Tropical forest-transition landscapes: a portfolio for studying people, tree crops and agro-ecological change in context

Abstract

Nudging the development trajectory of tropical landscapes towards sustainability requires a global commitment and policies that take diverse contexts and forest transitions into account. Out-scaling and upscaling landscape-level actions to achieve sustainable development goals globally need to be based on understanding of extrapolation domains and interconnectivity of products and services. We evaluated three portfolios of tropical landscape observatories and quantified extrapolation domains across ecological zones, stages of forest transition, human development index (HDI), population density and potential prominence of four dominant tropical tree crops (arabica coffee, cacao, rubber and oil palm). The ASB Partnership for Tropical Forest Margins portfolio was focussed on active humid forest margins and the Poverty and Environment Network on early stages of forest transition. The portfolio of sentinel landscapes of the Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) research programme provides a 5% sample of pantropical area, 8% of people, 9% of tree cover and 10-12% of potential tree crop presence, with quantified biases across zones, transition stages and HDI. In the 'water tower' configuration, relatively high population density coincides with biodiversity, coffee expansion and contested ecosystem services. The extrapolation domain of the FTA portfolio includes trade-off (tree loss) and synergy (restoration) phases of tropical forest transition. ARTICLE HISTORY

Gendered Species Preferences Link Tree Diversity and Carbon Stocks in Cacao Agroforest in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

“…These differences may be caused by differences in forest types and the biodiversity metrics that were used [9]. However, the degree of causality and the relevance of such relationships beyond (modified) natural forests is still uncertain and its relevance in the face of global climate change is debated [18].…”

“…While becoming the largest cacao producing region of Indonesia, Sulawesi boomed in cacao-based land-use systems after 1980 [28], with further increased from 55,000 ha in 1990 to 230,000 ha in 2010, particularly in South and Southeast Sulawesi [29]. Due to its suitability to a broad range of climatic conditions, cacao may be as great a threat to tropical rainforests [18,30] as the more widely debated oil palm. Subsequent intensification in cacao agroforestry systems leads to shade tree removal, shifting the systems to become monoculture.…”

Environmentally and socially responsible global production and trade of timber and tree crop commodities: certification as a transient issue-attention cycle response to ecological and social issues

“…Based on a first comparison between cacao, coffee, rubber, oil palm and tropical timber, four formal propositions are formulated: 1) a strong and prominent issueattention cycle on ES threats and social problems drives sustainability concerns and actions; 2) dynamics within determinants of global value chain governance (positively and negatively) interact with the emergence of sustainability standards, initiatives and certification; 3) pressures from the public evoke sustainability initiatives and shift standards systems; 4) sustainability initiatives, standard settings and certification only provide partial solutions for ES and social problems. Dewi et al (2017) discusses pantropical data on the relations between people, forests and tree crops and uses these data to test the validity of the FTA tropical landscapes portfolio. The FTA portfolio provides a 5% sample of area, 8% of people, 9% of tree cover and 10-12% of potential tree crop presence across the tropics.…”

“…As a sampling frame, we used a portfolio of Sentinel Landscapes (SLs) used across the three tropical continents. Dewi et al (2017) analysed the representativeness (and remaining biases) of this portfolio with respect to the issues of forest, human population density, deforestation rates and roles of the set of tropical tree crops studied here. The overall approach of the research project reported in this Special Issue is outlined below.…”

“…By means of expert consultations and the use of secondary data, other sources of information were collected on the main issues, as outlined above, as well as views on the propositions put forward. (d) The fourth step was fact-finding on the sites within the FTA SLs portfolio (Dewi et al 2017) to test applicability of the framework and the suggested methods. (e) The fifth step was the synthesis of results in the commodity papers (various contributions in this issue).…”