Suchergebnisse

Différents mécanismes d'intervention sont proposés pour transformer les paysages agricoles de manière à ce qu'ils remplissent de multiples fonctions, compatibles avec les objectifs du développement durable. Dans le cas de l'atténuation et de l'adaptation au changement climatique, des politiques incitatives et des mécanismes de rémunération des acteurs locaux sont promues dans le cadre des initiatives REDD+. Sur le terrain, ces interventions visent à assurer simultanément la fourniture de services écosystémiques et le maintien, voire l'amélioration, des moyens d'existence locaux. Dans cet article, nous explorons le rôle que peut jouer l'évaluation participative dans la mise en oeuvre de paiements pour services environnementaux au sein de communautés rurales d'Indonésie, du Laos, du Vietnam et de Chine. Engagées dans un processus d'intégration rapide à l'économie de marché, ces communautés ont transformé leurs systèmes d'abattis-brûlis traditionnels pour s'orienter vers différentes voies d'intensification agricole au cours des dernières années. L'évaluation positive ou négative de ces évolutions fait nécessairement l'objet de jugements de valeur dans les choix effectués entre différentes options possibles. La formulation de ces options en termes de services écosystémiques rendus permet de comparer les trajectoires paysagères et leur impact sur les conditions de vie locales. Sur ces bases, les communautés peuvent explorer des scénarios de transformation de leurs pratiques agricoles, négocier des compromis entre services écosystémiques et identifier les " gagnants " et les " perdants " potentiels. Ces simulations ont montré l'importance du calendrier de mise en place des programmes REDD+ par rapport aux transformations agraires en cours. Elles pointent le risque de s'éloigner des ambitions initiales d'un impact sur les émissions de carbone pour devenir un instrument supplémentaire de développement durable.

In German Aerospace Center (DLR); Germany. Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Mekong Environmental Symposium, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 5-7 March 2013. Abstract volume, Topic 02 - Hydropower development and impacts on economy. Wessling, Germany: German Aerospace Center (DLR); Bonn, Germany: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). ; We question whether payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have the potential to enhance natural resource management in Vietnam, where the state essentially designs and implements the programs. In such settings, the welfare gains achieved through PES programs will be determined by how the state incorporates the programs into national development strategies and aligns them with other land use and environmental policies. We consider also whether PES programs can be relied on to reduce poverty and enhance livelihoods, either alone or in combination with other policy interventions. To these ends, we trace the development of PES programs within the context of forest conservation policies and in relation to watershed management. Taking Vietnam as our case study, we illustrate how PES programs are implemented within the context of a monopsonistic, non-competitive market. We conclude that in the absence of a competitive market structure and with appropriate regulations governments can reshape PES programs so that they function primarily as tools for strengthening state control over natural resources.

Cet article montre les apports de la sociologie de la transaction sociale dans une recherche participative pour l'aménagement du territoire en Tunisie. Dans le cadre d'un programme de développement rural, trois scènes transactionnelles sont analysées : la politique, la recherche et le terrain. La sociologie de la transaction sociale permet : 1/ de prendre en compte les différentes échelles transactionnelles dans la compréhension des échanges et des débouchés de la démarche participative ; 2/ d'éclairer les oppositions entre acteurs. L'article propose trois manières pour les chercheurs et facilitateurs d'accompagner les acteurs locaux dans les transitions économiques, sociales et environnementales : en prenant en compte 1/ les émotions, 2/ le rôle de l'espace et du temps dans les démarches participatives et 3/ en favorisant l'élargissement de l'espace des transactions sociales, en estompant la rigidité des institutions et des dispositifs.

