European Tropical Forest Research Network

ETFRN News 60 se concentre sur la restauration des terres arides au Sahel et dans la Grande Corne de l'Afrique. Il rassemble 36 articles, de plus de 100 contributeurs, y compris des exemples d'augmentations remarquables de la couverture arborée et d'amélioration des rendements agricoles sur de vastes zones du Sahel occidental, la restauration des paysages en Éthiopie et des exemples de nombreux autres pays. 

At the beginning of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, this 60th issue of ETFRN News is very timely, reflecting a focus on drylands that cover some 40% of the world’s land area and contain some of the most severely degraded landscapes on Earth. They are also home to a third of the world’s population and a disproportionate number of the poorest people, along with unique ecosystems and biodiversity. And these issues are more acute in Africa than in any other continent.

ETFRN News 60 focuses on dryland restoration in the Sahel and the Greater Horn of Africa where levels of poverty, land degradation and out-migration are acute. It collates 36 articles from more than 100 contributors, including some long-term analyses of remarkable increases in tree cover and improved agricultural yields over large areas of the Western Sahel never published before, landscape restoration in Ethiopia, and examples from many other countries.

These provide new insights into what has led to the documented successes, summarizes the ‘top ten’ key findings, and offer recommendations to a much-needed change in focus if we are to achieve the ambitious commitments made by African countries to Land Degradation Neutrality targets, the Bonn Challenge, the African Forest Landscape Initiative, and the Great Green Wall, amongst others.

The overriding story is that farmer and community-led initiatives are the main driver of dryland restoration that have been adopted at scale, and at low cost. These include simple water harvesting techniques, encouraging natural regeneration, and locally-managed control over resources. Key factors include bylaws made with and enforced by local institutions and communities, the inclusion of women and youth, and effective support from projects and programmes, and national and international policies. Large-scale projects have also played a role, and private sector investments are limited but expanding.

There is an urgent need to take this knowledge on board in adapting and implementing restoration programmes. But challenges remain, such as tailoring investments to community needs so local people earn more from their efforts, and to improve monitoring to assess progress not just in productivity and hectares under restoration, but also in the resulting social, economic and environmental benefits.

Dryland degradation can be reversed, recreating more resilient and productive landscapes that will fix more carbon especially in the soil, restore ecosystem services, promote new viable enterprises and create employment, while reducing conflicts and migration. And together, these will increase the opportunities to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and the targets of the Rio Conventions on desertification, climate change and biodiversity. 

Widespread palm oil production causes much controversy due to its negative impacts in the tropics. But whatever is said about it, it is big business and getting bigger by the day due to increasing global demands. Alongside this, the size and depth of the social and environmental debates surrounding palm oil production are also growing. As a major globally-consumed commodity, its production in the humid and sub-humid tropics raises concerns due to its impacts on the environment, biodiversity, local communities, smallholder livelihoods, land rights and climate change.

One possible solution proposed is to improve the ‘inclusiveness’ of smallholders who make up a substantial part of the palm oil value chain. This ETFRN News presents potential opportunities by looking at the experiences, perceptions and perspectives of individuals, companies, institutions and NGOs on what has been done and is being done on the ground to increase the involvement of and benefits to smallholder oil palm farmers. And in doing so, it focuses on the following key questions: How do such actions and their impacts differ between different smallholder types and organizations? How do they differ between countries, regions and corporate contexts? What are the effects of various enabling policy environments? And what do the authors in this edition mean by ‘inclusiveness’?

This ETFRN News edition brings together 24 articles and interviews from around the world that reflect on these questions and it identifies means of improving smallholder inclusiveness in palm oil production and the ones that could be scaled up. These rich experiences are discussed and compared in a summary review, drawing out nine common key lessons.

Several hundred companies, governments, and civil society and non-governmental organizations have committed to zero deforestation initiatives. However, all may not have fully realized the enormousness and complexity of the challenge in committing to zero deforestation, and it appears that some did not know exactly what they stepped into. What is clear though, is that this endeavour is very much at the initial stage of development, and early work and experimentation is showing the way to putting in place what is needed.

This silver anniversary edition of ETFRN News brings together 40 contributions from 100 experts and practitioners. They share their experiences, and suggest ways to improve the effectiveness of zero deforestation commitments through public-private collaboration and other models.

ETFRN News 58 presents different views across a range of commodity value chains, including how companies and smallholders are working together to build deforestation free supply chains. It reviews publicly announced commitments and on-the-ground impacts, and how implementation challenges are overcome. It looks at how socio-economic and environmental impacts and trade-offs are addressed, links between private commitments and government policy and regulations, and how transnational and civil-society initiatives help or hinder them.

