Case Studies

Reforestation and Farmers

Background

This chapter provides an overview of reforestation programs involving smallholder farmers, highlighting factors that influence the attractiveness of reforestation to different types of farmers.

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The Role of Nurse Trees in Mitigating Fire Effects on Tropical Dry Forest Restoration: A Case Study

Background

The authors of this study initially studied differential growth rates in a reforestation project of native tree species with nurse trees(Leucaena leucocephala) and without nurse trees when the area had two fire events. However, authors took advantage of the unplanned experiment to study the effects of fire in reforestation.

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Lessons Learnt from WWF’s Worldwide Field Initiatives Aiming at Restoring Forest Landscapes

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This document provides a series of case studies about forest landscape restoration projects from across the WWF network. The authors provide overall lessons as well as country-specific lessons. The authors summarize lessons learned across programs for the different stages of restoration programs.

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Reforesting the Sahel: Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration

Background

This study describes the development of a simple income generating and self-promoting reforestation system called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) developed in Maradi, Niger. FMNR is an agroforestry system based on the natural regeneration and management of tree systems from underground stumps.

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Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration: The Niger Experience

BACKGROUND

This paper reviews the farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) program introduced in the Maradi region of Niger around 1983 to restore degraded parts of the lands. FMNR was started in response to past failures of restoration projects that were modeled for temperate climates and in societies and cultures different from those in West Africa. This prompted the use of more conventional traditional methods of regeneration from re-sprouts of felled trees without running expensive nurseries.

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More than Just Trees: Assessing Reforestation Success in Tropical Developing Countries

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Contextual Analysis of Agroforestry Adoption in the Buffer Zone of Podocarpus National Park, Ecuador

Background

Promoting sustainable agriculture and community development has been an important strategy both to alleviate resource pressures on Ecuador’s Podocarpus National Park (PNP) and surrounding forested areas in its buffer zone, and to aid local communities. However, many contextual factors drive neighboring rural and agricultural communities to put pressure on PNP and the surrounding landscape.

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Tropical Forest Restoration within Galapagos National Park: Application of a State-transition Model

Background

Few restoration models address ecological and management issues across the vegetation mosaic of a landscape. Because of a lack of scientific knowledge and funds, restoration practitioners focus instead on site-specific prescriptions and reactive rather than proactive approaches to restoration; this approach often dooms restoration projects to failure. This synthesis article tests a state-transition model as a decision-making tool to identify and achieve short- and long-term restoration goals.

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Restoration of degraded forest land in Thailand: the case of Khao Kho

Background

This chapter discusses the deforestation of Khao Kho district, situated in Thailand’s central highlands, in the 1970s and restoration efforts in the 1990s. Over 75% of the district was forested until 1968, when as a counterinsurgency strategy the Royal Thai Army began to build roads, deforest the district and encourage agricultural settlement in this heretofore intact forest. Deforestation and maize cultivation on these steep hillsides, often with already-poor soil quality degraded in situ, led to rapid degradation with farming untenable by 1990. A UNDP-funded reforestation project – managed by the Army – was initiated in 1990.

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Farm Forestry: An Alternative to Government-Driven Reforestation in the Philippines

Background

This study reviews literature and various case studies about growing trees at the farm level by rural farmers. In the Philippines, millions of dollars have gone to employ people to plant trees as part of reforestation programs while only about 10% of those planted areas are successful. The authors assert that paying people to plant trees is unsustainable and often hindered by the lack of prompt release of funding.

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