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- Convenors:
-
Natasha Constant
(RSPB)
Sorrel Jones (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)
Maarten Voors (Wageningen University)
Esther Mokuwa (Wageningen University)
Paul Richards (Njala University, Sierra Leone)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel explores the implications of incentive-based conservation programmes to support forest resource use and management and alternative livelihoods for local communities. We also discuss how local participation can lead to greater inclusion of local knowledge and values in forest conservation.
Long Abstract:
Natural forests are under increasing global pressure due to economic and population growth and shifts in consumption patterns. It thus becomes important to design and implement conservation programmes to provide incentives to encourage participation in sustainable forest use and management, and to support local livelihoods. REDD+ is as a set of policies and activities implemented to prevent or slow deforestation and degradation, and increase forest carbon stocks for example, through agro-forestry and reforestation. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) schemes have also been developed to address solutions to biodiversity loss outside of protected areas, and in response to the failure of top-down conservation approaches, by devolving control of forest resources to local communities. Benefits from these programmes can include direct revenue from environmental protection, and the maintenance of ecosystem services such as watershed protection and livelihood diversification. However, many forest dependent communities may experience positive or negative changes to their livelihoods because of these schemes. Costs from these programmes can include displacement of local communities due to increased human-wildlife conflict, restricted access to natural and cultural resources, and changes in land tenure and resource use patterns. Significant costs can also be incurred by communities if management and institutional capacity is lacking, and issues of governance and tenure are not resolved. Involving local communities in the planning and implementation of forest conservation is important for integrating local voices in decision making, and ensuring that financial or other benefits are equitably shared to develop sustainable solutions to deforestation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
It is argued that new economic models of climate change and conservation will be ineffective without alignment with the deepest rooted cultural values of local land custodians. This paper focuses on the kola tree as a key embodiment of those values.
Paper long abstract:
The Gola forest is a boundary wilderness between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Today, it is prime conservation real estate, and considered a vital remnant of the highly threatened Upper Guinean Forest formation. It is far from being a pristine African rain forest and has a tangled settlement history dating back many centuries. The forest has played a key part in the emergence of the distinct peoples, languages and cultures of the Upper West African coast. How much of that history is relevant to current efforts to protect this globally important bioresource? Here, it will be argued that the human history of the forest is central to its conservation, because it encapsulates the story of those who are and must remain the guardians of the forest. Conservation cannot hope to attain legitimacy as a post-colonial project unless it is prepared to attain an in-depth and long-term understanding of the lives of the people who have lived in and around the forest for many centuries, and who are the products of a complex and at times fraught history of rival occupations. And yet attaining that state of empathetic understanding is a challenging task for conservationists since it requires that a number of politically and culturally sensitive issues are addressed. Above all, insight into historical silences and fragments of untold ancestral stories is required. Tread softly because this is sacred ground.
Paper short abstract:
Conservation programmes offer a potentially cost-effective way to both reduce deforestation and benefit livelihoods. We discuss recent policy instruments implemented in Sierra Leone and argue that a key mechanism explaining divergent impacts relates to labour constraints.
Paper long abstract:
Reducing deforestation is a major policy concern in developing countries. Conservation programmes offer a potentially cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions and impact livelihoods. Yet these programmes come in many forms. We focus on the protection of tropical forest ecosystems in buffer zone areas around protected parks where the scope of instating mandatory restrictions are limited. Specifically, we present findings from evaluating several policy instruments implemented in Sierra Leone around the Gola Rainforest National Park. We find that unconditional benefits provided to communities increase land clearance in the short run. On the other hand, programmes that stimulate forest friendly agriculture and cash crop intensification achieve the opposite. These divergent results indicate that the type of programming matters for achieving environmental benefits. In particular whether programmes relax binding labour constraints appears to be an important mechanism.
Paper short abstract:
We give an overview of livelihood support activities delivered under a REDD programme in Gola Rain National Park, Sierra Leone. We describe projects dealing with agriculture intensification, village savings and loans groups and improving incomes from cocoa production
Paper long abstract:
The level of poverty for the people living in and around tropical forests is unacceptably high and must be addressed urgently to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, avoiding deforestation in tropical forests is critical in the world's struggle to limit global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Reducing Emission from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) is a financial mechanism by which the sale of carbon credits can be used to fund forest conservation and livelihood improvement programmes. In Sierra Leone, one of the first REDD+ programmes in West Africa was established in the Gola Forest. The programme aims to improve livelihoods in 122 forest edge communities. We give an overview of the projects that are implemented to achieve this and share our experience of agricultural intensification work, establishment of savings and loans groups, and work to improve income from cocoa production. Under the cocoa programme, farmers have seen higher yields as a result of adopting sustainable forest friendly practices. They now have a strong, gender inclusive producer organization, Goleagorbu, and have access to international cocoa markets through production of traceable, high-quality cocoa. Farmer incomes have increased due to better yield, quality and producer organisations
Paper short abstract:
Women have rights to land and strengthen their marriages by cash crop investment. Since women own land conservation programmes should develop tree crop programmes for women, but to be effective, support programmes need to be aligned with women's strategies to control their crops.
Paper long abstract:
The Gola Rain Forest National Park seeks to encourage sustainable development of plantation crops as a livelihood incentive for households and communities in forest edge communities (FEC). Women also have an interest in planting tree crops, but their planting strategies vary by type of marriage. Women's planting strategies are examined in four FEC, sampled by types of marriage - where the woman belongs to a village land-holding lineage and the husband is also from a village land-holding lineage, where a woman belongs to a land-holding lineage but her husband is a stranger, where the woman is a stranger but is married to a husband belonging to a local land-holding lineage, and where both partners are strangers lacking any local land rights. In four sampled villages, 221 women reported that they owned over 58,000 cash crop trees (mainly cacao or oil palm), but 57 percent of these trees were located outside the surveyed village, reflecting a woman's desire to have sole control over her crops. For women, owning tree crops in her own right insures her children's education and her old-age subsistence, but because of women's land acquisition strategies much of this activity is invisible or overlooked. Ethnographic work on women's land rights and land management activities is essential if external assistance to FEC is to be correctly applied. Since women own land the implication is that conservation programmes should develop tree crop programmes for women, but this should be done with an awareness of women's tree-crop ownership strategies.