Community-driven tree planting greens the neighbouring landscape

Abstract

Nature-based solutions to climate change are growing policy priorities yet remain hard to quantify. Here we use remote sensing to quantify direct and indirect benefits from community-led agroforestry by The International Small group and Tree planting program (TIST) in Kenya. Since 2005, TIST-Kenya has incentivised smallholder farmers to plant trees for agricultural benefit and to sequester CO2. We use Landsat-7 satellite imagery to examine the effect on the historically deforested landscape around Mount Kenya. We identify positive greening trends in TIST groves during 2000-2019 relative to the wider landscape. These groves cover 27,198 hectares, and a further 27,750 hectares of neighbouring agricultural land is also positively influenced by TIST. This positive ‘spill-over’ impact of TIST activity occurs at up to 360m distance. TIST also benefits local forests, e.g. through reducing fuelwood and fodder extraction. Our results show that community-led initiatives can lead to successful landscape-scale regreening on decadal timescales.

The Flexibility of Sengon Agroforestry in Small-Scale Forest Development in Indonesia

“…Small-scale forest planting patterns on private land can be classified into 3 (three) forms, namely: Monoculture small-scale forest planting patterns, mixed cropping patterns, and planting patterns with agroforestry/forestry systems [8,[10][11][12]. The tree species many people choose to develop in small-scale forests is sengon.…”

“…Small-scale forest planting pattern with an agroforestry system Agroforestry cropping pattern consists of three forms: Agroforestry/wanatani pattern, wanafarma pattern, and Silvopasture cropping pattern. a. Agroforestry/ Wanatani Patterns Agroforestry patterns are oriented to optimizing land use, both from an economic and ecological perspective, so there is a need for spatial arrangements for growth and plant layout [12]. The advantage of the agroforestry pattern is its strong resistance to pests and diseases.…”