An Assessment of Trends in the Extent of Swidden in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Swidden systems consisting of temporarily cultivated land and associated fallows often do not appear on land use maps or in statistical records. This is partly due to the fact that swidden is a diverse and dynamic land use system that is difficult to map and partly because of the practice of grouping land covers associated with swidden systems into land use or land cover categories that are not self-evidently linked to swiddening. Additionally, in many parts of Southeast Asia swidden systems have changed or are in the process of changing into other land use systems. This paper assesses the extent of swidden on the basis of regional and national sources for nine countries, and determines the pattern of changes of swidden on the basis of 151 cases culled from 67 articles. Findings include (1) a majority of the cases document swidden being replaced by other forms of agriculture or by other livelihood systems;(2) in cases where swiddening is still practiced, fallow lengths are usually, but not always, shorter; and (3) Hum Ecol (

Observing and understanding the Southeast Asian aerosol system by remote sensing: An initial review and analysis for the Seven Southeast Asian Studies (7SEAS) program

“…Currently, swidden small holders are an important part of the SEA agricultural economy but they are underestimated in the population census and often not included in land use maps Schmidt-Vogt et al, 2009). This is changing as much of the land occupied by small holding swidden has been converted to persistent farming and agribusiness plantation agriculture (Padoch et al, 2007;Schmidt-Vogt et al, 2009).…”

“…This is changing as much of the land occupied by small holding swidden has been converted to persistent farming and agribusiness plantation agriculture (Padoch et al, 2007;Schmidt-Vogt et al, 2009). Even so, in some areas swidden practices remain persistent (Hansen and Mertz, 2006) and some organizations have formed to advocate for small-holder (chiefly "orang asli" the "original people") interests (e.g.…”

A Review of Swidden Agriculture in Southeast Asia

“…Evidences from a recent meta-analysis published by van Vliet et al [9] suggest that these swidden cultivators are mostly located in the mountainous and hilly parts of Latin America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia (SEA). Based on the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science database (8 October 2013), swidden agriculture is mainly practiced by smallholder farmers in a conservative estimate of 64 developing countries ( Figure 1, [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]) from Africa, Latin America, and South/Southeast Asia. Forty-five of them are part of the United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (or the UN-REDD Programme) partner countries (currently 48 in total).…”

“…It shows that the monitoring of swidden agriculture will greatly contribute to implementing and managing the REDD projects [10]. [9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…For instance, Mertz et al and Schmidt-Vogt et al summarized the demography of swiddeners [12] and the extent of swidden [11] in a special issue (Volume 37, Issue 3) of the journal of Human Ecology in 2009. Padoch et al [54] and Ellen [30] discussed the persistence of swidden cultivation in the future.…”