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Tropical forests in Asia, Africa and Latin America are being rapidly transformed through slash-and-burn. Traditionally, slash-and-burn is a system for land use — shifting cultivation — based on alternating food cropping periods with periods of regrowth of vegetation (fallow). Increasing population pressure has shortened the fallow periods dramatically, making the system unsustainable in many areas.

Slash-and-burn is also a technique to convert forests into permanent agricultural land, or into other land use practices, including large-scale tree crops (rubber, oil palm, timber). In Asia, shifting cultivation is becoming less common and much of the slash-and-burn is related to permanent conversion of forests by smallholders, large operators and government-sponsored resettlement projects.

The consequences of this are devastating, in terms of climate change, soil erosion and degradation, watershed degradation and loss of biodiversity. The Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Programme is built around two issues — the global environ-mental effects of slash-and-burn and the technological and policy options to alleviate those effects. The programme assumes that the development of agroforestry-based forms of intensified landuse as an alternative to slash-and-burn can help to alleviate poverty and improve human welfare. By identifying alternatives to slash-and-burn and providing options from which farmers can choose, the ASB programme aims to provide benefits at a range of scales, from household to global.

ASB is a system-wide initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. Since it began in 1992, the programme has developed into a consortium of nine inter-national research centres and 62 national research institutes, universities and other government and non-government organizations. ICRAF is the convening centre for ASB because there is a close link between agroforestry options and alternatives to unsustainable slash-and-burn practices. ICRAF’s contributes to the ASB Programme in its research in the three humid ecoregions of Latin America, Southeast Asia and the humid lowlands of west Africa.

In Indonesia the peneplain zone of Sumatra is ASB’s focus of interest, with research sites in Jambi (low population density, forest margin) and North Lampung (high population density on similar soil, degraded lands). Associated research is carried out in West Lampung (Krui) and West Kalimantan. The Mae Chaem watershed in Thailand, and Claveria and Lantapan in the Philippines, were also chosen as ASB benchmark sites.

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 Contact address:
  Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) Programme

 Global Coordination Office
 ICRAF -- P.O. Box 30677
 Nairobi, Kenya
 Phone: + 254 2 524 264 or via the USA +1 650 833 6645, x 4264
 Fax: + 254 2 524 001 or via the USA +1 650 833 6646
 Email: asb@cgiar.org