Proceedings of the UNESCO - University of Tsukuba International Seminar on Traditional Technology for Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development in the Asian-Pacific Region, held in Tsukuba Science City, Japan, 11-14 December, 1995.
Editors: Kozo Ishizuka, D. Sc. , Shigeru Hisajima, D. Sc. , Darryl R.J. Macer, Ph.D.
It is said that the root causes of tropical deforestation is destructive shifting cultivation, but evidence suggest the numerous regions once supported human populations without known detrimental impacts on forest ecosystems. Serious deforestation and forest degradation are sometimes the results of neglect of traditional people's vast experience with resource management.
Traditional farmers have lived in the same region for generations and made decisions based on trial and error. They have thus accumulated considerable knowledge concerning the local environment and available natural resources and built a cumulative set of ideas and techniques that have withstood the test of time.
The main agricultural system practiced by many traditional farmers is shifting cultivation. The basic sequence involves cutting down the large trees in a small area, slashing small trees, burning the resultant slash, cultivating the cleared area for a few years, and moving on to another location to repeat the process. The abandoned area is then left fallow for a variable period of years. This system of agriculture is often blamed for tropical deforestation. It should be noted, however, that these farmers have developed various types of fallow management which has great possibility to improve forest resource use.
Some traditional shifting cultivators in Mexico leave some useful trees standing, which provide a variety of uses: edible fruits, seeds, or leaves; construction; nectar production; soil improvement; religion; ornamentation; or shade, among others. In some cases, plantations of trees are mixed with understory crops. In other cases, seeds of trees present in the soil or dispersed from adjacent forests may germinate in the shifting cultivation plots and be protected. These include fruit trees, timber trees or cash crops. Traditional farmers have learned from long experience how to manipulate succession and produced a potentially sustainable system (Gomez-Pompa, 1989).
Indonesian farmers have developed "agroforest", spreading on all the major islands of the archipelago: rubber agroforest (Sumatra, Kalimantan), fruits/export agroforest (all island), damar agroforest (Sumatra), rattan agroforest (Kalimantan), Illipe nut agroforest (Kalimantan), and sugar palm agroforest (Sulawesi, Lombok). These agroforests provide about 70% of the total rubber production in Indonesia, at least 80% of the damar resin, roughly 80 to 90% of the various marketed fruits and important quantities of the main export tree crops (cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, coffee, candle nut) (Foresta and Michon, 1994) Most of them has been established by local people especially shifting cultivators. The establishing process of traditional agroforests must have followed the ecological succession, starting with slash-and-bourn agriculture (rice and vegetables then moving to shrub/pioneer tree phase (bananas, coffee, pepper, fruits, firewood) and to mature tree phase (resin, fruits, timber). Mature agroforests look like mixed uneven aged forests, functioning like a rainforest with high potential for biodiversity conservation.
Complex agroforests are expected to increase production stability, increase biodiversity, reduce production risk and increase returns to labor. Interestingly enough, despite their importance agroforests have been largely ignored. ICRAF's researchers are trying to document, promote and improve these traditional systems.
Most forests throughout the humid tropics are state property, and governments are often reluctant to share authority with local people. Unfortunately the result is the widespread devastation of tropical forests. It would be more recommendable to return regal control of the land to local farmers and let them establish various agroforests using their own technology than encouraging companies to establish large scale monoculture of tree plantations with many farmers displaced.