Dr. James Herrera (Duke University, USA and Madagascar) about using a biocultural approach, inherently participatory methods, and co-creating action plans to develop place-based landscape restoration strategies that meet the needs of communities as well as safeguard the environment.
Der Vortrag wurde im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe „Umwandlung tropischer Regenwälder – soziale und ökologische Folgen und Perspektiven“ am 30. November 2023 an der Universität Göttingen gehalten.
Der Sonderforschungsbereich EFForTS erforscht seit 2012 die ökologischen und sozialen Auswirkungen dieses Wandels in der Modellregion Jambi auf der Insel Sumatra in Indonesien. Auf der Grundlage dieser Forschung und in ausgewählten internationalen Gastvorträgen beleuchtet die Reihe den Umwandlungsprozess aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven und anhand verschiedener Beispiele. Die Vorträge finden jeweils donnerstags um 18.15 Uhr in der Paulinerkirche, Papendiek 14, statt.
Tropische Regenwälder beheimaten eine außerordentliche Biodiversität und spielen eine herausragende Rolle im Klimasystem der Erde. Sie werden aber in großem Umfang in landwirtschaftliche Nutzungssysteme umgewandelt, mit vielfältigen ökologischen und sozial-ökonomischen Folgen. Im Zentrum der Vortragsreihe stehen Fragen nach diesen Auswirkungen, wer davon profitiert und wer verliert, nach dem ökologischen Fußabdruck, den wir in den Tropen hinterlassen, und wie negative Effekte ausgeglichen und ungewollte Trends umgekehrt werden können.
Das gesamte Programm ist unter www.uni-goettingen.de/vortragsreihe-paulinerkirche zu finden. Die Aufzeichnungen der Vorträge werden jeweils in der folgenden Woche am Montag ab 18.05 Uhr im StadtRadio Göttingen (107,1 MHz) ausgestrahlt und sind auch als Audiodatei unter https://publications.goettingen-research-online.de/lectures/ zu finden. Die Reihe findet in Zusammenarbeit mit der Niedersächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen und mit Unterstützung des Universitätsbundes Göttingen e.V. statt.
#unigöttingen #forschung #regenwald
And today today is my very great pleasure to invite a guest from us Madagascar to present here today Dr James Herrera Dr James herera is uh with duuk University in the US and often say based in Madagascar with the Duke lemur Center James today separat I think his work
Between research but also kind of Applied conservation science and as you have already noticed we are looking also very much at the trees and James also studies trees but different approach I mean we are Al for example last week it was more about natural science and Civic
Culture and something this is more a biocultural approach and the biocultural coach is enriched by his specific knowledge also on the Lemur the Lemur are primates occurring only in Madagascar today and some islands around and James is actually a liem more specialist he received his PhD in year
2015 from New York and um actually focusing on the biogeography the phog philogyny and so on of Lio species and uh James didn’t come alone he brought along his partner Mary very warm welcome also to Mary she also follows the biocultural approach and today I just want to hand over and give
The floor to you thank you for coming both of you and I’m looking forward to your talk thank you very much for that introduction thank you Derek for the invitation and thank you for all to be here it’s a really amazing opportunity it’s been a long-term goal of mine to
Come to Germany and especially gutland and it’s been a really enriching experience to be able to discuss uh research and collaborative projects with many of you um so today I will be talking about the biocultural approach which is how we uh look at our research and conservation which it means that we
Recognize and appreciate the intimate and inextricable links between the biological phenomena and the social cultural economic processes that shape the landscape and we also seek to increase the diversity and resilience of those systems as a part of this but I want to take you directly to the
Northeast of Madagascar an area known as the Sava it’s approximately 25,000 square kilometers a little bit smaller than Belgium and over a million people and it is home to diverse species of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world um the diversity is really unparalleled but also coupled with this
Human cultural diversity and you know in Madagascar there’s over 300 species of birds and similar number of mammals over 800 species of reptiles and amphibians by some counts 14,000 species of plants and they’re almost all endemic only found in Madagascar it’s been an isolated island for at least 90 million
Years and the species that we see there today many of them arrived via dispersal and they represent adaptive radiations that have filled numerous ecological niches uh there’s also numerous medicinal plants that we’re discovering and other beneficial organisms that we’re just learning about but just in the last thousand years or so that
Landscape has transformed we see an increase in the uh sediment record of charcoal and a transition from tree seeds and pollen to grasses we also see The Disappearance of at least 17 species of giant lemurs the largest bird that ever lived the elephant bird and we know
That humans played a role in this transformation but we really don’t know what the effects have been on ecosystem function we also know we’re just scratching the surface of species diversity every year we discover new species and just as one example the invertebrates are very poorly known
There’s over a thousand species of ants imagine what that means for all these other poorly studied organisms so plenty of space for people to continue to make amazing discoveries in this country but again it’s a it’s a it’s an issue where it’s not only about the biodiversity but about the people uh
There’s 25 million people in Madagascar or more 80% are rural farmers and they practice traditional Sweden or shifting agriculture like the billions of people in the tropics uh that involves cutting and burning the vegetation before planting annual crops like rice and in the past this may have been sustainable
And in certain cases it may still be but we see that this level of pressure on the forest has led to a rapid decline in Forest cover just since 1950 when we have aerial imagery moving forward to when we have satellites we can see that especially in the last 30 years there
Has been a significant loss of forest cover even just in the last 20 years in the Sava region specifically 26% of the forest cover has been lost and that results in carbon emissions but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to all the other sources of carbon
Emissions the real loss is in the carbon sequestration and ecosystem services that those Force provide uh one of the main factors driving Forest loss is fire uh and these are small scale fire fires by small holder Farmers um but you know if we just look at the last year there were
Over 300 of them in this region alone thankfully the last year was a little bit lower than what we’ve saw during the covid pandemic years when fires really spiked but uh we know that this continues to put pressure on the uh remaining Forest cover and you know it’s
It’s an active area of research to understand at what level this might be sustainable or not but I don’t want to focus too much on that because really the people depend on these Forest resources for food for uh you know there’s numerous different uh uh agricultural products all their construction materials for these
Communities that live on the forest Frontier they come from the forest people who use it for subsistence building their own home or they make their living by selling and and producing furniture and and and Building Homes um we also know that it’s an important source of medicine uh the
Trees and herbs provide all sorts of medicinal properties that people rely on fuel the most people rely on firewood and charcoal to cook and Heat their homes and the charcoal is really being produced at an exponential rate to uh to to provide for the burgeoning uh urban
Populations but at the same time we know that Madagascar has a wealth of valuable cash crops like coffee vanilla the world’s best coffee and most of the world’s vanilla comes from Madagascar there’s also cloves uh which are very popular abroad but also used medicinally in Madagascar there’s pepper there’s
