SCALING UP IN AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, AND NUTRITION


Building on Successes with Regreening in the West African Sahel CHRIS REIJ


Focus 19 • brIeF 6 • June 2012 R


egreening entails increasing the number of both on-farm trees and, in some countries, off-farm trees through natural forest


management and for the protection and management of natural regeneration on degraded land. There is an urgent need to scale up existing successes in both regreening approaches, because trees produce multiple benefits for rural populations. Trees have a positive impact on agricultural production as they help maintain or increase soil organic matter content, which increases the water-holding capacity of the soil. Some species fix nitrogen from the air on their root systems, which helps maintain and improve soil fertility. Other species also produce fodder, which allows farmers to keep more livestock. Trees also decrease wind speed and locally reduce temperatures, which helps farmers adapt to climate change. More trees, higher crop yields, and more livestock enable farmers to better cope with drought years. Women are among the key beneficiaries of more on-farm trees, which they can prune for firewood. The protection and management of woody species is a low-cost


way for farmers to intensify and diversify their rural production systems and increase their incomes. Farmers can support regreening without procuring expensive inputs simply by investing their labor in the protection and management of woody species, which produces much better results at lower costs than tree planting.


Pathways to scaling up existing successes


A growing number of farmers in the Sahel protect and manage natural regeneration of woody species to build new agroforestry systems. One example is the large-scale regreening of the densely populated parts of the Maradi and Zinder regions in Niger, where farmers have protected and managed spontaneous regeneration of woody species since 1985. Their regreening efforts cover 5 million hectares. The approach of African Re-greening Initiatives (ARI), which


became operational in June 2009 in Burkina Faso and Mali, is to scale up existing successes in regreening. This policy brief builds on ARI’s experience.


Lessons from ARI


Based on the work of ARI so far we can identify a number of key steps that help scaling up regreening.


1. Identify successes in regreening and analyze why and how they emerged. There are many small and large successes with on-farm regreening in the Sahel. Often these examples go unnoticed because most countries are not yet focused on monitoring landscape-level and farm-level changes in the age and density of on-farm trees.


2. Organize field visits for regional and local policymakers to areas regreened by farmers. The regreening initiatives in Burkina Faso and in Mali have organized visits for national, regional, and local policymakers and farmer leaders to the young agroforestry parklands on the Seno Plains in


Mali. Several Malian policymakers have visited the large- scale regreening in Niger. Such visits can help stimulate an awareness of the prospects for scaling up regreening and the policy reforms needed to trigger landscape- level transformations.


3. Organize farmer-to-farmer visits. Regreening by farmers is concerned more with knowledge management and commitment of labor than with investment in costly inputs. Farmers learn from other farmers with relevant experience. Visits can be organized within villages, between villages in the same district, between districts, and also between countries. Farmers who observe what other farmers have achieved working under similar conditions often want to do as well, or better.


4. Build village institutions responsible for tree management. The technical aspects of regreening are fairly simple. The required social capital building for managing the new tree capital is much more complex. Individual farmers can protect and manage trees, but it is easier if entire communities develop rules and regulations for the protection and management of trees and are able to enforce these. This requires the building of village and intervillage institutions that represent all stakeholders (men, women, farmers, and herders).


5. Develop technical training for land users in pruning, tree management, and exploitation. Young trees need to be pruned to develop a trunk and a canopy. This requires training. Farmers decide what tree densities fit their specific situation, which depends on their soils, the types of trees that regenerate, and how much land they cultivate, and then prune accordingly.


6. Systematically use rural and regional radio to spread messages about regreening. Radio is an effective but too often underused medium in rural areas. Over radio, farmers can easily present their experience with farmer-to-farmer visits, the impacts they perceive, the development of their technical knowledge and skills, and so forth.


7. Adapt national policies and legislation to private ownership. National policies and legislation should induce resource users to invest in trees. Farmers will protect and manage trees only when they have exclusive rights to their on-farm trees. This is currently not the case in most countries. Farmers often need permission from the forestry service to cut or even prune the on-farm trees they have protected and managed. One reason why the large-scale farmer-managed regreening in Niger occurred is a shift in perception of ownership of trees.


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