Transforming Rural Lives Capturing Opportunities for a Bigger Impact in the Forest Margins

1. Graduate Student Lunch Series, Center for International Development Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 24 October 2003 Transforming Rural Lives Capturing Opportunities for a Bigger Impact in the Forest Margins Dagmar Timmer, ASB (Kenya) – d.timmer@cgiar.org Harvard University – Seminar Presentation, October 24, 2003

2. Outline • About ASB • Crisis: Danger and Opportunity • Opportunities for ASB in Transforming Rural Lives Transforming Rural Lives

3. Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn • Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) is a system-wide, integrated natural resource management (iNRM) program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) • ASB mission: forest conservation and poverty alleviation in the humid tropics • ASB focus: tradeoffs between biodiversity and rural development at the forest margins in a landscape context • Benchmark sites in Peru (2), Brazil (2), Cameroon (1), Thailand (1), Indonesia (1), and the Philippines (1) • Scope: geographically focused on agriculture-forest interface at Tropical Broadleaf Forest Biome • Scaling up and out through South-South cooperation Transforming Rural Lives

4. The Nature of “Opportunity” Transforming Rural Lives

5. Taking on a Multi-Scale Approach • Challenge: Most of ASB’s work conducted at a plot level, but the reality is that need multiple scales of analysis and action for effective results (missing middle) • Opportunity: grapple with implications of different landscape mosaics for people’s livelihoods and environmental services • Priorities for work have shifted from plot-level analyses of specific land uses (forests, agroforests, pastures…) • Build on deeper understanding of landscape processes • Combinations of land uses interacting in space Transforming Rural Lives

6. Getting Serious about Tradeoffs • Challenge: ‘win-win’ is rare • Opportunity:negotiation to balance tradeoffs • ASB Matrix - negotiation support tool for “winning more and losing less” • Process conducted at all benchmark sites • Harness landscape restoration for poverty reduction • Opportunity: make tradeoffs explicit • Incentives for environmental services • e.g. through environmental payments (RUPES) Transforming Rural Lives

7. Improving Information for Policy • Challenge: Lack of solid scientific information on environment-development relationships of use to policy makers and practitioners • Opportunity: Prepare and disseminate a broad range of policy-relevant information from across the humid tropics on key themes • iNRM approach ensures saliency of research because it is problem driven • Ensure that local realities enrich policy processes • Proactively and strategically deliver research to relevant decision makers Transforming Rural Lives

8. Encouraging Rural Prosperity • Challenge: Subsistence farming will not reduce poverty in the full sense of increasing options for rural people • Opportunity: Support marketing, improved products, partnerships with private sector, farmers’ associations, etc. Transforming Rural Lives

9. Challenge: Capacity of developing country target groups to participate is constrained by lack of access to 1) information and 2) funding Opportunity: ASB as partnership to bridge gaps between reality and potential of national consortia’s role Agenda for action developed jointly by partners and adapted over time National consortia have emerged as the foundation of ASB Capacity-building of national partners to seize growing opportunities INRM methods adopted and adapted by NARS and others Research funding and access to information attaining ‘international standards’ When capacity is built nationally, most of the regional and global activities will be subsumed within national entities Strengthening National Capacity Transforming Rural Lives

10. Challenge: Sites distributed around the world with limited cross-site information sharing and technology transfer currently Opportunity: Aim to accelerate learning through cross-site approach Building cross-regional networks Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Active Learning Across Sites Transforming Rural Lives

11. Engaging with Development and Conservation • Challenge: Little experience and understanding of workable interventions, especially where they require integrated responses • Opportunity: Work more closely with development and conservation partners, e.g. IUCN, WWF, CIFOR, ICRAF, others • Rainforest Challenge Partnership • A global science-based approach to managing large forest landscapes • Learning, adapting, empowering, building capacity • Alleviating poverty and conserving the environment • Building a long-term partnership • Regional and national networks • Strong local partnerships • Engage knowledge, skills and impact channels of partners • Based on a learning network of sites • Multifunctional ‘mosaic’ landscapes • Areas of endemic poverty and high biodiversity • Opportunities for inter-institutional collaboration are the starting point for the RCP Transforming Rural Lives

12. Getting into Contact with New Stakeholders • Challenge: Local stakeholders are at the heart of ASB’s work and yet interventions are needed from across different sectors • Locally-appropriate environmental agenda and empowerment of local stakeholders still key • Opportunity: Strategic stakeholder analysis to build partnerships that leverage ASB learning at new research sites • New audiences to achieve additional goals, e.g. creation of non-farm jobs, rural entrepreneurship… • Increase impact on international organizations, global fora, multinational corporations, and the CGIAR itself. • Outputs from global synthesis not always read and utilized by researchers at national and local levels • Impact on general public awareness is indirect and limited Transforming Rural Lives

13. Inputs Outputs iNRM Approach ASB Impacts Activities Outcomes Understanding and Increasing Impact • Challenge: Typical indicators of impact (e.g. tons of rice grown, etc.) do not show the range of impacts that ASB has. • Opportunity: Identify the impact channels more precisely, by looking at the scales at which ASB works and its leverage webs. • Sissi Liu’s ASB impact typology • Leverage webs and feedback loops form the foundation for long-term and broad-based impacts • Integration and extrapolation activities produce the greatest impact leverage • Institutional learning loop important in refining existing and defining new problems • Support to partners increases national/regional impact Transforming Rural Lives

14. Inputs Outputs iNRM Approach ASB Impacts Activities Outcomes CG/ASB missions Interdisciplinary teams Poverty alleviation Pantropic presence Problem definition Food security Integrative problem definition methodology Environmental conservation ASB Program Impact Typology: General Schematic Global/International Global Impacts on scientific knowledge, private sector incentives, public awareness, and partner agenda as well as training and education Global capacity building & change in social values Cross-sector inputs Global analysis, integration & extrapolation; support for partners; information dissemination Scientific publications: theories, principles & methods; Policy Briefs & local Voices; training materials (Publicly accessible via research database) Interdisciplinary consortia of ASB and partner researchers & staff International Change in views & agendas of scientists & politicians of multiple nations Regulatory policy changes in non-ASB partner countries; conservation of tropical ecosystems Techniques & methods from ASB research, infrastructure, external scientific knowledge & local indigenous practices National/Regional Research for enhanced • productivity • human well-being • ecosystem resilience; enabling integrative & trade-off analysis, securing funding and providing negotiation support New technology; prototype for institutional innovations; dialogues with policy makers NARS capacity building; change in focus and agenda of NARs & politicians in primary program nations and regions Policy changes & expansion of ASB program in partner countries Multiparty project funding Local Local experimentation; community & capacity building Community networks; implementation of agroforestry practices; market access; secure land tenure; delivery pathways Change in production practices & social cohesion Increase in income, broadening of opportunities for multiple generations, conservation of local ecosystems Multi-scale communication and negotiation expertise ASB Internal Internal institutional innovations Intern/external reviews & assessments ASB as a boundary organization prototype Innovations in organizational processes & structure Systematic institutional learning Transforming Rural Lives Changes in external environment

15. Scientists and Researchers Boundary Organization: ASB Private Sector Managers and Investors Politicians and Policy Decision Makers Civil Society Capacity Architects Improving Capacity as a Boundary Organization • New concept for harnessing science and technology for sustainable development • Boundary organization as a forum for actors cooperating across the boundary between sectors and social spheres • Boundary management activities aid in: • Communication • Translation • Mediation • Impacts leveraged through global research and information dissemination • Participatory research provides livelihood capital assets Transforming Rural Lives