Pineapples there’s uh sugar cane and numerous other uh especially cacao numerous other crops that are produced in Madagascar sold abroad and they also provide economic income for people so for decades research has been showing that Community governance of these forests can have positive impacts for both people and nature that AGR forestry
Can be a solution to many of the global health challenges we face and that small holder Farmers more than two billion people around the world are providing food for uh the rest of the of the of the globe and so we often think about how there was once these pristine
Forests that have now been transformed to cropland pasture land Urban spaces uh but it’s within the grasp of these small holder farmers to convert those Landscapes into productive uh ag ag AGR forestry systems as well now when I say we take a biocultural approach what I
Mean is we need to recognize that there are different knowledge systems there are exitu actors International organizations who make Global policies uh globalization of Commodities and then there are insitu actors people who are based in the places of interest and they have a depth of indigenous knowledge
That is seldom uh synthesized with these exitu actors but if we can bring these different ways of knowing together we can really make uh informed policies that are more Equitable as well as productive and sustainable and so that’s what we’re seeking to do in our microcosm in the Sava region we’re
Really trying to engage the local actors learn from this traditional ecological knowledge and implement it in this complex landscape uh when I say complex I mean truly it is an agroecosystem Matrix where sometimes it’s difficult to tell where does a forest end and a crop land begin and So within that framework
We can really start to think about sustainability so I’m going to bring us to one of our case studies uh the sacred mountain of Amant Taza this is a mountain site where the local communities came to the DLC and requested uh technical assistance in a restoration project that I’m going to
Let them tell you a little bit more about the history of this site Foree the for so this complex history of natural processes like Cyclones followed by anthropogenic fires are coupled with an even deeper history that’s been revealed through focus groups where there were International logging concessions uh but the community needs this forest and they’re going to tell you a little bit
More about where they want to go next was a fore this is a really challenging site to work in because of this uh biophysical and deep history I mean there’s barely any soil left it’s just Leaf litter on top of a Rocky Basalt substrate so that comes with lots of challenges to
Restoration we return to Taza later but next I want to visit another case study onala where there’s a somewhat unlikely group of actors the local military who want to participate in restoration so Madagascar has uh is participating in the bond Challenge and they’re committing to reforesting uh I think
It’s 4 million hectares of land by 2030 and the government really mandates that all actors get involved in these restoration projects including the military now for decades the military has been working closely with the rural community that neighbors their land to create a restoration and reforestation project where local communities can put in
Requests to uh extract Timber from this uh reforestation effort which they use for Community projects like rebuilding the school uh and so they’ve been facing a lot of challenges especially technically and with fire damage that you know also these soils are just super super low quality so it’s been very very
Difficult for them to achieve their goals and that’s where they came to the DLC uh requesting assistance and we’re working together not only for uh creating Timber forests but also fruit tree Orchards that in the future they’ve told us they want the children to be able to realize the value of this land
For more than just cutting trees they want them to be able to harvest fruits from these forests so until now I’ve talked about some of the restoration projects in and one approach we take which is on communal lands the communities have dedicated portions of land that they specifically want to set aside for
Restoration next I want to talk about how we work with individual small holder farmers who have chosen that they want to use AGR forestry for example to diversify their income and to bring back ecosystem services that have been lost and you know it’s really challenging this is a really remote landscape we go
By foot we go by boat uh we go on some really bad roads but it really gives you an appreciation for the diversity of these Landscapes we also try to couple all these programs with Environmental Education opportunities working with schools to set up tree nurseries where the children are involved in caring for
The nurseries and uh we’re going to visit one of those examples here in the andapa district um it’s a really diverse landscape uh and you know these uh various Agro forestry uh practices have have have been put into place for many many years with mixed results and so in
This particular case in andapa they’ll tell you a little bit more about their goals PR For as I said Environmental Education is a fundamental aspect of our projects and we’re going to visit another actor who is a partner in many of the diversity turn research projects as well uh who has dedicated his land to making an interpretive Senter Fore So we take a community based approach to all our efforts and we use applied research to guide our methodology um we start with uh household interviews focus groups and a lot of community meetings to understand what are the challenges that farmers are facing and what are the solutions that they Envision we’re also
Really interested in uh human health especially maternal and infant health and working with uh PhD candidate nestene she’s studying uh different aspects of Nutritional Health uh and also uh teaching about nutritious diets and diversifying diets to improve their health and how that is coupled to how they use the
Landscape um but we really strive to co-create these action plans with the communities uh they are telling us what their goals are what their needs are and we can formulate these uh these written agreements together before we put a single tree in the ground we spend a year just creating these conventions and
And written agreements on what are the shared goals the responsibilities and especially figuring out uh land rights and land claims because we need to know that these lands are protected in the long term once all that is in place we create tree nurseries and the goal is
That by having these locally based tree nurseries uh the trees are well adapted to the place they’re going to be planted we’re using some technical uh uh aspects of uh improving sea germination with the these seed beds that I’ll tell you more about in a moment um and uh also you
Know have to spend a lot of time acquiring local soils so that the seedlings will be adapted to those local conditions mixing with sand and some compost to give those seedlings a fighting chance we do a lot of surveys with the communities to determine what trees they want uh and and tailoring each
Individual Project based on local needs and so in these little sand boxes the seeds are germin so they can easily be transplanted into those pots it really speeds up the process within just 5 or eight months these seedlings are ready to go out and be planted in the landscape but we’re also experimenting
With a few different methods like direct seeding for example uh either with the seed itself or what we call seed balls this method is especially useful for trees with tap Roots so that the The Roots don’t get root bound in those small pots uh which would siy their
Growth but once these tree seedlings are are big enough and ready to be planted we work very closely with the local community members they choose the areas that they wish to restore and you know it takes a lot of work this is all done by hand there are no heavy machinery uh
