Introduction

Forests comprise a rich and complex world whose vast array of products and benefits touch our lives in many fundamental ways. Tropical forests alone are home to a wealth of animal and plant life, housing more than 50 percent of the world's terrestrial biological diversity. All forests, whether, temperate, tropical, or boreal supply us with timber, fuelwood, medicines, foods, and raw materials for industry. Many agricultural crops have been domesticated from forests where their wild relatives still evolve.

Despite their value, we are destroying the Earth's forests at an ever-increasing rate. If we continue to use forests for human benefit, we must not only protect the forest areas that remain, we must also manage them to meet both present and future needs. A related issue is the degradation of agricultural land caused by unsustainable farming systems. The loss of productive lands forces farm communities to cultivate new land in forests.

Many international institutions and governments have launched initiatives to slow depletion of the world's forests and agricultural lands. The CGIAR is supporting these efforts through research on the conservation and use of forest genetic resources, the sustainable management of natural forest ecosystems, and the development of agroforestry systems.

In 1991, the CGIAR expanded its mandate to include forestry and agroforestry. As part of this initiative three CGIAR centers are undertaking research on forest genetic resources.

1. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia. CIFOR focuses on natural ecosystems and their management, as well as on plantations.
2. The World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. World Agroforesty looks at the role of agroforestry and specifically at the adoption of multipurpose trees in sustainable farming systems.
3. Bioversity International in Rome, Italy. Bioversity International concentrates on the conservation and utilization of the genetic resources of agricultural crops and forest tree species.

Example of a CGIAR forestry project

In 1997, the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and the International Tropical Timber Organization signed a groundbreaking agreement that allows CIFOR to research the Bulungan model forest located in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Indonesian Ministry of Forestry has designated that CIFOR may develop 321,000 hectares of forest as a model of exemplary researcy-based management. The project's objective is to achieve long-term forest management for multiple uses, integrating social and silvicultural aspects. Developing a successful model for application in other regions could go far in sustaining the biodiversity and economic resources of tropical forests worldwide.

Agroforestry

Agroforestry, or the growing of trees on farms, has been practiced by farmers for generations. Trees provide a range of products and services which improve the livelihoods of poor smallholders and improve the sustainability and productivity of agricultural landscapes. Among these are: fertilizer trees for land regeneration, soil health and food security; fruit trees for nutrition; fodder trees that improve smallholder livestock production; timber and fuelwood trees for shelter and energy; medicinal trees to combat disease; and trees that produce gums, resins or latex products. Many of these trees are multipurpose, providing a range of benefits.

Increasingly, agroforestry research is focusing on the potential of such systems to address global challenges of food security, poverty alleviation, land degradation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. The science of agroforestry is not a set of stand-alone technologies, but rather a holistic and ecological approach to land use; a natural resource management system that integrates trees into the landscape, whether on a single farm or in an entire region.

Examples of agroforestry research

1) For more than a decade, the World Agroforestry Centre and partners in Indonesia have been developing and field testing different rubber agroforestry systems under smallholder management. These systems use high latex yielding rubber clones which require less input and investment compared to monocultures, and they maintain greater biodiversity. Research indicates higher profitability and flexibility of these rubber agroforestry systems compared to other alternatives. Latex production can increase from about 500kg dry rubber/hectare/year in traditional systems to more than 1500kg/hectare/year. Around 1.5 million households or 7 million people in Indonesia derive a major part (about 70%) of their income from rubber farming, yet over 64% of the total 3.5 million hectares under rubber still consists of unselected seedlings with very low productivity. The relative universality of rubber agroforestry systems and their potential for adaptation to local conditions and markets make them attractive and affordable to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers throughout rubber growing regions of the world.

2) Fertilizer trees, which capture nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the soil, have been shown to reduce the need for commercial nitrogen fertilizers by up to 75 per cent while doubling or tripling maize yields. Research in Malawi, over a ten year period, using fertilizer trees such as Tephrosia vogelii and Gliricidia sepium, has seen maize yields average 3.7 tonnes per hectare compared to 1 tonne per hectare in plots without fertilizer trees or mineral fertilizer. If half a million farmers, each with 0.2 hectares, were to plant fertilizer trees, the amount of nitrogen biomass they would fix in a year would be equivalent to 200kg per hectare. To buy this amount of mineral fertilizer would cost around USD 5.8 million per year. In addition to increasing maize yields and providing greater food security, the increased growth of fertilizer trees will improve drought resilience and build Carbon sequestration, thereby contributing to climate change adaptation.

Conserving Forest Genetic Resources

Conservation of forest genetic resources is the best means to guarantee their availability for the use of present and future generations. Scientists and breeders use genetic material, or germplasm, to increase a tree's resistance to a new disease, improve the quality of its products, or make it more suitable for use in agroforestry. In this way, forest genetic resources can be developed to protect the environment, rehabilitate degraded lands and improve the welfare of rural communities.

Forest genetic resources can be conserved on sit (in situ) and off site (ex situ). Both approaches have advantages, as well as drawbacks, which is why a combination of in situ and ex situ are often necessary.

The main targets for Bioversity InternationalI's conservation work are tree species of high socioeconomic and commercial value. The objective is to conserve maximum genetic diversity and to ensure that valuable traits of potential value, such as resistance to pests or tolerance to severe environmental stress, are available for future tree improvement.

Finding Alternatives to Burning Forests

In 1997, the world watched in alarm as Southeast Asian tropical forests, which are rich in biodiversity, went up in smoke. Worldwide, concern focused on how to prevent such catastrophes from happening in the future.

The Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) Program World Agroforestry/ASB, a CGIAR system-wide initiative, responded immediately to this concern. After studying the problem, ASB reported that unless land clearing policies and logging practices changed, the Asian fires would likely worsen. ASB recommended re-examining Indonesian forest polices, allowing less government land clearing permits during El Niño years, and conducting more research on no-burn, land clearing techniques.

Led by World Agroforestry, the ASB Program has become a worldwide research and development project to reduce tropical deforestation and promote the rehabilitation of degraded land. The Program has identified five "best-bet" alternatives for farmers who practice slash-and-burn agriculture: complex multistrata agroforests, simple agroforests, improved fallows, agropastoral systems, and natural forest management. The Programme aims to develop local solutions to slash-and-burn problems by developing and distributing these scientifically sound best-bet alternatives.

Since its conception in 1992, ASB has developed into a multi-institutional research consortium of 9 international research centers, 62 national research institutes, universities, and governmental and non-governmental organizations. Originally based in three benchmark sites in Brazil, Indonesia, and Cameroon, the Program has expanded to five more countries-Peru, Thailand, Philippines, Mexico, and Vietnam.

page last updated October 2009