Payments for ecosystem services often are viewed as an innovative approach toward improving natural resource management, while also providing opportunities for enhancing incomes and livelihoods. Yet not all PES programs are designed and implemented in ways that reflect voluntary transactions between buyers and providers of well-defined, measurable ecosystem services. When third-party interests, such as donors or governments, design PES programs to achieve goals that lie outside the conceptual scope of payments for ecosystem services, the improvements in resource management and enhancements in livelihoods can fall short of expectations. We examine this potential dissonance in PES program implementation, taking the case of PES in the forestry sector in Vietnam. We question whether PES in Vietnam has the potential to enhance forest protection and watershed management. We highlight the importance of institutions and governance (i.e., the policies, rules, and regulations) in determining program significance and we illustrate how PES programs are implemented as part of the government's subsidy scheme. We conclude that in the absence of a competitive market structure and appropriate regulations, governments can reshape PES programs to function primarily as tools for strengthening state control over natural resources.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+) is a performance-based payment mechanism currently being debated in international and national environmental policy and planning forums. As the mechanism is based on conditionality, payments must reflect land stewards' level of compliance with carbon-efficient management practices. However, lack of clarity in land governance and carbon rights could undermine REDD+ implementation. Strategies are needed to avoid perverse incentives resulting from the commoditization of forest carbon stocks and, importantly, to identify and secure the rights of legitimate recipients of future REDD+ payments. We propose a landscape-level approach to address potential conflicts related to carbon tenure and REDD+ benefit sharing. We explore various land-tenure scenarios and their implications for carbon ownership in the context of a research site in northern Laos. Our case study shows that a combination of relevant scientific tools, knowledge, and participatory approaches can help avoid the marginalization of rural communities during the REDD+ process. The findings demonstrate that participatory land-use planning is an important step in ensuring that local communities are engaged in negotiating REDD+ schemes and that such negotiations are transparent. Local participation and agreements on land-use plans could provide a sound basis for developing efficient measurement, reporting, and verification systems for REDD+.

Crop booms are phenomena of global environmental change that keep on occurring around the globe and frequently exploit or degrade the local socio-ecological resources (resulting in e.g. loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, indebtedness). While causal mechanisms were identified and summarized in several frameworks, the causal effects of the identified factors remained largely unknown. In this study, we set up a new application of a spatial land system model to examine the causes for the clustered spatial pattern of the maize boom between 2000 and 2016 in Sayaboury Province, Laos. The factors tested included market access (travel time to trader companies), land productivity and total net revenue (proxy for profitability), spatial differences in farm gate price of maize, slope, and soil types. While crop booms are commonly associated with high commodity prices and improved market accessibility, our simulation results suggested that the combination of the geographic and economic factors we tested partially contribute to explain the location and spatial extent of the maize boom, but a full explanation has not been found. Interestingly though, temporal dynamics, such as increases in land productivity and profitability had the largest effect on model performance regarding the size of the maize boom area (experiment 2). Productivity and profitability increased thanks to political economic support for the introduction of a series of techniques (i.e. hybrid maize cultivars, herbicides, mechanical tillage and sowing)that made maize mono-cropping disproportionally competitive over other land management. We outline implications of our findings for governance bodies that are faced with crop booms.

Southern Sayaboury province has long been at the forefront of rural economic development in the Lao PDR. Over the past twenty years, livelihoods have undergone drastic changes and agriculture has become increasingly linked to the demand of the Thai market. At the same time, similar to the 1970s agrarian transition in northern Thailand, agricultural systems have shifted from traditional shifting cultivation systems based on fallowing, slash-and-burn and crop rotations, to more intensive systems based on heavy mechanized tillage, pesticides and hybrid seeds. Responding to substantial demand from local traders, smallholders have engaged massively in maize monocropping and have rapidly generated large profits. As a result, the area planted to maize in southern Sayaboury province has expanded rapidly to cover more than 42,000 ha, i.e., more than 88% of the total rainfed area cultivated in 2008. Although livelihoods have certainly been improved in the short term, in the longer term, this dual process of agricultural intensification and expansion can have very negative social and ecological impacts, including increased soil erosion (leading to the destruction of roads and siltation of paddy fields), gradual soil exhaustion, chemical pollution of soils and hydrological systems, and increased risk of human intoxication by pesticides. In the light of these various threats, and since 2003, the National Agro-Ecology Programme (PRONAE) of Laos has been developing and adapting direct seeding mulch-based cropping (DMC) systems through a participatory approach involving village communities and farmer groups. Since 2006, and based on PRONAE's research results, the PASS-PCADR project - a rural development project active in the 4 southern districts of Sayaboury province - has been disseminating DMC systems on a larger scale. Between 2005 and 2008, extensive surveys were carried out in order to: (1) assess the socio economic outcomes of DMC systems on a household level, (2) estimate the level of dissemination of DMC systems on a community level, and (3) determine the factors conditioning smallholder adoption or rejection of DMC systems. Surveys were carried out by the PRONAE programme in 4 villages (462 smallholders) and the PASS-PCADR project in 21 villages (2,160 smallholders). The results of these surveys show that there are currently more than 1,200 smallholders using DMC systems on a total of about 1,500 ha of cultivated land. Overall, the rates and levels of DMC system adoption by smallholders appear to be greater in areas where the environment is most degraded and/or particularly fragile. With significant levels of crop diversification and engagement in off-farm or non-farm activities, livelihoods in general appear more diversified in these areas. These trends can be considered as 'risk avoidance' strategies. By adopting DMC systems, smallholders attempt to avoid the environmental and economic risks associated with less sustainable systems based on heavy mechanization and maize monocropping. In turn, by diversifying their livelihoods, smallholders attempt to limit their vulnerability to the potential failure of a single economic activity. In contrast, in less environmentally-degraded and less fragile areas, the level of DMC system adoption is still rather limited. With more productive soils, mechanized monocropping can still provide high profits and, as such, retains the interest of a majority of farmers. Although on-farm experimentation has shown positive technical and economic results, DMC system dissemination faces many technical and socio-economic constraints. For instance, whilst no-till agriculture can certainly reduce productions costs (hence, contribute to improving the livelihoods of poor households), the credit and collection systems that have developed in southern Sayaboury province continue to favour conventional, mechanized agriculture and prevent farmers from adopting technical alternatives (i.e. crop rotation and diversifica