You know a lot of these areas are completely overtaken by invasive grasses and Bracken Ferns and vines that we’ve got to clear back from these planting areas and maintain consistently throughout the year and uh you know it’s it’s really an amazing uh Endeavor when we’ve got you know over a 100 people
Coming out to participate even just taking out those plastic pots is a step that’s sometimes forgotten in these larger Scale tree planting and what to do with all that plastic waste we’ve got to take it off of these restoration areas and dispose of them properly so that’s really really uh fundamental just
Teaching best practices getting the communities engaged and um and it really turns out to be a lot of fun even though it is hard work when it comes to our collaboration with the local military they’ve got officers they’ve got the cadets and the local communities with whom they collaborate all coming out
Multiple times a year to do both the tree planting and the maintenance and you know even the high level officers like this General come out to oversee the project because this has been their goal for a long time maintenance is critical so these trees you know they need little shade structures
Uh because this hot sun you know there’s almost no shade in most of the places we’re planting them so we create these shade structures which must be maintained until the trees are big enough and strong enough to withstand that sun and when we’re talking about the uh integrated Landscape Management with the
Individual Farmers again tailoring it to what the farmers desire whether it’s coconuts and cloves or vanilla like in this clip teaching about best practices uh you know for example planting on Contour using swales and berms to capture rainwater amending these really lowquality soils with compostable material we’ve got to bring these the
Organic matter back to these soils to give these seedlings a fighting chance after planting we cover it with a nice thick level layer of mulch all this is necessary to preserve and increase the soil quality create shade structures and it’s not only about trees but it can be
An integrated AGR forestry system we’re also experimenting with syntropic farming if anybody’s been studying about that how to integrate and think about succession in this Agri fore F l some foree speaking of fire we have to protect these Landscapes from the neighboring uh communities which still use traditional practices including fire and so we spend a lot of time and effort creating fire breaks and also working with the local community members to talk and be more
Communicative and and align those efforts you know telling each other when we’re planning on burning leading workshops on best practices of how to use fire and manage the fire sustainably uh and again all done by hand there’s no heavy machinery and they do an amazing
Job I mean you can even see these fire brakes from space in this Google Earth image I also want to point out in the top right portion of the screen if you can see it this is a growing oil palm Plantation I know that’s a big part of
The research done with the CRC in case there’s any interest in pursuing it here so now just to look at some of the outcomes we’ve seen thus far um we’re using satellite imagery to measure how landscape and and land cover types are changing through time due to fire so we
See that in the early 2010s there was mostly burning of grasslands and savanas but as we moved into the you know 2019 era we see a much larger increase in forest fires there was a really big stress due to the covid pandemic that really LED people to turn more more
Towards Forest Products and and clearing forest for agriculture in the past especially the early 2000s we see more of a banial trend in burning where you know they burn one year and and not in the second and then since 200920 we see a much more consistent uh burning every year you
Know of course it’s not causality but there was also political coup d’a at that time period where there was a lot less oversight over uh Forest resources so these are really affecting the land cover type based on our household surveys we see that the majority of farmers are small holder farmers and
They’re simply there’s huge yield gaps so in terms of their rice productivity they should be producing two tons of rice per hectare not less than 400 kilos they should be producing as much as 600 kilos of vanilla per hectare not 30 kilos and they really don’t they’re not
Able to keep very many domestic animals in terms of the Nutritional Health research we we see that 11% of mothers and infants are anemic this is lower than many other regions of Madagascar where we see upwards of 20 25% so we’re encouraged by that but it still has a
Negative impact on long-term Health outcomes 42% of children are stunted 22% of children are wasted again this has long-term implications for the sustainability of the communities as well as the landscape and why do we see this we see that you know when we do 24-hour recalls about diet that the
Dietary diversity is very low using this uh scale from the FAO you know most people are getting less than five different food groups per day which is considered inadequate to meet their M micronutrient needs we also use another kind of standardized though adapted uh instrument from the FAO called the food
Insecurity experience score uh where you know five a score of five or above is considered moderate to severe food insecurity they have to go whole days with without eating we see the vast majority of people fall into this high-risk uh category so these are some of the causes that people tell us this
Is why we turn to Forest resources we don’t we we we’re not making our ends meet but they also tell us about how important those Forest resources are for their daily lives not just for Timber that they sell like we might immediately think but the second most common use for
These trees is medicine this is their Pharmacy in the forest and in places like Madagascar where the healthc care infrastructure is not the best uh taking away their access to those forests is really detrimental to their health when we ask the participants what they perceive to be the major causes of
Forest loss they’ve told us about these cycles of the Cyclones and fires which have really had these big impacts but also the charcoal production land clearance for agriculture population growth they also tell us that yes we understand harvesting trees is uh you know causing Forest loss but a lot of
That harvesting is from Outsiders not people in the community people coming from far away cities logging in their Forest just to go back and and sell those products so it’s not even the local communities that benefit from that tree extraction when we ask people about the benefits they derive from the forest
They immediately respond happily saying we recognize the ecosystem services that these forests provide the for the forests seed the rain uh they re recognize that in areas where the forest is gone there’s there’s very little rainfall uh the Clean Air that they uh enjoy the clean water like we saw at on
Bonaza that these watersheds are the sources that people depend on for cooking water uh um for cleaning for irrigating their fields again medicinal plants are high on their list of the benefits they derive from forest and without these um medicines that they get from the forest they would really be at
A loss so we have to really oh and I can’t forget about the spiritual uses people have a spiritual connection to these forests they go to the forest for rituals they bury their dead in the forest so when we ask what do they think we should do to protect and restore the
Land they tell us we need to restrict and manage our tree harvesting in a more sustainable manner they also really want to plant trees to bring these forests back um they recognize the importance of fire prevention fire management and that they they they know that in the past the
Methods they used may not be effective in the future um they also want to be able to maintain their land and phow but as the population is growing there’s less and less land for people to shift to so they tend to uh where it used to
Be a 10 or 15E rotation it’s now two or three years so while they understand that they need to have this fallow period they also need to eat so this is where we really had to step back and think carefully about how we would go forward uh in in protecting these
