Scientists recommend realistic, conditional, voluntary and pro-poor rewards for environmental services and find that in-kind payments may be more beneficial than cash

Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) is a long-term research program dedicated to developing practical environmental services schemes that can be adapted to work in different countries with different circumstances. The goal of this program is to reward poor people for their work in protecting environmental services and, at the same time, come up with development programs that alleviate rural poverty and protect the natural environment. This is done in a balanced way that ensures effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and support to the poor people. A study recently carried out in Indonesia, the Philippines and Nepal outlines the key issues associated with the design and implementation of Rewards for Environmental services (RES).

Scientists from the World Agroforestry Centre (Beria Leimona, Laxman Joshi and Meine van Noordwijk) developed and explored two propositions that would meet the conditions necessary for alleviating poverty and enhancing environmental sustainability. The propositions stipulated were: to provide individuals who protect environmental services with cash incentives, and to provide them with non-financial incentives such as social, human and physical forms of capital. The project was therefore to determine which of the two propositions would lead to a significant reduction in poverty, and to examine the expected non-financial benefits received from participating in the scheme. In addition to that, the study also aimed to encourage scientists and policy makers to focus on balancing trade-offs between poverty and conservation so as to receive maximum environmental benefits.

Cash payments are viewed as being flexible as they can be converted into local goods and services prioritized by the receiver. However, money given to individuals’ usually ends up being used for the wrong reasons, leaving no long-term benefits for their own livelihoods. “The first proposition would only work if the scheme involves upstream (rural) providers of lower population density relative to downstream (urban) beneficiaries. The downstream beneficiaries should also have higher income, the ability and willingness to pay compared to the upstream providers,” said Beria Leimona. “In addition to that, the environmental services are to be non-substitutable, sustainable, worth buying and efficient with low transaction costs.”

Therefore, using this method would prove difficult to achieve the desired results given the population and income structures of the downstream and upstream communities in Asian cases. For instance, the ratio between the income levels of the upstream and the downstream is quite low and in some cases the upstream communities may have slightly higher income than the downstream communities. This can be attributed to the fact that the upstream communities reside in the highlands thus get their income from their agricultural produce. “This method would best be used in the early stages of implementation, enabling practitioners to avoid useless investments and over expectations of alleviating poverty and retaining environmental services,” pointed out Leimona.

According to the scientists, the second proposition on non-financial benefit, proved to be the best method to use as it matches the people’s needs and expectations and also extends to the community as a whole, not just the poor. This is because the scheme provides investments in schools, health centre’s, water pipes, and even strengthens and instills new skills that in the end benefit all. Factors that contribute to poverty were also considered, for example, with human capital, lack of knowledge and access to higher education are contributing factors. In the case of physical and financial capital, poorly maintained roads and insufficient land contribute to poverty. ”Obtaining information about all the factors which encompassing livelihood capital – not just financial – - will help practitioners to design better pro-poor reward schemes,” says Leimona.

The study recommended reward for environmental services schemes be given four attributes, i.e. realistic, conditional, voluntary and pro-poor. Realistic means that the benefits gained by both the buyer and the seller need to be tangible and sustainable thus reducing and avoiding threats to the environmental services that are likely to occur in the absence of further intervention. When it comes to pro-poor, the program should include fairness aspects, such as equitable access, decision making and impacts on all actors, as well as ensuring the rewards for environmental services are positively biased towards poor stakeholders. “Overall, the criteria ‘voluntary’ and ‘pro-poor’ for establishing rewards for environmental services are the most important issues for local communities. This is because individuals get involved by choice and are involved in internal and external decision-making processes,” noted Leimona. Furthermore, he ‘conditional’ aspect of the scheme is a way of ensuring transparency in the rewarding processes such as when they should be granted on not. Conditionality helps in solving local problems about voluntary participation thus making the process more effective. “Intermediaries and buyers also play a crucial role in the scheme as they ensure it is realistic and of importance to the poor,” declared Leimona.

One of the constraints faced by practitioners in the developmental stages is that the poor may be excluded from such schemes as they may not qualify as providers. This is as a result of lack of or ownership of small pieces of land, hence they receive smaller portions of benefits or none at all compared to people who are well-off. The laborers may also lose their jobs as the scheme may provide land-use systems that require limited labor. In addition to that, since the scheme is area based, distribution of resources may be local thereby enhancing the differences in wealth status.

There have been numerous efforts to increase environmental services and alleviate poverty, and rewards for environmental services have the potential to be one of the best ways to achieve this. This study’s results can contribute to ensuring fairness and efficiency in providing rewards for environmental services, across the world.
 

The World Agroforestry Centre has joined partners in launching Landscapes for People, Food and Nature, an international initiative for dialogue, learning and action.

A consensus is emerging that many of our production systems for food, forest and wetland products are unsustainable–for people, for long-term food and fiber supply and for nature. Yet from sustainable fish farming in Spain to rice intensification systems in Sri Lanka, people are working together in their landscapes to find better ways to meet our current and future demands for food and fiber while also protecting nature’s services and local livelihoods. Farmers, policymakers, food companies, conservation agencies and grassroots organizations in all parts of the world are generating innovations to meet the challenge, though today these approaches are being practiced on a limited scale. Since, over two-thirds of the world’s land area is shaped by cropland, planted pastures, or other agricultural practices, it is critical to scale up such integrated systems to combat both hunger and environmental degradation.

In an effort to strengthen such approaches, the World Agroforestry Centre is a proud partner of the international Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative. This three year collaborative Initiative aims to scale up successful strategies that simultaneously improve livelihoods, conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services, and feed the world while helping to address climate change. This integrated approach combines interests across multiple sectors to improve landscape management.

