The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
A unique research network is examining how games can help when making land-use decisions.
Nairobi, Kenya, 27 July 2020 — The way water, forests and people interact is complex but critically important to the lives, health and food security of more than half the world’s population. And many tree-planting campaigns are motivated by expectations that they will increase the availability and quality of water and control floods. Sometimes they do but in many cases they don’t. This is because of a mismatch between the local ecological knowledge, the knowledge of policies and regulations and the scientific knowledge of what happens with water in landscapes with forests, trees and agroforestry. This makes it difficult to agree on ways forward.
One of the ways to reach a shared understanding of the underlying processes of climate, soils, vegetation and river or groundwater flow — as influenced by land-use decisions with or without trees — is the use of ‘serious games’. A number of examples now exist where games, constructed on the basis of a specific situation, have helped in reducing conflicts and agreeing on solutions.
‘However, there are four limitations to games,’ said Meine van Noordwijk, distinguished senior fellow at World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and first author of a recent publication, Sustainable Agroforestry Landscape Management: Changing the Game, in the journal Land. ‘First, they appear to be ad hoc, case dependent, with poorly defined extrapolation domains; second, they require heavy research investment; third, they have untested cultural limitations; and, fourth, they lack clarity on where and how they can be used in policy making.’
To clarify the potential of games, a network was created at Wageningen University in the Netherlands of 15 doctoral students from countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. Named, Scenario Evaluation of Sustainable Agroforestry Management, or SESAM, it has partners such as ICRAF, Tropenbos International and national organizations in the students’ countries.
‘ICRAF Eastern and Southern Africa region is happy to partner with SESAM in case studies in some of the East African watertowers in Kenya and Uganda,’ said Catherine Muthuri, regional coordinator of ICRAF’s Eastern and Southern Africa region, adviser to SESAM and co-author of the publication that sets out the ideas, describes the case studies and formulates expectations and hypotheses about the way games can be constructed and used. ‘The relations between Mount Kenya and Mount Elgon as watertowers that support mid- and downstream livelihoods is specifically complex and important, with tree planting seen both as solution and as a cause of problems.’
The SESAM network will have case studies that span the full range of ‘forest transition’ settings, from landscapes with less than one person per square kilometre that are dominated by natural forests in Suriname and Peru, to densely populated areas in East Africa and Indonesia, with 1000 persons per square kilometre. Specific studies will deal with coastal mangroves and tropical peatlands.
‘ICRAF Latin America will partner in a number of the studies, which include both up-wind and down-wind contributors and beneficiaries of “rainfall recycling”, for which the Amazon region is famous,' said Andrew Miccolis, ICRAF coordinator in Brazil and participant in SESAM.
The researchers claim that there will be answers to the four issues and that this work can raise the bar for the way analyses in a well-understood context can contribute to options elsewhere.
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Read the journal article
Van Noordwijk M, Speelman E, Hofstede GJ, Farida A, Abdurrahim AY, Miccolis A, Lukman A, Wamucii CN, Lagneaux E, Andreotti F, Kimbowa G, Assogba GGC, Best L, Tanika L, Githinji M, Rosero P, Sari R, Satnarain U, Adiwibowo S, Ligtenberg A, Muthuri C, Peña-Claros M, Purwanto E, van Oel P, Rozendaal D, Suprayogo D, Teuling AJ. 2020. Sustainable agroforestry landscape management: changing the game. Land 2020, 9(8), 243; https://doi.org/10.3390/land9080243
Media enquiries: Jeanne Finestone, Head of Communications, ICRAF. Email: j.finestone@cgiar.org; Mobile: +254 711 946327.
About World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
World Agroforestry (ICRAF) is a centre of scientific and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. Knowledge produced by ICRAF enables governments, development agencies and farmers to utilize the power of trees to make farming and livelihoods more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable at multiple scales. ICRAF is one of the 15 members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. We thank all donors who support research in development through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.
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