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RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND CONSERVATION
CI believes that maintaining critical ecosystems and their environmental services helps support rural development objectives. Although conservation has been described as a luxury that poor countries cannot afford, we believe the opposite is true, especially over the long term. Valuable ecosystem services and natural resources are the foundation for future economic development in many countries. Opportunities exist to integrate conservation priorities in rural development efforts by promoting policies and actions that simultaneously increase human welfare, boost economic development, and support conservation.
Ecological services offer one example of the vital link between biodiversity and human welfare. Water is especially critical. Freshwater systems and the life they support are highly threatened from many sources: human waste and pollution, over-extraction of water, watershed destruction and resultant sedimentation, and agricultural runoff. Yet these consequences of human actions imperil biodiversity, livelihoods (e.g., no fish, no water for agriculture) and human health (e.g., unsafe or insufficient water). Protecting, maintaining, and restoring key watersheds can provide rural jobs, improve the availability and quality of safe water, connect corridors, sequester carbon, and conserve biodiversity. | |
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Realizing the potential benefits of strategic rural development to conservation will not happen without research, planning, and action. In one set of studies, HDP is examining the trade-offs between protected areas, proposed conservation corridors, conservation gaps, and high-quality agricultural land. Geographic information system (GIS) technology is used to overlay maps showing agricultural suitability, actual land use, human settlement data, biodiversity, and park boundary data. These data allow researchers to provide development planners with the information they need to maximize the areas available for biodiversity conservation in species-rich places, while minimizing the amount of good agricultural land that is included in protected areas or conservation corridors.
Analyses indicate that even in complex social settings, good planning can minimize potential conflicts over what might incorrectly be viewed as competing land and resource uses. HDP research on agriculture and protected areas can help conservationists identify strategies to help the people living in or near protected areas to meet their families’ needs without using resources in the neighboring parks.
RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Naughton-Treves, L. 2004. Deforestation and carbon emissions at tropical frontiers: A case study from the Peruvian Amazon. World Development. 32(1): 173-190.This paper analyzes the impact of national development policy on land cover change and associated carbon fluxes at a Peruvian Amazon frontier. Remote sensing and field transects reveal changes in forest carbon stocks and accumulation rates. Deforestation was most rapid along the Interoceanic Highway during 1986–91 when credit and guaranteed markets were available, resulting in emissions of 708,000 Mg C yr-1, of which 14% was offset by secondary regrowth. Despite continued population growth, deforestation slowed during 1991–97 when fiscal austerity measures were imposed, resulting in emissions of 389,000 Mg C yr-1, of which 41% was offset by regrowth. Strategies to conserve frontier forests are compared in terms of carbon, biodiversity and economic costs and benefits.
Brandon, K. 2004. The policy context for conservation in Costa Rica: Model or muddle? In Frankie, G.W., Mata, A., Vinson, S.B. (Eds.), Biodiversity Conservation in the Costa Rica: Lessons Learned in a Seasonal Dry Forest. pp. 299-310. Berkeley: University of California Press.Frankie, G.W., Mata, A., & Brandon, K. 2004. Conclusions and recommendations. In Frankie, G.W., Mata, A., Vinson, S.B. (Eds.), Biodiversity Conservation in the Costa Rica: Lessons Learned in a Seasonal Dry Forest. pp. 311-323. Berkeley: University of California Press.Alvarez, N.L. & Naughton-Treves, L. 2003. Linking national agrarian policy to deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon: A case study of Tambopata, 1986-1997. Ambio 32(4): 269-274.Amazonian deforestation rates vary regionally, and ebb and flow according to macroeconomic policy and local social factors. We used remote sensing and field interviews to investigate deforestation patterns and drivers at a Peruvian frontier during 1986-1991, when rural credit and guaranteed markets were available; and 1991-1997, when structural adjustment measures were imposed. The highest rate of clearing (1.5% gross) was observed along roads during 1986-1991. Roadside deforestation slowed in 1991-1997 (0.7% gross) and extensive regrowth yielded a net increase in forest cover (0.5%). Deforestation along rivers was relatively constant. Riverside farms today retain more land in both crops and forest than do roadside farms where pasture and successional growth predominate. Long-term residents maintain more forest on their farms than do recent colonists, but proximity to urban markets is the strongest predictor of forest cover. Future credit programs must reflect spatial patterns of development and ecological vulnerability, and support the recuperation of fallow lands and secondary forest.Naughton-Treves, L. & Chapman, C.A. 2002. Fuelwood resources and forest regeneration on fallow land in Uganda. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 14(4): 19-32. Copyright Haworth Press. Article copies available from The Haworth Document Delivery Service at 1.800.Haworth or docdelivery@haworthpress.com. East African forests have been largely converted to agriculture. The remaining forests hold many endangered species but are threatened by the heavy local demand for fuelwood. Here we evaluate fallow land in western Uganda as an alternate fuel source to diverse forests. We quantify the regeneration process on fallows, calculate tree biomass increases, and measure grass and woody herb biomass over 44 months. The biomass values we measured were typical or slightly below the average from 11 studies elsewhere in the tropics. Variation in biomass between our neighbouring study sites exceeded that between sites on different continents, indicating the sensitivity of vegetation regeneration to local land use. Tree regeneration was extremely slow (0.46 g/m2/year); however, the woody herbs and grasses on a 4 year old fallow of ~0.5 ha can provide much of a family’s domestic fuel. Fallow land is generally abundant in western Uganda and can partially alleviate pressure on forests for domestic fuels. Fallows cannot however provide the trees demanded by charcoal, brick, and gin manufacturers. In the future, conserving forests while meeting fuelwood demands will require improving local land tenure security, enhancing the productivity of cultivated and abandoned land, promoting more efficient stoves, stills and kilns, and curtailing illicit, inefficient charcoal manufacture. | |
| |  | | New Presentations on Hydrological Services Available Online: Sampurno Bruijnzeel, tropical hydrology expert, talks about vegetation, reforestation, and hydrological services in two CI-sponsored presentations.
Oct. 16 presentation at the World Bank (8 MB PDF)
Oct. 17 presentation at CI (7.2 MB PDF)New CABS Brochure Now Available: Click here to view the latest CABS brochure. Contact us to order a hard copy. The Environmental Systems Research Institute Awards CABS’ GIS & Mapping Lab: The Institute honored the Lab for the fifth time in six years, awarding it First Place in the Best Cartographic Design - Single Map Product category for the Coppename River AquaRAP by Mark Denil.
View the winning map Hotspots Revisited Available Online. Hotspots Revisited details the state of the earth's biodiversity hotspots. The book identifies 34 regions that cover only 2.3 percent of the Earth's surface but are home to 75 percent of the planet's most threatened species.
View Hotspots Revisited | |
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