Local farmers shape ecosystem service provisioning in West African cocoa agroforests

Economics of agroforestry: links between nature and society

“…Examples of Cameroonian cocoa-based agroforestry systems are given and show that upturns and slowdown of cocoa-based agroforestry systems are first linked to farmers labour force and investments, and secondly impacted by the sector vitality or the aging of the cocoa trees and the yield decline. Sanial et al (2022) confirm that Ivorian cocoa-based agroforestry systems are shaped by human management of associated trees and that ecosystem services are weakly linked to environmental variables. Trees in these systems provide different services: remnants stock provide most above-ground carbon, but recruits are the most diverse and provide medicinal resources while planted trees are mainly for food resources.…”

Lessons from a regional analysis of forest recovery trajectories in West Africa

“…Secondary forests resulting from this deforestation represent a large part of the West African landscape and are valuable to local people. These secondary forests provide valuable ecosystem services, including timber and fuelwood, fodder for livestock, non-timber forest products, and also contribute to water purification (Amani et al 2021, Doua-Bi et al 2021, Sanial et al 2022. In order to ensure that these secondary forests can continue to provide these services and cleared land is reduced to a few suitable areas, it would be necessary to • Promote sustainable, i.e.…”

“…carbon storage, biodiversity reservoirs). Notably, they can store more carbon than agricultural fields (N'Guessan et al 2019), even if those fields are conducted in agroforestry (Sanial et al 2022). The main factor that has driven the historical expansion of secondary forests in West Africa is the development of family farming (Bayas et al 2022), linked to rapid demographic growth, which results in a pioneer front dynamic (Pouliot et al 2012).…”

“…As such, West African farmers cultivate clear-cut lands for a few decades before migrating elsewhere once soil fertility is depleted and then eventually returning again once fertility is restored after a few decades of fallowing (Ruf et al 2015). Despite the crucial importance of these secondary forests resulting from agricultural fallows in the functioning of human societies (Sanial et al 2022) and in the structuring of West African landscapes, there is still a serious lack of knowledge on the trajectories, and their main local and regional determinants, of forest recovery in this region of the world (Schroeder et al 2010).…”

The great mistake of plantation programs in cocoa agroforests – Let's bet on natural regeneration to sustainably provide timber wood

“…all remnant, spontaneous and (trans)planted commercial trees that have reached a sufficient size to be harvested today; and (ii) the future timber resource, i.e. all commercial trees that are spontaneous or (trans)planted but have not yet reached a sufficient size to be harvested today (Sanial et al, 2022).…”