Category: agriculture
The Scope for Reducing Emissions from Forestry and Agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon
Reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses is considered an essential ingredient of an effective strategy to mitigate global warming. Required changes in land use and forestry, however, often imply foregoing returns from locally more attractive resource use strategies. We assess and compare the prospects of mitigating climate change through emission reductions from forestry and agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon. We use official statistics, literature, and case study...
Agriculture and Deforestation: Is REDD+ Rooted In Evidence?
This article deals with the links between agricultural technologies and tropical deforestation in order to determine whether and how the REDD + mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) might address agriculture expansion on forests. We study in the first place the Borlaug/land sparing hypothesis, according to which an increase in agricultural productivity per hectare leads to reduced cultivated areas, or at least is a prerequisite for such an outcome, but we find...
REDD+ and Agriculture Web Resource
There are a growing number of organisations, academics, publications and projects seeking to understand and address the links between deforestation and agriculture. The International Sustainability Unit (ISU) has itself commissioned a series of studies intended to address how the increasing demand for certain commodities could be met without further deforestation, and how REDD+ finance and policy frameworks could assist the agricultural sector transition from business-as-usual to sustainable...
Perceptions of Climate Variability and Pest–Disease Incidence on Crops and Adaptive Forest–Agricultural Practices
The article examines the influence of local perceptions of climate variability and pest–disease incidence on crops and its management and on adaptive forest–agricultural practices. The study was conducted in the humid forest of Southern Cameroon along a resource use intensification and population gradient using a semi-structured questionnaire administrated to farmers. The results showed that the level of severity of crops–pests incidence was perceived as high, with an increase over the past 15...
From Farmers to Loggers: The Role of Shifting Cultivation Landscapes in Timber Production in Cameroon
This article focuses on timber sourced from the agricultural areas in the shifting cultivation landscapes of the Central Region of Cameroon. Data about volumes marketed in urban centers, harvesting operations and on-farm timber management are used to discuss the ecological impact of small-scale logging and its sustainability in the long term. An opportunistic association exists between small scale logging and agricultural land uses, determined mostly by the abundance of valuable species in...
Climate change and agriculture: can market governance mechanisms reduce emissions from the food system fairly and effectively?
Climate and agriculture are inextricably linked: the climate affects agricultural production and is itself affected by agricultural emissions. Agriculture is responsible for 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. How agriculture is practised therefore has significant potential for mitigating climate change, for providing food security and for improving the livelihoods of millions of food producers worldwide. There is growing interest in the use of market governance mechanisms for...
Bonn Climate Change Conference on Finance for REDD+ and Agricultural Drivers
Progress at the Bonn UNFCCC Climate Conference has been frustratingly slow. One of the key goals for the conference was to lay the foundations for scaling up the finance needed for REDD+, and to secure short term additional finance commitments to support this transition in advance of COP18 in Doha.However, as the conference draws to a close, Parties are still struggling to agree on whether sources of private finance (e.g. market based approaches) can, or should, be used to...
Building Bridges Between REDD+ and Sustainable Agriculture: Addressing Agriculture's Role as a Driver of Deforestation
The potential role of forests in reducing of global greenhouse gas emissions is attracting considerable interest from the international community. Deforestation and forest degradation is largely being driven by forces outside the forestry sector. Many of these forces are closely tied to agriculture. For this reason, an isolated sectoral approach focusing solely on forests cannot succeed in implementing REDD+ policies. This paper suggests maximizing...
State of the World's Forests 2011
State of the World’s
Forests, which is published on a biennial
basis, presents up-to-date information on key themes affecting the world’s forests. The 2009
issue considered the theme of ‘Society,
forests and forestry: adapting for the
future’ by presenting a ‘demand-side’ perspective
on forest trends and topics. The 2011 issue takes a more holistic approach to the multiple
ways in which forests support people’s
livelihoods under the theme ‘...