Forests that really has to be a people and nature approach um just talking about the reforestation efforts we’ve planted more than 50 species of trees uh but it’s mostly been concentrated in its top five uh species which have been uh you know we’ve seen the the highest survival
Rates and the highest success rates we’ve planted over a 100,000 trees in the last 3 years uh on about 150 hectares and you know this does kind of pale in comparison to some of the big projects where we hear about planting millions of trees and you know we we still think
About that but I just can’t imagine with the level of maintenance and evaluation and uh collaborative uh conventions with the communities how could you possibly reforest four million hectares um but you know with the right Financial backing it it may really be possible the uh level of planting has
Varied over the years um first you know just in accordance with what what we were capable of you know how much how many seedlings the nurseries were producing um how much motivation the communities had and we could really see that it increased in many of these sites
Over time people really got engaged and wanted to continue planting but it is challenging you know producing the seedlings alone is is a really challenging uh aspect of this project and you know when we look at survival after one year we do see significant variation across sites
So for example in two sites there was significantly lower survival than in a third site njap pangi all compared to the amb bonaza site where we see about 5050 um but you know there’s there’s a lot of underlying variables that I can’t get into in this talk that may be
Predicting that survival and and the mortality um the underlying soil quality which we are measuring but we’re just scratching the surface of those analyses and so also just existing Forest around the can provide some shade and provide uh the leaf litter which can start to bring the soil uh organic matter
Back when we’re looking over three years we’ve been a little bit discouraged uh after the first year we see about 50% mortality and the second year only about 25% of the seedlings are surviving but still we’re really proud of that 25% because it’s such a difficult landscape
To work in and these seedlings are really you know they’re doing the best they can on their own this is all rainfed systems and those few that are surviving we’re really really excited to see uh just how well they’re doing um just as a as a brief example we can show
You from one of the sites you know some of these trees are are are really showing impressive growth um you know some of them as much as 2 meters tall already in such a short time I never thought that would be Possible Fore uh returning to the uh uh individual small holder Farmers with whom we’re collaborating we asked what kind of training in agriculture especially are you most interested in and the overwhelming response was Agro forestry especially with cash crops like cloves caca and vanilla Falls in that same category because vanilla must be grown
Within this kind of for for setting with what we call support or tutor trees that can provide a little bit of shade for them and you know also Market vegetable farming where as we talked about in the one case we can actually do both in the
Same space for the first few years until those trees start to grow in and create a more closed canopy as some of the research is uh is is moving forward here in in your institution as well so with that in mind we were really encouraged to see that so many people were
Uh motivated to plant trees on their landscape and that’s that’s also speaks to the survival actually we’ve trained uh had more than 250 Farmers engaged in these training workshops we’re able to follow up with about half of them and 65% are using the techniques they used uh learned in the workshops and they’re
Seeing 80 or 90% survival because those are their trees they’re proud of them they are taking care of them they say these kids these trees are for our children because we want our children to have these resources in the future so to kind of summarize the approach we take in this biocultural
Landscape restoration project uh it starts with identifying the key stakeholders the motivated individuals who desire to have these uh projects on their Landscapes without them none of this would be possible with them we decide what are the the targets and the desired outcomes that we share and what
Are the needs that they have how can we create these these written uh agreements that clearly outline roles and responsibilities and and shared uh interests and once we had those in place we were able to create these tree nurseries uh or in many cases there were other projects like the Swiss
Organization granden which has provided a lot of uh tree seedlings that we’ve been able to incorporate into this uh project as well uh it took a lot of research to understand what is the best plant uh planting spacing you know how far apart should we be planting these trees do we
Need certain trees that can tolerate the sun like pioneer species and if so which ones are most suited to these environments uh and so by co-creating this kind of evidence-based planting strategy we were really able to um to to to come up with something that we thought would be more effective than you
Know just kind of a mass planting of as many trees as possible the maintenance is critical I mean we go out twice a year just to cut back all those invasive grasses and weeds which are otherwise smothering those tree seedlings and it’s going to take time before the trees can
Out compete all those weeds evaluation is critical we really need to know is this working before we continue to dump funds and time and resources into these projects and then as we do these evaluations we start to understand what are the challenges that we’re facing and what are these novel solutions that we
Can come up with together for example creating these shade structures it’s it’s extremely intensive but really necessary to ensure a higher survival probability so on the one hand we take these results and we disseminate them to the local communities to get their feedback as well as create creating
White papers that we can share um more broadly and share with our our um supporters but this is an iterative process we can are constantly going back to those written agreements and reformulating to make sure that we are hitting our targets and if we’re not maybe those targets need to be adjusted
Because they were unrealistic so in some cases we’re actually trying to move that Target higher you know we started out with 10 or 20,000 seedlings as our goal this year we’re really trying for 100,000 so um we’re really excited as this continues to develop um and like I
Said it’s it’s iterative so we’re we’re constantly creating these living documents and and Protocols of our collaboration how we are are going to implement these projects you know for real on the ground and uh it’s it’s definitely uh taxing but it’s worth it because there are many co- benefits the
Communities and the solidarity that is created uh by these big projects where people come together to to restore their land they you know a lot of these Villages are are extremely remote and they’re separated by a Day’s Journey and people come in droves to to to participate in the meetings as as well
As the tree planting um and there’s also you know many uh outcomes aside from you know just tree planting so for example um in the case of Amant Taza they asked us to be a third-party intermediary that could oversee the democratic election of local leaders who would oversee this
Transfer of management from the government to the local stakeholders so that was just one area in which we were able to help out Beyond just planting trees we also assist in the creation of micro credit and micro Finance projects that are based in the village because banking systems are simply inaccessible
For most of the people in the countryside and having this entrepreneurship and this system of savings gives them a lot more opportunities we do a lot of training in uh Market vegetable gardening and farming because that was one of the main things that people said this is
