|
Strategic
Opportunities |
| These two page publications
provide overviews of new research and development opportunities
being developed by our staff that are seeking partners and
funding. They complement the content of the annual report,
and show how we are seeking to expand it through new project
ideas. |
|
|
Farmers
of the Future
‘Farmers of the Future’ is an innovative education
approach for youth and their communities, providing
life skills to improve local environmental management
while broadening the options for school leavers. Education
for many rural poor is seen as a means for children
to escape from the farm, rather than as a means of
transforming the local environment. So educational
curricula are disconnected from everyday reality,
and with the few job prospects for school leavers,
many will return to their farms ill-equipped to improve
their situations. But if agriculture and natural resource
management become a key part of their classroom experience
from the start, they will gain a valuable understanding
of local and global issues and be better prepared
for life on or off the farm. The interdisciplinary
approach of integrating natural resource management
into the curriculum and the focus on local action
encourage partnerships among schools, community groups
and natural resource professionals.
Download
Document (.pdf, 124KB)
.:.
Back to Top
.:. |
|
Managing
the risk of agroforestry trees becoming weeds
Widespread adoption of agroforestry technologies will
drastically change the agricultural landscape, modifying
and increasing biodiversity in agroecosystems. The
characteristics of competitiveness or fast growth
that are desirable in agroforestry species can also
make them prime candidates to become weeds when large
numbers are planted on farms. There is a serious need
to assess and manage the weediness of agroforestry
tree species that are being widely promoted so that
their environmental and economic benefi ts and risks
are better understood. This will allow the risk from
their introduction into new environments to be minimized.
Download
Document (.pdf, 137KB)
.:.
Back to Top
.:. |
|
Forests
as resources for the poor — the rainforest challenge
The world’s humid tropics are home to over 500 million
people, the vast majority of whom are poor. In many
places the mosaic of forest and agricultural land
in which many of these people live is becoming increasingly
degraded. Natural resources cannot be conserved without
meeting the aspirations of the local people who use
them, and prosperity cannot be built by unsustainably
exploiting the remaining forests. Past piecemeal efforts
to address these issues have failed to produce large-scale
changes. This project will develop a network of research
and development sites over a range of humid tropical
ecosystems, so that lessons from one site can be shared
with the others. It will involve a partnership between
local research and development agencies, international
research institutions and conservation organizations
to bring about sustainable benefi ts for tropical
environments and livelihoods.
Download
Document (.pdf, 197KB)
.:.
Back to Top
.:. |
|
The
Agroforestry Knowledge Initiative
Over the last two decades agroforestry has developed
from isolated indigenous practices to a worldwide
science with numerous practical applications impacting
thousands of farmers. The main problem is that its
extraordinary successes are still isolated and often
unknown outside the regions where they were developed.
This is occurring in a so-called ’information age’.
Science and practices that could have a huge impact
on improving the well-being of the world’s rural poor
are failing to do so because of poor communications.
This initiative combines the agroforestry expertise
of the World Agroforestry Centre with the information
expertise of CAB International to take advantage of
new information and communication technologies in
the developing world. The result will be a greater
flow of useful agroforestry information between partners
across the world and within countries, supporting
the expansion of useful practices to impact many more
rural smallholders.
Download
Document (.pdf, 119KB) |
|
The
Millennium Agroforestry Programme for Africa
This programme aims to halve hunger in rural Africa
by 2015 by increasing the scale of adoption of proven
agroforestry technologies. Agroforestry has the inherent
ability to empower smallholder farmers to increase
the productivity of their farming operations—to lift
themselves and others out of poverty, achieve food
security, and rebuild and protect their most precious
physical asset; the land. The programme will bring
together a world-class alliance of international,
regional, national and local partners to sensitize
policy makers to the benefits of agroforestry, apply
the best science available for improving soil fertility
and land productivity, empower farmers and scale up
local agroforestry innovations.
Download
Document (.pdf, 130KB) |
|
Managing
pests and diseases in tropical agroforestry
Pests and diseases are major causes of yield losses
in crops around the world, but they have been given
very little attention in agroforestry. As more farmers
plant trees on their farms, there is a signifi cant
potential for an escalation in traditional pest and
disease problems as they are provided with more hosts,
or the development of new pests and diseases that
could hinder agroforestry development. Until now pest
management has relied on traditional knowledge. There
needs to be more awareness of pests and diseases in
agroforestry, and to undertake pest risk assessments
before scaling up successful agroforestry options.
This will help in the eventual development of strategies
for minimizing pest damage in agroforestry systems.
Download
Document (.pdf, 128KB) |
|
Sustainable
fish yields with better land and water management
in the Lake Kyoga basin
Lake Kyoga neighbours Lake Victoria in the vast White
Nile lake and river system that stretches from Lake
Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. Lake Kyoga is a
shallow, productive lake with a surface area of 4000
km2, draining a large part of Uganda. Up
to 100,000 people live along its shores and on its
‘sudds’ — floating islands of aquatic weeds. They
rely on the lake for their livelihood. But the lake
and its basin are now threatened. Recent floods and
continued upland degradation have increased sediment
flow into the lake. These factors, coupled with climatic
changes, pose a threat to sustainable food production.
The project will develop an ecosystem decision-support
model for predicting basin runoff, erosion, and sustainable
fish production of key species that will provide a
basis for intergovernmental water management negotiations
in one of the largest — and most contentious — basins
in the world.
Download
Document (.pdf, 165KB) |
|
Food
security and biodiversity conservation in the Mara
watershed
The Mara watershed, straddling the Kenya-Tanzania
border, is critical to the survival of pastoral peoples,
farmers, fisher families and wildlife in the Mara-Serengeti
ecosystem. It faces growing threats. Over the last
30 years, a third of the forest in the headwaters
has been lost, reducing base flow and water quality
in the river. Privatization of pastoral lands in the
region is attracting migrants, which will further
exacerbate water shortages in this largely semi-arid
watershed. More urgently, Kenya also proposes to divert
water from the Amala tributary for power generation.
But there is an opportunity to address these problems.
Ongoing political and policy reforms in the East African
Community and our international experience are providing
scientific indicators of watershed status and implementing
community management options. This could catalyse
better transboundary management of this watershed,
with lessons for similar situations throughout Africa.
Download
Document (.pdf, 186KB) |
|
|
