Understanding and Integrating Local Perceptions of Trees and Forests into Incentives for Sustainable Landscape Management

Local stakeholders divided the Takamanda-Mone landscape into two main components: forests and farmlands. However, they did not clearly differentiate between the functions provided by forest or farmland areas (Fig. 5). On average, surveyed village communities valued both forests and farmlands for their food [collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), animal trapping] and direct income generation potential, although the importance given to farmlands for these major functions was more pronounced. Differences in scoring responses between villages were slight.

Sources of income include trade of high-value NTFPs such as bush mango (Irvingia spp.), eru (Gnetum spp.), chewing sticks (Garcinia spp. and Massularia acuminata), and cattle stick (Carpolobia spp.) and, especially for villagers adjacent to logging concessions, commercial timber extraction. In farmlands, improved market access due to road construction has stimulated the cultivation of cocoa as a cash crop during the past 10 years. Cocoa farms (up to 3 ha) are sometimes mixed with banana (Musa acuminata) and plantain (Musa x paradisiaca), with up to 50% canopy cover for shade. In the studied landscape, farmers living close to the main road were the first to cultivate cocoa, with other villagers following suit progressively once connected by improved road systems. The expansion of cocoa agroforests is a marked trend and farmers consider accessible forests to be land available for conversion. With the creation of the Takamanda National Park and overexploitation of some NTFPs, residents believe that access to wild resources will be limited in the future (van Vliet 2010).

In this landscape, cocoa cultivation often takes place under shade trees, giving the overall structure similarities to natural forest (Slayback 2009). Drivers of deforestation and spatial differentiation are related to road access and cocoa markets but, overall, there is no sharp segregation between landscape components, and the measured deforestation rate remains low, at 0.1%/ha*year.

The Viengkham District site includes the large Nam Et Phou Loey National Protected Area, which is surrounded by complex landscape mosaics resulting from long-established systems of shifting cultivation. Free grazing of livestock and collection of NTFPs (including fish and crabs) complement the traditional upland rice swidden system. Local people value remaining forests more for NTFPs than for timber and mentioned their utility for providing shelter and forage for livestock. There are no permanent agroforests. Smallholder plantations in this landscape are primarily fruit trees (orange, Citrus aurantium; pomelo, Citrus maxima; jackfruit, Artocarpus heterophyllus; mango, Mangifera indica) and trees linked to specific markets such as agarwood (Aquilaria crassna), teak (Tectona grandis), and rubber (Hevea brasiliensis). Complementary exercises showed that residents prioritize tree uses for income generation, but still value food production and timber.

In contrast to the Takamanda landscape, local communities recognize a greatly differentiated set of landscape components (Fig. 6). Villagers listed with details all components of their landscape together with their functions and status. They distinguished between types of natural forests (conservation, timber and firewood, watershed protection, secondary forests), agricultural zones (gardens, irrigated paddy fields, shifting cultivation areas, grazing lands), water management zones (rivers, streams, fish conservation areas), mineral resources (gold mines, mountains), and societal locations (old and new villages, cemetery).

Forests appeared prominently in responses, especially when combining all the types listed in Fig. 6. Forest products remain available and are to some extent complemented by those from plantations and fallows. Rivers and streams form very important landscape components, equally or more important than agricultural components, principally because they provide fish and crabs for local diets.

As shown in Fig. 6, the three villages differ in terms of access and forest cover, in contrast to the homogeneous Cameroonian landscape. It is therefore interesting to focus on the observed gradient in the importance villages placed on different forest types: in Phadheng, the most remote village, villagers considered forests for timber and NTFPs to be much more important than conservation forests, whereas the value given to these two forest categories was more balanced in the other villages. Furthermore, we note an inverse trend between shifting cultivation and paddy fields across villages and a higher importance of plantations in the more accessible villages of Bouammi and Muangmuay.

Irrigated rice is becoming more important, but swidden agriculture remains the principal farming system by area, as irrigated paddy fields lie in valley bottoms and cover less than 5% of the area. This is despite government policy encouraging rapid rotational upland rice cultivation by using a three-year fallow as a strategy to concentrate the system. Although harvesting of wild NTFPs continues in forest areas, domestication (i.e., the managed cultivation of NTFPs) is increasing in deforested areas, with easy market access for some profitable products such as peuak meuak (Boehmeria malabarica). Accessibility (by road, track, or river) appeared to be the most important factor when choosing the location of the few smallholder plantations seen in our study villages. It seems likely, however, that the district will be increasingly affected by the high regional demand for rubber and teak (Vongkhamor and others 2007). Government policies encourage private investment in plantations, building on the trend that has already seen large areas of forest converted to rubber plantations in the north of the country (Shi 2008).