Something that can produce uh an income in just two or three months we can Harvest these crops and have a little bit to eat and have a little bit to sell and so we’re training in best practices of agroecology again you know it comes down to basics of organic matter and
Compost amending these soils so that they can be productive over 500 Farmers have participated in these workshops and you know we we’ve been able to follow up with about half of those farmers and 50% of them immediately adopt these new techniques and 95% of those early adopters report improved yield better results
And uh improvements in their dietary diversity as well I mean all these crops you know they’re they’re they’re available but they just weren’t productive before and so now um that they are producing more we can go to the next step which is teaching about cooking and nutritious diets so again
Nerine is not only collecting data about Nutritional Health but paying it forward and and teaching about diversifying diets what she calls Saku maruku the food of many colors and so uh she teaches about making a nutrient-dense porridge for infants uh and it’s not just for the infants it
Turns out it’s delicious and the adults love it too but uh everybody gets involved they’re helping in a participatory way to to do these cooking workshops and then you know it it really is challenging remember we’re out there in the countryside cooking on an open flame and uh trying to you know serve
Over a hundred people requires a lot of rice but it’s really really fulfilling to be able to participate in these kinds of workshops where the communities are engaged but we also all get to enjoy a delicious and nutritious meal together in the end um as we continue to just to to
Learn about the challenges that people face in their staple agriculture like rice farming we’re finding uh the appropriate uh trainers who can bring new methods so for example um maybe some of you have heard of the system of rice intensification uh we’ve had over a 100 farmers in s different communities
Trained in this uh method which uh cuts down on the amount of seed stock that the farmers need so that immediately saves in their household budget but also it can be more productive so with the proper plant spacing and the timing of planting uh we can actually we’ve we’ve
Observed yield increases of more than one and a half times and this is still in kind of the pilot phase it’s really hard to to break tradition but when they see these uh amazing results they’re really convinced aquaculture is another really great system that we use to to teach about different
Alternatives using an incentive based program the uh lead farmers who have adopted these new techniques can also apply to to earn uh watering cans and other uh in U important farming equipment Environmental Education is fundamental to all the efforts we have uh starting with the schools and building up to huge CommunityWide
Celebrations like World lemur day and the International Day of the environment we just had almost 1,200 people turn out including local authorities from the government from the Madagascar national parks and this is an opportunity for the people to to tell the authorities we want this restoration we need improved
Policy so thinking about these outcomes starting just from these seedlings that you know are only recently put in the ground to these bigger picture concepts of agroecosystems and Agro forestry nothing not a lot of this is new people have been practicing this for decades but especially with a lot of the global
Demand for high value crops like vanilla there have been trans transitions to more monoculture we’re trying to bring back traditions of Diversified home gardens that include bananas cacao uh bread fruit uh and you can you can grow them all together you know the vanilla can be grown right there in the same
Plot with the cacao so that they have this uh insurance if one crop doesn’t produce they’ve got others that can take over in the long term our dream is that the forest will be restored the animals will come back and they will continue this process in perpetuity because it’s
The animals like the Lemur that are the crucial seed dispersers who are doing the real tree planting they’re eating the fruits from these trees and they’re spreading the seeds in their feces and that’s how natural recruitment happens that’s the long-term goal but I just you know also want to uh
Think Beyond the Forest and back to the communities so it’s really really important to us that the communities are not only participating but they’re giving us their feedback so I wanted to share that you know the people that you just saw in this video they gave us
Feedback on earlier drafts they see how this is being uh portrayed and they they help to to co-create the final products in every way I’m very grateful for the team of colleagues and collaborators that I’ve had the great Fortune to work with from madag Asar from us and many
Other countries as well none of this work would be possible without them I thank Ricardo who’s the amazing videographer who produced all the wonderful imagery we got to see today and I thank my sponsors and the sponsors for this project um and I also thank you
Again for the invitation to come and to share this work with you [Applause] dear James thank you so much that was an inspiring talk very very interesting I’m deeply impressed by the work you realize in the field but also in the communication with us and I hope for a
Very good discussion and now I’m looking to the audience who would like to have the first question well thank you first of all for your really amazing presentation and talk it was really fun and interesting um my question is uh you do a lot of amazing work there and uh I guess often
The problem is the capacity and the funding that you have so my question is uh how big is your capacity to take on new communities that might be interested in this and is there a limit in the next years or what what’s the major problem in that uh Direction
Thank you for that question yes we are a small organization you know we’re not the WWF or WCS um we are um actually we have a staff of five permanent employees so uh we currently have 12 communities with whom we collaborate very closely only a few of them were shown in in this
Video and I often say to myself we are at Max Capacity with those 12 communities but when new communities come to us with their impressive ideas and their motivation I have a hard time saying no um and so we just really strive to continue to grow the the
Project it’s really only possible with our collaborations with local stakeholders especially the team at the regional University which is in uh the region it’s called Cura uh with whom the members of the CRC here have also collaborated they really are the rock stars who have done the hard work
They’re out there all the time participating in the tree planting leading these meetings collecting the data um and and feeding the information back to the communities so uh as our project grows we’ve taken on a lot more uh you know people who started out as assistants and now are leaders and we
Really want to see that model continue because you know even if I am no longer with the project they can keep it going but it does come down to funding and so we’re um like you know many academics were constantly looking for new grants I actually have one do on Sunday night so
Hopefully I’ll still get that done um but um you know I’m I’m Keen to collaborate as well if this uh presentation spoke to anyone you know we’re we’re really open to taking on new research projects because even with um you know focused research we can learn a
Lot more we can develop more capacity with the local stakeholders bring on more researchers uh so yeah hopefully that answered your question thank you for this uh this presentation uh my question is like uh are you working in some protected area for your project I mean for all of this project
And uh if so uh how do you actually select the the the people who are working if you I mean the people who participate on the on the workshop and uh my third question is uh maybe I didn’t follow very well the presentation but uh have you been
Working also on some valuable plant like like improving the Y of vanila cacao as well during your project thank you MH um so to answer the first question yes there are is an amazing network of protected areas just in the Sava region alone there’s over 100 protected areas
