The Pattern and Process of Adoption and Scaling up: Variation in Project Outcome Reveals the Importance of Multilevel Collaboration in Agroforestry Development

Abstract

Agroforestry is considered a subsistence system that balances the urgent need for food and income of small scale farmers with restoration and conservation of ecosystem services, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Vi Agroforestry Program aims to implement agroforestry as a means to alleviate poverty and increase resilience among the poorest smallholders. After seven years, the Vi Agroforestry Project in the Mara Region of Tanzania had an inter-village variation in the proportion of households with tangible surviving agroforestry trees ranging from 10%-90%. Using a multiple methods approach, this variation was analysed in relation to changes and differences among administrative districts and project zones regarding perceived barriers to agroforestry adoption, project interventions, governance and the chronology of the process. In districts and zones where collaboration among the project staff, government counterparts and other stakeholders had been established at multiple levels, more agroforestry trees survived and a OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2013, 5 5196 larger proportion of households practiced agroforestry. The established collaboration made it possible to discover and consider opportunities and barriers to agroforestry development such as diverse stakeholder interests and perceptions. As a result, potential conflicts could be avoided and socially robust solutions developed, adapted and integrated into the local subsistence systems.

Mapping the Relationship of Inter-Village Variation in Agroforestry Tree Survival with Social and Ecological Characteristics: The Case of the Vi Agroforestry Project, Mara Region, Tanzania

“…For a more comprehensive understanding, it is thus necessary to complement this quantitative analysis with an analysis including qualitative data, considering and interpreting the relationships presented in this study in relation to a wider socio-cultural context, the scaling up process itself, differences in governance at multiple levels and interaction between the social and ecological subsystems [57,58].…”

Decline in local ecological knowledge in the Colombian Andes may constrain silvopastoral tree diversity

“…Likewise, as general interest in tree planting declined, utility may have become a more important consideration. Evaluations conducted shortly after the completion of restoration projects may overestimate the potential for sustained interest in restoration‐oriented practices because interest in a topic and knowledge are linked in complicated ways (Tobias ; Zhang et al ), highlighting the need for long‐term monitoring of landscape scale restoration projects (Kiptot et al ; Frey et al ; Johansson et al ).…”

Scaling Up Pro-Poor Agrobiodiversity Interventions as a Development Option

“…The scaling up of innovations in agroforestry has often proved difficult. One of the main reasons put forth to explain this is that these innovations are knowledge-intensive, making their dissemination and adoption processes more difficult [70]. The choice of which pro-poor agrobiodiversity interventions to implement and to scale up depends on the local situation, socio-economic conditions, and site-specific information [3,49,57].…”