In the Manompana site, as in Laos, the main farming system is traditional upland rice cultivation through swidden cycles (locally called tavy), with irrigated rice farming in valley bottoms where there is sufficient water. Forests are viewed primarily as available land for agricultural expansion. The area of fallows used in shifting cultivation occupies between 43% (Ambofampana, enclaved in the forest corridor) and about 60% of village territories. Fallows provide local people with a range of valued products and services: (in order of importance for our site) fibers, tools, ropes and woody items, food production, medicinal plants, construction materials, and firewood. Food production is included because vegetables are planted in the first years of fallows. Fallows also possess notable ritual and sacred values through the spiritual and cultural associations of the tavy cycle (Pfund 2000).

Agroforests, locally called tanimboly, occur either around the villages as homegardens or in more remote agricultural zones. In addition to common crops such as banana (Musa acuminata), coffee (Coffea robusta), and papaya (Carica papaya), tanimboly can include various fruit trees (lychee, Litchi chinensis; breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis; jackfruit, Artocarpus heterophyllus; coffee) and clove trees (Syzygium aromaticum). These generally diverse agroforests contribute primarily to food production. Crops and trees for income generation [mainly cloves, coffee, and vanilla (Vanilla planifolia)] tend to be planted in monoculture stands, which are then named simply for the principal crop (e.g., “alan’jirofo” for “clove forests”). However, investment means are limited for such plantations, which remain a risky activity for most people. Agricultural diversification has been slowed by poverty, the risk of cyclone damage, tenure insecurity, and poor market access across the whole landscape.

Local valuations show that farmlands are the most important landscape component in terms of income generation (Fig. 7), but that forests are valued for marketable timber and NTFPs, particularly mats made of Pandanus guillaumetii (Fedele and others forthcoming). Distance to the road inhibits timber commercialization because of high transportation costs, but this limitation can be balanced by NTFPs, which are lighter and easier to carry, even from the remote villages of Ambofampana and Maromitety. This explains why people in remote villages still value forests as an income-generating landscape component (Fig. 7).

In the site in Madagascar, we evaluated financial incomes generated by agricultural and forest products (Fig. 8). Communities living closer to roads obtain significantly better returns to agricultural work than do remote communities, a feature particularly influenced by cash crop production (Rakotoarison 2009). Accessibility is also correlated with more income generated from marketed forest resources, although this income contribution is minor (less than 1% for farmers) compared with agricultural benefits. Although forest cover is diminishing (especially in Bevalaina), timber is exploited as soon as it can be transported at an acceptable cost, as it generates greater benefits than do NTFPs (Urech and Sorg 2010). A comparison of Figs. 7 and 8 indicates that local people do consider income generation from forests to be important, even though cash returns are limited compared with agricultural products. This finding might be because focus group participants place value on potential—rather than actual—income generation, or that they appreciate the role of forest resources as safety nets for cash. In Maromitety, for instance, where poverty is severe, rice production is often sufficient for only six months, so that even small financial returns can be considered important. However, with limited available land, growing populations, and the restriction of investment in new crops and agroforests to accessible areas, the shifting cultivation system will expand at the expense of forest, especially in remote areas.

The Tanzanian site, which is close to the Amani Nature Reserve in the East Usambaras, differs from the other sites in several aspects. Its most notable characteristics are the high population density and the fact that the Eastern Arc forests generally form habitat islands surrounded by drier and non-forested areas. Many of the people living in these regions are relatively recent immigrants, and hence do not have a strong cultural link to wet forests. Major international and national conservation efforts have mainly focused on the forest ecosystems in the mountain areas. In this study site, forests are highly valued for the provision of environmental services, conservation functions, and, particularly, the protection of water quality and prevention of soil erosion. Most focus group participants acknowledged the problem of declining forest services, and several communities—with NGO support—have devised new village bylaws to protect the forest environment. Nevertheless, deforestation outside protected areas continued unabated from 1992 to 2008. Lack of trust between forest officials and local communities, complex forest laws and procedures, and limited knowledge of regulations inhibit many farmers from planting or retaining trees in their farm areas (for more details, see Rantala and Lyimo 2011).