In Madagascar and in the Sava there’s at least 10 uh they’re managed by uh different organizations and with different schemes so for example there’s the Maro ji National Park which is um you know kind of an exclusive this is a nature space set aside for for only nature there’s other forests that are
More open to forestry and other forms of kind of uh you know use and management and in terms of uh yes we do work in the in kind of the buffer zones of a lot of these protected areas and um but in many of the cases like on Baza for example
It’s not an officially protected area it was once considered a a Forest Reserve by the government but um there’s really no formal protection it’s the local communities who want to protect it and make it um what you know is um in Madagascar they have a system where the
Community can be the the the the people in charge of of managing it as opposed to Madagascar national parks for example the second question about how do we select communities um it largely comes from them they they come to us and they say hey we’ve got these ideas uh we just
Need some technical financial assistance can you can you help when we want to get involved and um you know there is a bit of a selection process I mean for example you know I I should preface by saying I’ve only been with the DLC the Duke lemur Center project for the last
Four years this is a project that’s been going on for 10 years and even before that for 30 years in Madagascar generally so I’m building on um many many you know Giants before me um so a lot of these communities were already engaged when I came in and I had the
Good Fortune to to meet them and and start you know with the ground running but when new communities come to us we really do have to weigh the the potential you know costs in terms of the resources we’re going to have to allocate to this new project uh against
The benefits and um you know I’m I’m I’m very hardpressed to say no in a lot of these cases um I know that we’re at Max Capacity but when I can see that um you know it’s not all us it’s not just us trying to push this project and we’re
Going to have to put all our resources I see that the community they come to us and they say look this is our land that we want to set aside to this project or here you know we have this perfect area where we can make fish ponds then and
And they have this they often have uh farming associations or um they actually have a system like within the schools where the teachers and the parents work together and and those associations will will you know take the role of for example the labor when we can provide the
Materials so there has to be some some real collaboration and that’s again goes down to the uh those written agreements where we say okay this is what we can provide this is what you’re willing to provide we can move forward from here uh I wish we could take on more and
Hopefully in the future we will be able to actually in The Proposal that we’re writing we’re we’re proposing 20 new communities all around these protected areas so we’ll we’ll see fingers crossed and then your last question was about um improving the production of some of these key crops like vanilla cacao um
You know we’re still so early on that I can’t say for for for sure yes our method is improving the yield compared to other methods like for example if it was a monoculture but again based on like you know the evidence that we see in the literature and Recent research
That’s been done in the region we know that there’s um multiple ways of coming upon the same yield when it comes to vanilla you know it’s not um this um negative relationship between uh biodiversity and uh yield that we see in a lot of other settings like with coffee
For example uh actually it seems to be uh independent of you know the yield seems to be independent of biodiversity meaning um that you know increasing the intensification would not necessarily come at the expense of biodiversity University however we are working with uh local trainers who have had um the
The training themselves to say you know these These are the traditional techniques that people have used and you know this is the yield that we can get and here are the new methods that have been designed for example there’s a French organization called sod that has
Done a lot of amazing research on best practices in vanilla for example and they’re able to show okay you know this is the proper spacing 2 and A2 meters this is the proper amount of shade these are the best shade trees and you know we’re adapting from there because again
We want to promote more biodiversity and crop diversification so yeah we’re still in an early stage to say how well this is maybe improving but when it comes to for example the market vegetable gardening we uh overwhelmingly see improvements in results we’re still it’s it’s difficult to measure yield for
Example on things like you know the greens and the beans that they’re growing because it’s it’s it’s still kind of a novel idea because you know vanilla that’s that’s the main one we want to measure but uh we’re we’re trying to work on that as well so that
We can really measure and say this is the Improvement compared to past techniques hopefully that answer your question uh hello um I have a question because you really emphasized that you’re um bringing trees or planting trees in a Barren landscape and bringing the first shade there and so so um then
Later on you said that the well long-term goal is the self- recruitment of the trees so in what broad time frame would you imagine that would be possible thank you yeah the the time frame you know it’s daunting for me um especially even just talking about cash crops you know for example the
Cloves you know cacao those will probably produce after about 5 years they’ll start to produce for cloves it’s not until 10 years that they’ll really produce uh a sizable yield so that’s the time frame in terms of um in terms of those cash crops but when it comes to
Forest trees I mean I’ve been impressed to see the the rapid growth and and some of them but we know that for example we you know Rosewood is one of the trees that we are planting because it’s it’s a legacy that they want to bring back is to have these precious Woods Rosewood
And Ebony and those are going to take a hundred years before they’re big and mature you know so it’s uh it’s definitely a long-term Vision I’ve actually you know it’s inspiring to learn from countries like in Germany the way that forestry has this Forward Thinking of You know these are planned a
Hundred years the the tree plantings that we’ve done now and and in a 100 years we’ll be able to harvest them so I think that’s a kind of thinking that maybe we need to try to implement in Madagascar as well but it’s also really difficult because we’re facing these
Challenges today you know people and their and their food and security challenges it’s hard to think a 100 years from now okay we can wait 100 years to build our home it’s impossible so we have to think about what are the fast- producing trees so for example you know eucalyptus Acacia these introduced
Species that have been used around the tropics you know a lot of people are are against them and I was for for a very long time but when used properly these trees can produce uh really valuable timber in just 10 or 15 years Acacia 5 years and this is building material this
Is fuel wood so you know as long as it’s not at the expense of native forest and native trees I think it definitely still has a place so that we can have these kind of um kind of staggered successional phases for the forestry practices yes thank you very much for
This presentation um very interesting because I I’ve seen already many attempts and many projects of uh trying to uh build Agro forestry schemes um or enrich biodiversity and really not all of them were successful so um quite an interesting and impressive example of their um my question goes also towards
The longevity of the project but rather from another’s perspective first I was wondering you were mentioning Land Titles and we know that they can play quite a crucial role in the long term uh whether these Land Titles are legal or if people or a community has a legal
