an individual such as conservation benefits and education & information were more preferred within Shinyanga region compared to extrinsic incentives which relied more on external factors such as REDD+ and awards. Nonetheless, a combination of both incentives and disincentives has led to the success of restoration in Shinyanga; positive incentives worked better for privately owned lands while regulatory disincentives worked better for communally owned restoration lands. High levels of social equity and trust have enabled the functioning of these incentives while a robust governance structure at the local level has been instrumental in enforcing the disincentives. There is need for government and all stakeholders to maintain and enhance the gains from restoration, especially empowering communities further, for these incentives to work.

Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms in Integrated Landscape Initiatives.

Integrated landscape initiatives typically aim to strengthen landscape governance by developing and facilitating multi-stakeholder platforms. These are institutional coordination mechanisms that enable discussions, negotiations, and joint planning between stakeholders from various sectors in a given landscape. Multi-stakeholder platforms tend to involve complex processes with diverse actors, whose objectives and focus may be subjected to periodic re-evaluation, revision or reform. In this article we propose a participatory method to aid planning, monitoring, and evaluation of such platforms, and we report on experiences from piloting the method in Ghana and Indonesia. The method is comprised of three components. The first can be used to look ahead, identifying priorities for future multi-stakeholder collaboration in the landscape. It is based on the identification of four aspirations that are common across multi-stakeholder platforms in integrated landscape initiatives. The second can be used to look inward. It focuses on the processes within an existing multi-stakeholder platform in order to identify areas for possible improvement. The third can be used to look back, identifying the main outcomes of an existing platform and comparing them to the original objectives. The three components can be implemented together or separately. They can be used to inform planning and adaptive management of the platform, as well as to demonstrate performance and inform the design of new interventions.

Implementing REDD+ at the local level: Assessing the key enablers for credible mitigation and sustainable livelihood outcomes.

Achieving cost-effective mitigation and sustainable livelihoods through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) depends heavily on the local context within which REDD+ projects are implemented. Studies have focused on how REDD+ can benefit or harm local people, with little attention paid to how people, their assets and institutions can promote or impede REDD+. This paper examines the key local assets necessary for REDD+ to protect forests and support local livelihoods based on evidence from a globally-linked REDD+ project in Kenya. Household interviews (n = 100), focus group discussions (n = 6) and in-depth interviews with government (n = 8) and project stakeholders (n = 14) were undertaken to rank and explain how local assets interact with the project's efforts to protect forests, and the role of State institutions in shaping project-asset interactions. Locally, pro-poor assets such as land tenure and water access had most influence on the project's ability to protect forests. Inclusion of communal forests as part of the REDD+ project entitled local poor peasant farmers to participate in and benefit from the project and so dissuaded them from using protected forests for charcoal production. Water access determined agricultural productivity and intensity of forest use for livelihoods and coping. Even though carbon revenues were distributed equally between social groups and support directed to pro-poor livelihood initiatives, efforts were impeded by State decisions on land that interfered with communal approaches to forest conservation, by strict carbon standards that limited trade-offs between livelihoods and forest protection and by fluctuating carbon prices and buyers that limited funds needed for project operations and local livelihoods. Equitable and pro-poor benefit sharing are necessary but not sufficient for effective REDD+ implementation unless national institutions are reformed and global carbon pricing harmonized with local livelihood needs.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation in the land use sector: from complementarity to synergy.

Currently, mitigation and adaptation measures are handled separately, due to differences in priorities for the measures and segregated planning and implementation policies at international and national levels. There is a growing argument that synergistic approaches to adaptation and mitigation could bring substantial benefits at multiple scales in the land use sector. Nonetheless, efforts to implement synergies between adaptation and mitigation measures are rare due to the weak conceptual framing of the approach and constraining policy issues. In this paper, we explore the attributes of synergy and the necessary enabling conditions and discuss, as an example, experience with the Ngitili system in Tanzania that serves both adaptation and mitigation functions. An in-depth look into the current practices suggests that more emphasis is laid on complementarity-i.e., mitigation projects providing adaptation co-benefits and vice versa rather than on synergy. Unlike complementarity, synergy should emphasize functionally sustainable landscape systems in which adaptation and mitigation are optimized as part of multiple functions. We argue that the current practice of seeking co-benefits (complementarity) is a necessary but insufficient step toward addressing synergy. Moving forward from complementarity will require a paradigm shift from current compartmentalization between mitigation and adaptation to systems thinking at landscape scale. However, enabling policy, institutional, and investment conditions need to be developed at global, national, and local levels to achieve synergistic goals.

An Examination of Forest Certification Status among Logging Companies in Cameroon.

This paper assesses the level of interest, awareness, and adoption of ISO 14001 and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification schemes among logging companies in Cameroon. Eleven logging companies located in Douala in the Littoral Region of Cameroon were assessed through a structured interview using an administered questionnaire which was mostly analyzed qualitatively thereafter. The findings indicated that none of the companies was certified for ISO 14001; however 63.64% of them were already FSC-certified. Four companies (36.36%) were neither FSC- nor ISO 14001 EMS-certified. Among the factors found to influence the adoption rate was the level of awareness about ISO 14001 and FSC certification schemes. The main drivers for pursuing FSC certification were easy penetration into international markets, tax holiday benefits, and enhancement of corporate image of the logging companies through corporate social responsibility fulfillments. Poor domestic market for certified products was found to be the major impediment to get certified. To make logging activities more environmentally friendly and socially acceptable, logging companies should be encouraged to get certified through the ISO 14001 EMS scheme which is almost nonexistent so far. This requires awareness creation about the scheme, encouraging domestic markets for certified products and creating policy incentives.

Community capacity for implementing clean development mechanism projects within community forests in Cameroon.

There is a growing assumption that payments for environmental services including carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emission reduction provide an opportunity for poverty reduction and the enhancement of sustainable development within integrated natural resource management approaches. Yet in experiential terms, community-based natural resource management implementation falls short of expectations in many cases. In this paper, we investigate the asymmetry between community capacity and the Land Use Land Use Change Forestry (LULUCF) provisions of the Clean Development Mechanism within community forests in Cameroon. We use relevant aspects of the Clean Development Mechanism criteria and notions of "community capacity" to elucidate determinants of community capacity needed for CDM implementation within community forests. The main requirements are for community capacity to handle issues of additionality, acceptability, externalities, certification, and community organisation. These community capacity requirements are further used to interpret empirically derived insights on two community forestry cases in Cameroon. While local variations were observed for capacity requirements in each case, community capacity was generally found to be insufficient for meaningful uptake and implementation of Clean Development Mechanism projects. Implications for understanding factors that could inhibit or enhance community capacity for project development are discussed. We also include recommendations for the wider Clean Development Mechanism/Kyoto capacity building framework.