Among the livelihood options supported by conservation and development programs, agroforestry has been presented as a promising alternative for conserving ecosystem services. By maintaining a forest-like structure, agroforestry systems can support endemic and threatened species, such as the long-billed tailorbird (Artisornis moreaui), which was recorded in an agroforest for the first time during our surveys. Agroforestry systems comprise planted spices such as black pepper (Piper nigrum), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), and cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) under a partially open (around 50%) rainforest canopy. These agroforests also often include food crops such as yam and banana. Typically, forest species are initially maintained alongside food and cash crops, but tree regeneration is later cut to maximize crop production.

People consider fields to be the most important landscape components (Fig. 9), followed by agroforests and forests, which received similar value ratings. Forests owned by tea plantation companies (“company forests”) are less valued than village forests, and plantations in Kwatango (grouped with agroforests in the graph) received a much lower value than agroforests in other villages. As in Laos, water-related areas (rivers, springs, swamps) are of major importance, and a rather logical opposite relationship exists between the values given to open fields and fallows.

When soil fertility decreases, agroforests are typically converted to land uses with less forest because such uses have higher economic returns (Reyes and others 2009; Stocking and Perkin 1992). In collaboration with our study, Bullock and others (forthcoming) analyzed the profitability of various agricultural systems and found that sugarcane, cardamom agroforestry, and perennial spices are the most profitable of the currently practiced cropping systems based on a 13-year period, which is the estimated productive life of a cardamom agroforest. In general, farmers recognize that conversion to more open land uses will perpetuate the trend of declining tree cover. Furthermore, conversion to open fields and monocultures reduces biodiversity potential.

Since the 1970s, Bungo District in Sumatra has been transformed by infrastructure developments, mining developments, and large-scale immigration. Between 1973 and 2004, forest cover decreased from 75 to 35% (Dewi and Ekadinata 2010). From 1950 through the 1980s, the main emphasis was on the establishment of rubber monocultures; during the past two decades, however, oil palm plantations have become dominant in the development strategy (Feintrenie and Levang 2009; Feintrenie and others 2010a). In the Bungo landscape, remaining natural forests are far from the study villages, fallows play only a very minor and localized role, and the dominant tree-based systems are oil palm and rubber monocultures.

Various oil palm production systems exist in Indonesia (Sheil and others 2009), and both large companies and smallholders own and manage the oil palm plantations in Bungo District (for more details, see Feintrenie and others 2010a).

The principal function of the young agroforests is cash generation from natural rubber production, although they are also valued for food (from fruit trees), construction materials, and firewood, except in Danau (Fig. 10).

Farmers in villages with very limited forest cover tend to place greater importance on the provision of construction materials from old agroforests (Fig. 11). In Danau, old agroforests, which are dominated by durian trees, are highly valued for their provision of fruit. Increasingly, some villagers use other secondary products from agroforests such as Parkia speciosa pods, nuts, rattan, and fruits for subsistence or as alternative sources of income during periods of economic stress. These findings may indicate that the importance of agroforests for providing forest goods is increasing in environments that have few forest resources, and hence in which forest goods are becoming rare, as well as in agricultural fields poor in natural resources.

Nevertheless, financial considerations continue to dominate farmers’ perceptions (see also Feintrenie and others 2010b). Through visioning exercises and perception surveys, farmers indicated that the most common and desirable pathway to improved livelihoods was through oil palm plantations and rubber intensification. Most farmers expressed a desire to have around 40% of their non-irrigable lands dedicated to oil palm, 40% to rubber monoculture, and 20% to agroforests with fruit trees (see Fig. 12, adapted from Therville 2008; see also Therville and others forthcoming). Market demand for other crops in the district is limited. Although there are plans at the provincial level to introduce large-scale pulpwood plantations (Acacia mangium, Eucalyptus spp.), local residents have little knowledge of these developments and remain unaware of the associated implications.

