In recent decades in northwest Vietnam, Arabica coffee has been grown on sloping land in intensive, full sun monocultures that are not sustainable in the long term and have negative environmental impacts. There is an urgent need to reverse this negative trend by promoting good agricultural practices, including agroforestry, to prevent further deforestation and soil erosion on slopes.
With 15–20% of Indonesian oil palms located, without a legal basis and permits, within the forest zone (‘Kawasan hutan’), international concerns regarding deforestation affect the totality of Indonesian palm oil export. ‘Forest zone oil palm’ (FZ-OP) is a substantive issue that requires analysis and policy change.
Valuable lessons can be learned from smallholder farmers who have successfully protected and regenerated tree cover across agricultural landscapes in Senegal, with minimal reliance on tree nurseries, seedling distribution or tree planting. In the process, they have restored soil fertility to sustainably increase agricultural production.
Influenced by international trends, as well as in response to population, climate, resource and development needs, the standards, norms, mechanisms and incentives in natural resources law at the national level have evolved in recent years.
In the above initiatives, self-motivated populations increased food security and reduced vulnerabilities to climatic shocks by restoring and sustainably managing local forest resources. To regenerate agroforestry parklands, farmers built on traditional systems to increase on-farm tree density and convert degraded lands to densely wooded savannas.
Did you know that forests cover nearly 1/3 of land globally?
That’s 4.06 billion hectares.
In other words, there is around 0.52 ha of forest for every person on the planet.
More than half (54 percent) of the world’s forests are in only five countries –the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and China.
The standard System of National Accounts (SNA) omits the costs of the environmental inputs from nature and the environmental fixed asset degradation from the national/sub-national natural working landscapes.
Forests managed by Indigenous and other local communities generate important benefits for livelihood, and contribute to regional and global biodiversity and carbon sequestration goals. Yet, challenges to community forestry remain. Rural out-migration, for one, can make it hard for communities to maintain broad and diverse memberships invested in local forest commons.