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is viewed as an effective way to mitigate climate change by compensating stewards of forested areas for minimizing forestland conversion and protecting forest services. Opportunity costs assess the cost of foregone opportunity when preserving the forest instead of investing in an alternative activity or resource use. This paper questions the calculation method of opportunity costs using averaged economic benefits and co-benefits of different land-use transitions. We propose a nested approach to land-use transitions at the interface between landscapes and livelihoods and assessing a wide range of potential socio-ecological costs and benefits. Combining household surveys and focus groups with participatory mapping, we applied the approach in villages of Laos, Vietnam and China positioned along a broad transition trajectory from subsistence shifting cultivation to intensive commercial agriculture. By looking beyond the economics of land use, we highlight important linkages between land-use changes and livelihood differentiation, vulnerability and inequalities. Our results show the importance of addressing the impacts of land-use transitions on a wide range of potential ecological and socioeconomic costs and benefits at multiple levels.

This report explores the drivers (both direct and indirect) of deforestation and forest degradation and discusses the political, economic and social opportunities and constraints that will influence the design and implementation of REDD+ in Laos. The government of Laos has long sought to curb deforestation and forest degradation, and the country is receiving considerable international attention and support to implement REDD+. However, agricultural expansion, the development of industrial tree plantations, and large hydropower, mining and infrastructure projects continue to result in deforestation, with shifting cultivation and selective logging (legal and illegal) largely blamed for forest degradation. At the same time, indirect drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are rooted in a national agenda of economic growth, characterized by incentives for foreign and domestic investment in forest management and timber harvesting. As a result, Laos is becoming an important resource frontier for transnational capital and large-scale land and natural resource investments. The consequent intensification of competition for resources poses a challenge not only for forest governance, but also for the development of REDD+ policies and initiatives. In an examination of the institutions and policies defining Laos� forestry sector and REDD+, the report reflects on lessons to be learned from past forestry and economic development policies. The government of Laos has demonstrated strong political interest in REDD+, but REDD+ implementation faces major obstacles, particularly unclear carbon rights and weak governance, with the latter attributable to poor local capacity, weak coordination among stakeholders, and minimal involvement by local communities and civil society. The report makes several recommendations for achieving effective, efficient and equitable outcomes of REDD+ in Laos: capacity building of administrative and technical staff, especially at the subnational level; clarification and harmonization of land-use planning and land allocation processes; and stronger monitoring and law enforcement in areas under high threat of deforestation and forest degradation. Furthermore, an accountable and transparent mechanism for sharing the benefits of REDD+ across levels and fully accountable consultation processes must be implemented, with the participation of not only elite and powerful actors such as domestic and foreign businesses but also local groups and civil society.