Land Title uh so um maybe a bit of your perspective on that then you also mentioned the pressure from uh from other communities Outsiders going into areas and deforesting I imagine this is not going to decrease in the next couple of years so um yeah which then of course
Is leads me to the question how well will the these communities be able to protect prot themselves from these people or from from foreigners to protect these areas if it’s just a small very simple Community I might assume it these resources are rather limited and then the last point would be yeah um
Linked a bit to funds uh which I guess um many of them of them are small holder farmers and then once a project runs out I ask myself also how self- sustainable it is um because I mean Agro Forestry uh I think provides certainly a good
Share of income or at least some income but certainly not 100% of the income of all these people in a community so if you could address this A bit thank you great I have to write it down so I make sure I touch on all
Those uh so in terms of land rights how much time do I have I’d love to talk give an entire presentation just on that topic it’s so fundamental and yet very rarely discussed because um you know I’ve I’ve I’ve tried to put myself in the farmers’s uh position and think you
Know if if their land if their claim to the land is tenuous in terms of you know next year or several years from now someone might come and contest their claim to the land where the government might come and take their land or you know even a neighbor or a family member
Might say Hey you know this this is actually our land you’ve been here illegally what is the incentive for them to invest in a longterm strategy like AGR forestry why would they plant the trees now that in five years may now belong to someone else um so absolutely
You’re 100% right and it’s not that we try to exclude the people that don’t have the the legal land rights because actually getting those land claims is almost impossible for most of these Farmers um the paperwork is extensive many of the farmers are unfortunately illiterate the costs associated with
Bringing the um the you know the the offices the administrative offices that are in charge of those land titling the costs are are uh simply beyond what the average farmer can can support and so recognizing the importance and the cultural significance of their traditional land inheritance
Systems is fundamental so what we try to do and what we’re really trying to move forward with as as we build on this project is to bring the community members together on the landscape and and say okay you know hey you haven’t uh gone and got your deed you haven’t gone
And put down the you know mapping your your actual what is what is your land but you all recognize each other’s lands and maybe there’s some con contesting of boundaries you know this is this stream in your land or my land but in general people respect each other’s land because
It’s it’s a legacy the the system of land inheritance is typically from their parents you know their parents they had 10 hectares and then they had five children and so they divide you know each child gets two hectare it’s not that simple of course but um and and
This is a community that they’re tight-knit they’re extended family and they can say you know hey I remember since your grandfather was here this was your land and so they really respect that so if we can bring people together and we can map it with them we don’t
Necessarily need to have the um you know the office of land tenuring to come out and do it um I think that’s a step in the right direction uh although I do really want to support more of the farmers to be able to get the official land rights because especially once they’ve restored
It you know they they really are worried that the government come might come take their land or you know this is not necessarily something that happens but they’re worried about it because again why would I invest in such a long term effort it also has you know thinking
About the impacts of cyclones when you saw how steep some of these slopes are if there’s a cyclone that’s going to come and wash out and erode my hill and all my trees are going to you know collapse into the valley why would I go and invest so much and something that’s
Not going to produce for 10 years so it’s definitely a big Challenge and I appreciate that you brought it up I don’t have a a clear-cut answer but I do feel like respecting traditional local land rights is our first step um in terms of the um kind of people from
Outside the community coming in and um overh harvesting manipulating local systems you know there’s a lot of bribery that’s that’s done as well it’s not only logging but also gold mining and things like that um you’re right that it’s not something that’s going to change immediately but again by uh
Working with the communities and building this solidarity creating these associations uh they are now in a better position to go to the local authorities like the um the ministry of the environment and say Hey you know look we at it’s not just me that I say oh it’s
My land that they’re logging it’s us as an association it’s us as a community that they can bring that force and that power to the local authorities and that’s much stronger than one person alone and then you know we do try to um back them as well and say look we’ve
Been working with this community for uh many years now we know that this is what they’re trying to do and these people from outside or you know they’re coming from really far off and they it’s it’s easy to see when they come in with these big operations so by going to the
Ministry of the environment and and all their local branches together as a unit they have a lot more power so I I am hopeful that you know as we progress and they finalize their um their um formalization of of their you know community-led protected area they’ll be
Able to use that power so for example their are in there are kind of like um decentralized systems in place they’ve got all these different forms of committees that get formal recognition from the government branches but without that they just don’t have the power so if they can create these committees and
Uh those committees are formally recognized and they can bring the they know what is the procedure we’re supposed to follow the paperworks we’re supposed to fill out and again the Duke lemur Center can help them with the paperwork and you know the transportation because even even just
Bringing the authorities to the site you know you have to pay to get them to come out and and and do this justice so um helping them out to overcome those barriers is is something we’re looking forward to doing and uh long-term sustainability and self-sufficient uh funding of this
Project you’re right it’s not 100% of their income for 100% of households that are depending on Agro forestry but actually a lot of the research that that we’re conducting as well as from the diversity term project showed that really the the number one form of income
That folks have is vanilla in many of these cases or cloves depending on where where we’re talking um you know they may be able to sell some of their greens and tomatoes and pineapples but it’s really not their main income for the majority of people their main income comes from
Selling these cash crops um again that’s not everyone but actually in some of these Villages it’s 95% of people are they consider themselves their M income generating activity is vanilla farming so again that’s risky and we want to diversify but um for example with the animal husbandry like the aquaculture uh
Chicken husbandry uh that is an alternative or not only alternative but supplemental form of income um and then creating these Village Savings and Loans associations or these community- based micro Finance you know they can diversify their income generating opportunities like for example uh people we’ve heard all sorts of really great
Entre entrepreneurial ideas like they want to get into soap production and using organic materials to make soap because they see that the chemicals are adversely affecting their water um we’ve had uh women’s groups come and say they want to create a sewing Association to supplement their income um they want to
