This presentation examines the importance of social science approaches to understanding social and political dynamics of interventions on forest development in sloping lands. This presentation was given by Kiran Asher at the World Conference on Agroforestry, Feb 10-14, 2014, New Delhi, India, and Transforming Mountain Forestry ICIMOD symposium, Dehra Dun, Jan 2015.

1. Understanding diversity of smallholder agro-forestry and
forestry systems in hilly and mountainous landscapes:
Regional comparisons in Asia
Kiran Asher, Peter Cronkleton, and Louis Putzel.
CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia. Presentation at the World
Conference on Agroforestry, Feb 10-14, 2014, New
Delhi, India, and
Transforming Mountain Forestry ICIMOD
symposium, Dehra Dun, Jan 2015

2. Country profiles: China, India, Indonesia, Thailand,
Nepal & Philippines, Vietnam
CIFOR/ICRAF SLANT (Sloping lands in
transition) scoping study

3.  Six trends affecting the practice of swidden
agriculture in Southeast Asia (China
(Xishuangbanna), Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and
Indonesia.
• classifying swiddeners as ethnic minorities within nation-
states
• dividing the landscape into forest and permanent
agriculture
• expansion of forest departments and the rise of
conservation
• resettlement
• privatization and commoditization of land and land-
based production
• expansion of markets, roads, and other infrastructure
and the promotion of industrial agriculture
Sociopolitical trends and upland farm-
forest landscapes in Asia (Fox et al. 2009)

4.  Agroforestry systems and forests play an
important role in providing or supplementing the
livelihoods of small holders living on sloping
lands.
 Smallholders manage these systems in ways that
sustain their livelihoods and the biophysical and
ecological integrity of these lands.
 “smallholders” are not an unitary group. Rather,
they are as diverse in terms of their needs,
characteristics, motivations, and management
practices as the agroforestry systems they
depend upon.
Smallholder agroforestry: some
observations

5. Small holder farm, Dzongu, N. Sikkim

6.  Governments and non-government
agencies promote policies for reforestation,
afforestation, forest management, and
agroforestry on sloping lands to:
• Mitigate soil erosion, water loss, land
degradation,
• Enhance specific ecosystem goods and
services (often for people downstream),
• Conserve biodiversity
• Promote sustainable development
Interventions on sloping lands in Asia:
Selected observations

7. • China: Conversion of Cropland to Forest
Program (CCFP)
• India: dam building, cash crop
production in the North and northeast,
biodiversity conservation in the south
and southwest
• Thailand: Water provision for lowland
rice cultivation
• Indonesia: Reforestation for PES,
timber production
Examples of interventions…

8. Conversion of Cropland to Forest
Program (CCFP) in China
 Response to flooding in 1998 blamed on deforestation,
over-logging, & forest-agriculture conversion on sloping
lands

9. Teesta River, Sikkim and West Bengal

10. Rice paddies on terraces, Sikkim, India

11. Smallholder forest management in Leksono,
Wonosobo

12. Water for Rice Production, Thailand

13.  While often sophisticated in terms of attention to
the ecological and biophysical characteristics,
(agro)forestry research is not
sufficiently attentive to the sociocultural and
political economic context of smallholder
agroforestry and interventions on slopes.
 Social science approaches can focus attention to
the often blurry line between the natural and the
social, and the implications of such blurring
Our claims

14. Ecosystem
services specific
to sloping lands
Provision of water
Purification of water
Erosion control: conservation of soils
Flood prevention
Conservation of soil nutrients
Maintenance of habitats
Carbon sequestration
Maintanence of regional
precipitation patterns
Human-centered values and services
Others?

15.  Enable an understanding of the diversity of
smallholders and their resource management
practices,
 Analyze success or failure of projects targeting
sloping lands, e.g. incentives vs. restrictions,
 Provide inputs for better agroforestry
interventions (to improve soil and water
management, biodiversity conservation, better
production of cash crops, income generation,
and payment for services).
Why social science tools and
methods? The functional reasons

16. Dieng, Wonosobo, Indonesia

17.  Analyze the arbitrary and dynamic
definitions of agroforestry, slopes,
smallholders that govern such
interventions,
 Implications of generalizing across what
are diverse interests, practices, and
intents,
 Contradictory, contingent and co-
constitutive nature of linkages and
relations (agro and forestry, people and
products, etc.)
Why social science? The analytical
and political reasons

18. Thank you