Environmental Governance

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Environmental Governance

This focus is on providing science-based evidence on the trade-offs between land use for environmental services and for livelihoods of smallholder farmers; supporting policy processes for harmonizing environmental policy and concerns for sustainable rural development; and, working in partnership to facilitate access to information about policy options

Lead scientists: Brent Swallow

Environmental policies in the tropics often reflect a complex interplay between international conventions, regional geo-politics, pressure from international and national interest groups, and initiatives from local government agencies that may not be fully accountable to local residents. Common results from this inter-play are command-and-control regulations that emphasize the conflicts and tradeoffs between environment and development. Smallholders are more often seen as causes and obstacles of environmental degradation, rather than interested parties and implementers of solutions. Environmental policies are often viewed piecemeal, especially at the international level, rather than in an integrated manner. For example, there is very little connection between the environmental management policies and poverty reduction strategies that have recently been promulgated in most African countries.

The environmental policy focal area of ICRAF will address three main challenges. The first challenge is to provide policy makers and “policy shapers” with science-based evidence on the tradeoffs and complementarities between land use choices, a range of environmental services and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The second challenge is to provide policy makers and other stakeholders with policy options for harmonizing environmental policy and concerns for sustainable rural development. The third challenge is for ICRAF to work in partnership with other institutions in order to facilitate access to information about policy options. ICRAF will address these challenges at three distinct levels of policy formulation and implementation: international, national and regional and local.

Results Chain for Environmental Governance

Goal: International, national and local policies are designed to better harmonize goals related to environmental stewardship and sustained and equitable rural development.
Indicator: Policy and institutional changes.

Outputs

Indicators of outputs

Outcomes

Indicators of outcomes

Impacts

Indicators of Impacts

Information on the potential role of agroforestry for meeting development and environment goals is packaged and made available to the negotiators and secretariats for the three Rio conventions, the GEF, regional and national planners and environment agencies.

Methods for multi-stakeholder assessment of the tradeoffs and complementarities between land use, environmental services and rural development are refined and shared.

Policy and institutional options for enhancing the role of agroforestry in enhancing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers while meeting environmental objectives are developed, tested and disseminated.

Guidelines for the appropriate governance of land, water and trees in multi-functional landscapes are developed for high priority areas and disseminated throughout the continent.

Viable public and market-based options for rewarding smallholder agroforesters for environmental services they provide are developed, tested and disseminated.

A critical mass of national and regional expertise in multi-stakeholder assessment and negotiation support is created.

Relevant content on the ICRAF web page.

Frequency of access to ES material on the ICRAF web page and ICRAF ES material on other web pages.

Distribution of materials targeted to the multi-lateral environmental agreements.

Summaries, proceedings, workplans and agreements from the multi-lateral environmental agreements refer to agroforestry.

International conventions and financing arrangements are implemented in a way that creates more opportunity for smallholder agroforesters to benefit.

Governments in priority countries enact changes in environmental governance that better recognize the multi-functional nature of agroforestry and landscape mosaics.

Operational schemes for environmental service payments across the developing world reinforce incentives for manage resources and technologies in ways that enhance farm incomes and generate environmental services of value to local, national and international populations.

A critical mass of national and regional expertise in integrating local, national and international issues and processes into harmonized environmental and poverty reduction strategies and policies.

Vulnerable groups of indigenous people who rely on agroforestry are empowered by more secure property rights.

Methods for multi-stakeholder assessment and negotiation support are used in areas outside of ICRAF pilot sites.

Number of farmers involved in environmental reward schemes involving agroforestry.

Reduced conflict between stakeholders in multi-functional landscapes.

Evidence that millions of farmers in upland SE Asia perceive that they have more secure property rights.

Impact assessment studies.

Sources of knowledge about agroforestry and environmental services

Environmental governance – including environmental policies and the institutions that develop and implement those policies -- is in flux in most developing countries. Authority structures are changing, simultaneously becoming more globalized, through multilateral environment agreements, and more localized through devolution to local governments and user groups. Multi-stakeholder processes and committees are replacing top-down environmental planning. Environmental governance is also becoming more monetized, with increased private sector involvement in the provision of extension, conservation and water supply services, and new institutions emerging for linking buyers and sellers for a variety of environmental services.

Agroforestry is particularly affected by these shifts in power and institutional structures, with central forestry departments becoming less important as forestry gatekeepers, decentralized environment committees assigned new roles in watershed protection and forest management, and market mechanisms for environmental service provision becoming more of a reality. In many cases agroforestry extension and seed systems are becoming de facto privatized, without little explicit planning or effective regulation. Agroforestry can contribute to the goals of environment programmes and policies, but only if it is adequately financed and linked to economic growth and poverty reduction strategies. Overall, more and more organizations are making decisions affecting environmental governance, creating greater need for effective multi-stakeholder negotiation processes, and more implicit demand for ICRAF to disseminate information about the potential economic and ecological benefits of agroforestry.

Since the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, a wide range of multi-lateral environmental organizations and agreements have been put in place. Greater emphasis is now being put on the overall effectiveness of the new institutions, prompting new projects and programmes on Global Environmental Governance at UNEP, Yale University in the United States and the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in India. The World Resources Institute and IUCN concentrate on ways to make decentralized environmental governance more effective; ODI, Indiana University and CIFOR focus on decentralized forest governance; UNDP, the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, the World Bank and DFID consider the links between environmental governance and poverty reduction; and the World Bank, IIED and Forest Trends are concerned with environmental service reward mechanisms.

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