Some challenges arise when comparing scores across sites because of inconsistent definitions of landscape components. When defining categories of local land uses, it is useful to clarify if and how more general definitions can be applied later. Standardized definitions are especially important for components such as “natural forests” that are linked to centralized decisions or funding mechanisms such as REDD + discussed further below (Putz and Sasaki 2009; van Noordwijk and Minang 2009). When local aspects such as tree composition, management, and cover permanence are clear, they can generally be linked to broader categories. However, for cross-site comparisons, it is important to pay attention to details to ensure correspondence between regions. In our case, an element given insufficient consideration was the role of water and wetlands as “landscape components”. It would have been more comprehensive to encourage focus group participants to consider in their evaluations all landscape components as well as animal, vegetation, mineral, and water resources. The same applies when constructing a comprehensive list of functions or use categories; in our case, it would have been useful to include forage and the provision of mineral resources in our set of goods. As for environmental services, on the one hand, such services should be related to systems and relationships that people recognize; on the other hand, it should be possible to classify them into comprehensive categories for comparison, such as in relation to water quality and availability, which proved to be important in our sites. This is especially important in view of promoting reward mechanisms. When applying such assessment methods generally, it is necessary to consider trade-offs between open exercises, which are useful for capturing local interpretations, and assessments designed to deliver results suitable for making comparisons that are then used to identify spatial or regional priorities.

Our data reveal an apparent, well-known paradox similar to the classic “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968), in that many of the tree-based use systems that are lost and converted into less diverse systems have multiple and significant local values. The perceived importance of landscape functions reflects not only their actual value but also the degree to which the service is a public (lower value) or private (higher value) good (Swift and others 2004); functions that are more public tend to be replaced by a narrower set of functions that accrue benefits to specific users. The data we collected through focus groups illustrate a collective “ideal” perspective, influenced by group leaders, rather than individual decision bases. Although many focus group participants may regret the loss of forests, species-rich agroforests, and fallows, they are under pressure to increase their own financial income. The loss of environmental services is thus the result not of ignorance or neglect but of commercial and demographic pressures and the desire for improved individual prosperity. Conservation efforts in the East Usambaras meant the general trend linking private goods and low services was reversed in the Tanzanian site. Under new decentralized village structures, the “community” appropriated areas that had been privately held and managed according to private land use decisions and set these aside for conservation, with strict restrictions on use.

The assessment of collective appreciation of the functions of forests and other landscape components is useful for opening discussions about landscape management strategies. However, when seeking to maintain important functions, it is crucial to present hard evidence of the actual trends to allow realistic planning in the light of individual constraints and behavior.

Results relate to site- and village-specific contexts and must be interpreted in that light. For example, communities in Madagascar and Indonesia value the provision of construction materials more highly because they have few alternative sources for these products (Fig. 3). Strict logging regulations and plantations probably influenced answers in Tanzania and Laos, and the presence of timber trees in farmlands would have influenced answers in Cameroon. In the case of Madagascar, the three sampled villages awarded similar importance values to the “income generation” of different landscape components (forests, agroforests, farms) although, in absolute terms, net forest-related cash benefits are much higher in the accessible village and are generally very low in all villages compared with agricultural returns. Because of the lack of means and access to markets, local communities, especially remote ones, have very limited opportunities to invest in cash crops or livestock. Hence, they value forest income more highly than might be expected due to limitations related to marketable crops and the perceived potential of forests as freely accessible resources. In Indonesia, where farmers focus on lucrative crops such as rubber and oil palm, the lack of forest goods influences perceptions of old agroforests. Here again, combining perception surveys with quantitative measurements would inform deeper discussion, both of the differences between the perceived and actual importance in a given location, and of how it is influenced by local circumstances.

The importance given to environmental services in the Tanzanian site appears to make it an outlier. We identified two possible reasons for the difference. First, until recently, a system of management dating back more than 100 years excluded local people from most extractive benefits (see Rantala and Lyimo 2011). Second, the surveys were conducted by representatives of a conservation NGO that had been active in the region for several years. Both these factors might have encouraged the local communities to emphasize conservation values. Local people values generally reflect a complex mixture of experience, assumptions, and knowledge that, in most cases, have been introduced to the village by “outsiders.” Furthermore, local communities may be selective in deciding what views they wish to report to researchers. We therefore need to acknowledge that potential bias may occur if local informants provide answers skewed toward those that they believe the researchers (or officials) want to hear or that might offer them some advantage. As engaging with local communities and understanding their aspirations is a requisite when addressing the trade-offs between conservation and development, especially in agricultural landscapes (Garcia and others 2010; Harvey and others 2008), such biases and pitfalls cannot be entirely avoided, although they may be mitigated by longer periods of engagement and careful cross-checking (Sheil and Wunder 2002). Furthermore, trade-offs between the effects of individualistic behavior on recognized common environmental services can be highlighted during land management and zoning negotiations through the combined use of “soft” (social, anthropological) and “hard” (economic, spatial) data.