From the different contributions in this book, common threads are drawn, woven into the following eight key issues, that if implemented, can enhance the implementation, effectiveness and impact of pledges, and increase the likelihood of existing and future zero deforestation commitments being met.

1. Agree on clear definitions and standards – what is a forest, and deforestation, and, what are acceptable credible and coherent standards for use across different commodities?

2. National and local governments to become more involved – as failure to address broader governance challenges may reduce the positive impact of private sector zero-deforestation initiatives.

3. More corporate transparency and accountability – must become the norm for monitoring and reporting progress, and not just regarding zero deforestation commitments.

4. Support for smallholder empowerment – through capacity building and technical assistance, so millions of small producers can become effective players.

5. Civil society to continue to advocate for change – as consumers and global citizens, for corporations to take effective action.

6. Advocate for jurisdictional action in support of national goals – required to complement corporate supply chain initiatives, and helps to fulfil more inclusive, sustainable development criteria.

7. Include alternative business and financing models – that better take into account existing realities, and local systems of governance and tenure.

8. Invite broad stakeholder involvement – in the inclusive platforms that are clearly needed for progress, as no single solution can achieve the desired impact.

Farm and forest producer organizations are of critical importance to the sustainable use of our natural resources, now and into the future. So says the growing consensus of global opinion. And they hold the key to overcoming many issues, from poverty and human rights, to environmental degradation and biodiversity conservation. Producer organizations represent the collective voices of farmers and forest- dependent peoples, indigenous groups and rural communities. They, are the building blocks of local democracy, and provide essential services to members. And when truly inclusive and with the right support, management choices are sustainable and the benefits are equitable.

This latest edition of ETFRN News contains more than 200 pages of stories from local producer organizations, associations and federations, and from those that speak for them at national and international levels. Reporting on issues of inclusiveness, this is also reflected in the authorship, with most of the 80 contributing (co)authors from the Global South, representing NGOs, UN organizations, government bodies and private companies as well as producer organizations, a third of them women. The result is a compilation of experiences that adds significantly to a growing body of knowledge. Forest and farm producer organizations speak of their achievements and successes – and challenges, some overcome, some not. They share how they have organized themselves, what support they have received, and whether this was for better or for worse. Some benefits were expected, others unexpected. Problems remain, and some were made worse, even with well-meaning intentions of ‘outsiders’.

What have we learnt?

As well as understanding the experiences of individual producer organizations, we appreciate the pivotal role that umbrella organizations – national or regional federations or associations – are able to play in scaling up the benefits. To have meaningful influence at policy and corporate levels, becoming more effective at higher levels is a strategy that must be promoted. Well organized and articulated, many voices can force through the necessary changes needed for local producers to improve and sustain the positive impacts they make to their land, livelihoods and well being.

But the bottom line, as emphasized in many of the articles, is to ensure people’s rights to land, natural, social and financial resources, and to justice and the rule of law in assuring and enforcing these basic human rights. And here, much still remains to be done. But there is much to learn from within these pages, and we hope that you will also take encouragement from the stories that are shared here.

The landscape approach has increasingly been promoted as a new perspective on addressing global challenges at a local level. In the face of increasing and competing claims to the land and the exhaustion of natural resources, planners, scientists and policymakers have come to realize the limitations of sectoral approaches. Integrated landscape level considerations have begun to supersede those restricted to, for instance, water, forests, farming and development programmes.

Given this interest, and the potential impacts of such initiatives, it is important to learn from the many practical experiences in applying integrated landscape management throughout the world. This issue of ETFRN News 56, ‘Towards productive landscapes’, brings together 29 papers by practitioners from all over the world who highlight the successes and challenges of applying landscape approaches.

Jointly, the articles explore:

• the role of forests in mosaic landscapes;
• governance arrangements at the landscape scale; and
• key factors contributing to success in landscape management.

This ETFRN News explores how foresters, farmers, pastoralists and other land users have taken charge and jointly shape the landscape they inhabit. How the private sector finds ways to integrate supply chains into sustainable landscapes. And how this helps the global community to address the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity.

The articles highlight the contribution of increased social cohesion as a key benefit of landscape approaches. In many cases, it is catalyzed by an environmental problem serious enough to require negotiated solutions that create better outcomes for everyone. Stimulus and support from external actors in the form of compensation, co-investment and independent facilitation is usually needed to make this happen.

Although the authors quote many benefits of landscape approaches, a systematic framework against which to assess and evaluate the impacts of landscape approaches seems to be lacking. There is a need for people engaged in landscape approaches to put their experiences together, compare them and look for general patterns that explain why certain approaches work and others fail. A clear language is needed for understanding landscapes and landscape approaches to help monitoring and evaluating landscape efforts.