Through an on-going Global Review, the Initiative is synthesizing the evidence base and key perspectives for such integrated farming landscapes. A series of multi-stakeholder Dialogues will be kicked off with an international forum in March 2012 at the Centre’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. This series will bring together thought leaders and innovators to interpret results of the Global Review and develop action agendas to alleviate food insecurity, persistent poverty, and ecosystem degradation. Action and Advocacy through 2014 and beyond will promote the policy, investment, capacity building, and research agendas developed through the Global Review and Dialogue series. The Initiative will work with countries committed to scaling up integrated landscape approaches to support sustainable land management.

Together, the Initiative co-organizers are working at the landscape level in over 60 countries around the world to promote integrated agriculture-ecosystem-climate initiatives. Leaders from these initiatives, including farmers, governments, NGOs, donors, and the private sector, will join the Dialogues to learn from the Global Review and put the knowledge sharing into practice. The Initiative will provide direct input to key policy conversations within the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), UNFCCC (COP17), Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and key regional platforms such as NEPAD in Africa.

Visit the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative website

Photo by Sarah Thompson

Anybody still unsure about the viability and profitability of climate smart agriculture needs to visit farmers like Maurice Kwadha for a proof that it can be done very successfully. He is a smallholder farmer based in western Kenya’s Nyando Basin at Kochiel village. Mr Kwadha’s farm is small but thanks to the use of agroforestry and other climate smart agricultural techniques, he is able to grow a wide variety of vegetables and high-value fruit trees.

A quarter of his farm is devoted to a very profitable tree nursery containing around 20, 000 seedlings of local and introduced tree species. The water for his farm comes from a large rain fed pond which he dug himself. His pond is supplemented by a big water tank that he installed in order to harness rain water from the roof of his house.

Testament to the quality of his agricultural products, he was recently asked to host a special event for World Food Day and his customer base includes the Kenyan government.

Read more of Maurice’s story here.

Agroforestry will take a prominent place at a conference this week in Kigali, Rwanda looking at how to produce more food in Central Africa.

Brian Keating from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and first keynote speaker says food demand is expected to rise by 30 percent from 2010 to 2050. Generally, farmers from sub-Saharan Africa have been trying to increase “food production per capita by expanding the land footprint” rather than increasing productivity levels per unit of land, he observes. Keating’s keynote speech encourages mitigation strategies that “fill the production gap while avoiding losses of current productive capacity”.

Organised by the Consortium for Improving Agriculture-based Livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA), the conference aims to take stock of the art of agricultural intensification in the Humid Highlands of sub-Saharan Africa. The conference has been arranged in four themes and World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) scientists have key roles in two of these.

Theme three explores the key drivers influencing farmer adoption of agricultural innovations. ICRAF’s Dr Anne Degrande will be presenting on the effectiveness of relay organisations in disseminating agroforesry innovations in Cameroon. Relay organisations are community-based organisations that bridge the researcher to farmer gap. Her team’s paper discusses whether ineffective dissemination methods are to blame for the low adoption of agricultural innovations in Africa.

Ineffective communication methods have an adverse effect on farmers’ attitude towards the adoption of agricultural innovations. Therefore, the fourth theme of the conference will explore ways of communicating the complex knowledge associated with agricultural intensification. This theme’s keynote speaker will be Dr John Lynam, a member of ICRAF’s board. He will share his research into ways of disseminating knowledge and technology within an evolving research for development framework in East Africa. His paper shows that the pace of the evolution of research themes and technology transfer methodologies differs from the pace with which farmers adopt knowledge intensive farming techniques. There is a lack of understanding of the steps from knowledge transfer to farmer learning to farmer mind change in management says Dr. Lynam. On the same theme, Dr Jeremias Mowo, ICRAF’s Regional Coordinator for Eastern Africa will present a talk that suggests development organisations may need to prioritise farmers’ needs more than previously realised. Their study found that farmers value water, financial capital and energy more than soil fertility and soil erosion.

All the four themes of the conference encompass six factors that have been identified as major discussion points. These are: high poverty and generally poor food security, lack of agricultural inputs due to long distance to ports, high erosion risks due to steep slopes, lack of organic resources for supplementing fertilizer, lack of a systems approach to agricultural intensification and insufficient capacity of stakeholder networks to disseminate knowledge-intensive technologies and approaches.

The international conference to address challenges and opportunities for agricultural intensification of the Humid Highland Systems of sub-Saharan Africa opened today in Kigali, Rwanda will run until Thursday 27th of October.

Please visit the conference homepage for more details.

Image credit: CIMMYT

A recent ICRAF research paper published in Agroforestry Systems journal suggests that the certification of agroforestry tree seeds need to improve in order for agroforestry to have greater impact on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

The study found that without any form of certification, farmers are often unsure of the viability of a seed, its physical, genetic and physiological qualities.

A full certification process can be expensive and therefore inaccessible to farmers. Dr Nyoka’s team recommends a cheaper and suitable alternative for seed labelling called Quality Declared Seed (QDS).

They say the voluntary labelling system (QDS) could be used for in-country seed labelling while the compulsory and expensive full certification of seeds to be reserved for international trade. The QDS is in line with World Bank recommendations that countries should have legal frameworks that will allow the marketing and selling of uncertified but properly labelled tree seeds.

One country leading the way in proper certification is India. In its Forest Reproductive Material Bill of 2008, India established a different law for tree seeds because its agricultural seed laws could not easily accommodate tree seeds.

Lead author Betserai Isaac Nyoka says “as soon as there is a wide adoption of some form of certification, the availability of high quality agroforestry germplasm will improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers”

The study is available from the Agroforestry Systems journal website.