Biodiversity and Tree Ownership Rights

Objectives

Cash crops like coffee are the main drivers in landscape dynamics in the Western Ghats. In Kodagu district, the Forest Department directly controls 33% of the total district area. Spatial analysis suggests that this area has not witnessed major changes for the last 30 years. It is the private lands that supported either patches of forests or multi-storied coffee based agroforestry systems that have been rapidly evolving. Yet what farmers can do with the trees in their lands is very much dependent on the land tenure system and the rights they have on the trees.

From tree species that are state monopoly (government trees) like Rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) to totally unregulated ones like Silver Oak (Grevillea robusta), norms and public policies put constraints on the farmers’ management practices. Alternative strategies are developed to either abide by the rules or find ways around them, while intensive lobbying is applied to change said rules. This situation provides us with an opportunity to look how public policies, in this case tree ownership rights, framed in the name of sustainable development and natural resources conservation clash with the farmers management practices, and the impact this interaction will have on the landscape.

The project general objective is to identify under which conditions public policies and traditional management practices of trees and forests can develop synergies to enable economical development and sustainable management of forest resources.

The specific objectives are:

• To document traditional management practices of trees and forests and the different modalities of implementation of public policies developed in the name of sustainable development;
• To qualify and quantify the impacts of the public policies on peasant management practices and landscape dynamics;
• To monitor the response of the rural system (landscape, agricultural practices, social structures) to the implementation of those public policies.

Materials and Methods

Action 1: Traditional management regimes on trees and forests.

• Select the study site and design the sampling strategy
• Develop a stakeholder typology.
• Document practices and traditional knowledge
• Describe the management regimes of trees in agroforestry systems and private forest patches.
• Gather secondary data (previous ecological studies, available maps and census data).

Action 2: Public policies implementation

• Document the public policies related to trees and forest management and developed in the name of sustainable management.
• Analyse implementation of the public policies.
• Identify institutional and legal constraints imposed on farmers

Action 3: Monitoring the impacts and interactions between management regimes and public policies

• Characterise the coping strategies developed in response by the farmers.
• Assess the social, economical and ecological impacts, both direct and indirect, of the public policies.
• Design spatially explicit models that allow for scenario building.
• Propose alternatives based on the scenarios developed.

The POPULAR (Public Policies and Traditional Management of Trees and Forests) projects spans over 4 countries (France, Morocco, Cameroon and India). It will compare conflicting issues and potential synergies between public policies drafted in the name of sustainable development and traditional management of trees and forests, drawing elements for the various social and ecological conditions of the study sites.

Partners

See project outline.

Team of POPULAR project

Project Leaders:

• Dr. Robert Nasi – Project Leader (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement. – CIRAD)
• Dr. Geneviève Michon – Project Leader (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement – IRD)

Regional Leaders:

• Dr. Laurent Auclair – Morocco Team Leader (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement – IRD)
• Dr. Gérard Balent – France Team Leader (Institut National de Recherche Agronomique – INRA)
• Dr. Claude Garcia – Indian Team Leader (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement. – CIRAD / French Institute of Pondicherry)
• Dr. Guillaume Lescuyer – Cameroon Team Leader (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement.– CIRAD)

Main Outputs

Project starts Jan. 2007.