Transforming Rural Lives Capturing Opportunities for a Bigger Impact in the Forest Margins

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Transforming Rural Lives Capturing Opportunities
for a Bigger Impact in the Forest Margins
Graduate Student Lunch Series, Center for
International Development Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University, 24 October 2003
Dagmar Timmer, ASB (Kenya) d.timmer_at_cgiar.org Ha
rvard University Seminar Presentation, October
24, 2003
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Outline

• About ASB
• Crisis Danger and Opportunity
• Opportunities for ASB in Transforming Rural Lives

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Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn

• Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) is a
  system-wide, integrated natural resource
  management (iNRM) program of the Consultative
  Group on International Agricultural Research
  (CGIAR)
• ASB mission forest conservation and poverty
  alleviation in the humid tropics
• ASB focus tradeoffs between biodiversity and
  rural development at the forest margins in a
  landscape context
• Benchmark sites in Peru (2), Brazil (2), Cameroon
  (1), Thailand (1), Indonesia (1), and the
  Philippines (1)
• Scope geographically focused on
  agriculture-forest interface at Tropical
  Broadleaf Forest Biome
• Scaling up and out through South-South
  cooperation

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The Nature of Opportunity
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Taking on a Multi-Scale Approach

• Challenge Most of ASBs work conducted at a plot
  level, but the reality is that need multiple
  scales of analysis and action for effective
  results (missing middle)
• Opportunity grapple with implications of
  different landscape mosaics for peoples
  livelihoods and environmental services
• Priorities for work have shifted from plot-level
  analyses of specific land uses (forests,
  agroforests, pastures)
• Build on deeper understanding of landscape
  processes
• Combinations of land uses interacting in space

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Getting Serious about Tradeoffs

• Challenge win-win is rare
• Opportunity negotiation to balance tradeoffs
• ASB Matrix - negotiation support tool for
  winning more and losing less
• Process conducted at all benchmark sites
• Harness landscape restoration for poverty
  reduction
• Opportunity make tradeoffs explicit
• Incentives for environmental services
• e.g. through environmental payments (RUPES)

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Improving Information for Policy

• Challenge Lack of solid scientific information
  on environment-development relationships of use
  to policy makers and practitioners
• Opportunity Prepare and disseminate a broad
  range of policy-relevant information from across
  the humid tropics on key themes
• iNRM approach ensures saliency of research
  because it is problem driven
• Ensure that local realities enrich policy
  processes
• Proactively and strategically deliver research to
  relevant decision makers

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Encouraging Rural Prosperity

• Challenge Subsistence farming will not reduce
  poverty in the full sense of increasing options
  for rural people
• Opportunity Support marketing, improved
  products, partnerships with private sector,
  farmers associations, etc.

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Strengthening National Capacity

• Challenge Capacity of developing country target
  groups to participate is constrained by lack of
  access to 1) information and 2) funding
• Opportunity ASB as partnership to bridge gaps
  between reality and potential of national
  consortias role
• Agenda for action developed jointly by partners
  and adapted over time
• National consortia have emerged as the foundation
  of ASB
• Capacity-building of national partners to seize
  growing opportunities
• INRM methods adopted and adapted by NARS and
  others
• Research funding and access to information
  attaining international standards
• When capacity is built nationally, most of the
  regional and global activities will be subsumed
  within national entities

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Active Learning Across Sites

• Challenge Sites distributed around the world
  with limited cross-site information sharing and
  technology transfer currently
• Opportunity Aim to accelerate learning through
  cross-site approach
• Building cross-regional networks
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

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Engaging with Development and Conservation

• Challenge Little experience and understanding of
  workable interventions, especially where they
  require integrated responses
• Opportunity Work more closely with development
  and conservation partners, e.g. IUCN, WWF, CIFOR,
  ICRAF, others
• Rainforest Challenge Partnership
• A global science-based approach to managing large
  forest landscapes
• Learning, adapting, empowering, building capacity
• Alleviating poverty and conserving the
  environment
• Building a long-term partnership
• Regional and national networks
• Strong local partnerships
• Engage knowledge, skills and impact channels of
  partners
• Based on a learning network of sites
• Multifunctional mosaic landscapes
• Areas of endemic poverty and high biodiversity
• Opportunities for inter-institutional
  collaboration are the starting point for the RCP

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Getting into Contact with New Stakeholders

• Challenge Local stakeholders are at the heart of
  ASBs work and yet interventions are needed from
  across different sectors
• Locally-appropriate environmental agenda and
  empowerment of local stakeholders still key
• Opportunity Strategic stakeholder analysis to
  build partnerships that leverage ASB learning at
  new research sites
• New audiences to achieve additional goals, e.g.
  creation of non-farm jobs, rural
  entrepreneurship
• Increase impact on international organizations,
  global fora, multinational corporations, and the
  CGIAR itself.
• Outputs from global synthesis not always read and
  utilized by researchers at national and local
  levels
• Impact on general public awareness is indirect
  and limited

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Understanding and Increasing Impact

• Challenge Typical indicators of impact (e.g.
  tons of rice grown, etc.) do not show the range
  of impacts that ASB has.
• Opportunity Identify the impact channels more
  precisely, by looking at the scales at which ASB
  works and its leverage webs.
• Sissi Lius ASB impact typology
• Leverage webs and feedback loops form the
  foundation for long-term and broad-based impacts
• Integration and extrapolation activities produce
  the greatest impact leverage
• Institutional learning loop important in refining
  existing and defining new problems
• Support to partners increases national/regional
  impact

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General Schematic
ASB Program Impact Typology
Global/International
Global
Impacts on scientific knowledge, private sector
incentives, public awareness, and partner agenda
as well as training and education
Global capacity building change in social
values
Cross-sector inputs
Global analysis, integration extrapolation
support for partners information dissemination
Scientific publications theories, principles
methods Policy Briefs local Voices training
materials (Publicly accessible via research
database)
Interdisciplinary consortia of ASB and partner
researchers staff
International
Change in views agendas of scientists
politicians of multiple nations
Regulatory policy changes in non-ASB partner
countries conservation of tropical ecosystems
Techniques methods from ASB research,
infrastructure, external scientific knowledge
local indigenous practices
National/Regional

• Research for enhanced
• productivity
• human well-being
• ecosystem resilience
• enabling integrative trade-off analysis,
  securing funding and providing negotiation support

New technology prototype for institutional
innovations dialogues with policy makers
NARS capacity building change in focus and
agenda of NARs politicians in primary program
nations and regions
Policy changes expansion of ASB program in
partner countries
Multiparty project funding
Local
Local experimentation community capacity
building
Community networks implementation of
agroforestry practices market access secure
land tenure delivery pathways
Change in production practices social cohesion
Increase in income, broadening of opportunities
for multiple generations, conservation of local
ecosystems
Multi-scale communication and negotiation
expertise
ASB Internal
Internal institutional innovations
Intern/external reviews assessments
ASB as a boundary organization prototype
Innovations in organizational processes
structure
Systematic institutional learning
Changes in external environment
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Improving Capacity as a Boundary Organization

• New concept for harnessing science and technology
  for sustainable development
• Boundary organization as a forum for actors
  cooperating across the boundary between sectors
  and social spheres
• Boundary management activities aid in
• Communication
• Translation
• Mediation
• Impacts leveraged through global research and
  information dissemination
• Participatory research provides livelihood
  capital assets