Do um value added products like making chips from their bananas or making jams from their fruits uh drying the fruit so it’ll last longer so all those kinds of um kind of supplements to their income can help to um decrease the Reliance on just the Agro forestry but again the the
Goal is for it to be more self- sustaining so that you know when I leave it’ll all continue yeah thanks for inspiring talk I like to focus a little bit on education I wonder in which ways are the conducted Community projects linked to teaching and learning in school it’s
Given the uh curricular the current curricular uh I can’t imag I can imagine that the project can be an enrichment to build an inspiring teaching and learning environment uh can you eventually elaborate more on the best practices here and um can you also tell us a
Little bit more on your efforts to link the huge action oriented Community projects with school learning thanks thank you for that question and we’ll definitely be talking more about that in our meeting tomorrow but I would love to be able to share a little bit now so um
We have a few different arms to our education program some are very lemur Centric because you know lemur hunting and keeping lemurs as pets is still a big problem that threatens um these endangered species so we have what we call the Lemur awareness campaign where evard benis swava that you saw in the
Presentation he has this goal to reach every single School in the Sava region which is ambitious but I support him um and he’s going school to school with with um a variety of different media that he can use to teach about the value of lemurs um so for example posters and
Um um coloring books that are very focused on the local biota to emphasize not only you know that oh lemurs are endangered and they’re endemic and we should protect them but also what are the functions they provide for people like I said they they are the farmers
Growing these trees uh and and people know that and appreciate that so that’s that’s one area where he’s going school to school and we’re actually still in the in the process of developing an evaluation instrument to determine how effective it is but just to give you
Some examples um you know we we revisit these Villages often and the schools and the children even the year after they’ve graduated they can still answer the um you know tell us you know how many Lemur species are there in Madagascar why are they important but more importantly than
You know just acquiring knowledge they became they become spokes persons for the environment themselves I mean some of the children have even uh LED um kind of education campaigns in their Villages themselves they go back to their homes and they tell their parents hey this is
What we learned in school we don’t we don’t want to have Lemur in you know keep the Lemur as a pet anymore or we we don’t want to you know hunt lemurs so you know we we still haven’t had uh you know numbers to put to that to say okay
You know 50% of the children then agree that they will continue to protect cour we’re we’re not there yet but we do see it as as being effective to answer your question more broadly though how can this be uh integrated into the curriculum one project that they that
The Duke lemur Center had before I started and I really want to um expand on is um teaching teachers about how to incorporate environmental principles into their uh everyday curriculum so you know the educational infrastructure in Madagascar uh could be improved let’s say and you know you’ll have one teacher
With 100 kids in their classroom and they are have a mandate that we’ve got to teach them the math and the French and uh and and reading and writing and they don’t have time in their schedule or resources to be able to teach about environment so what our training program
Did was uh try to show how they can integrate environmental principles into the existing curriculum for example when they’re using you know word problems in math they can use examples from the environment like you know if they were 100 trees you know 10 years ago and they
Cut 10 trees per year how many are going to be left something like that um or even about farming you know if you if you planted uh you know 15 kilos of rice and you yielded 100 kilos or you you produced 100 kilos what was the yield
Things like that so that’s a project that we really want to expand uh over 2,000 teachers were trained in that program and again we want to do more evaluations but we want to expand to to more communities and then I think just lastly I’ll say that for example with
Some of these tree nurseries that we’ve established uh it’s in partnership with the parent teacher associations so the kids you know it’s right outside the school the kids can come out every day and they help out in the nursery you know watering the tree seedlings they plant every year around the schoolyard
And you know they they’ve seen in the time since they started school until they finished some of these trees are now taller than they are so you know they that’s actually how evard says he was motivated his teacher had them plant mango trees in their schoolyard and he
Came back 10 years later and there they were producing fruit and he said I can do that too so again it’s n of one but uh it’s those kind of stories that really inspired me to keep going with the Environmental Education uh yeah thanks for your talk
Um if I got that right you’re currently experimenting with several different uh types of trees but it comes down to mainly like five or six U types that you’re using so um yeah how how high would you estimate the value of the forests that now grow as a potential
Habitat for lemur or other endangered species thank you yeah when you compare to these old growth forests these are depop parate Landscapes um and a lot of the trees that do the best in these land apes are not actually lemur food trees because those lemur food trees are kind
Of the climax community trees um so what I’ve I’m trying you know I I have a background as as DK mentioned in in ecology I’m trying to think about how we can Implement principles of natural succession to create this Baseline where those these Pioneer tree species can
Provide the shade under which we can now plant those more Climax and lemur uh food tree species one of the challenges that we’ve faced is just getting enough seeds uh you know we’ve got to go out to the forest we’ve got to find the the seeds that have fallen under the mother trees
That are not rotten um in one project in a collaboration with another PhD candidate at Duke she’s actually collecting the seeds from the Lemur feces and growing them in the nurseries to show that the seeds that have been passed by lemurs actually germinate and grow better than those that just fall
Under the mother tree and again we can think about eological principles in that regard you know the seed Shadow and Seed rain and you know in some of these settings you might have noticed there there are still nuclei of of natural forest and without the Lemurs and other
You know Birds to disperse the seeds it’s going to be hard for them to to get much further than just falling underneath the mother tree so if we can collect those and and take those to the nursery and this year we’re actually doing a lot more of that I mean you know
It my first few years in the project it was just such a a labor of love to try to find any tree seeds uh and now we’ve got this community of people who are really uh actively going out to Forest collecting the trees I mean uh just in
The last few months we were acquired almost 100 kilos of um uh well I won’t name all the species but Rosewood was one of them and Rosewood is not a great example because it’s not a lemur food tree but again it’s a it’s a an indicator of that climax community and
Um you know it it it really is going to take a lot of time I think maybe after 5 years we’ll have enough shade uh in in these early p with from these early pioner species to be able to now plant later stage trees but again just just
Acquiring enough seed stock can be a challenge uh hi yeah thanks for the very interesting talk um you mentioned that a lot of the like restoration projects and a lot of the just projects that are happening are done by hand are there plans to like introduce mechanization or is it even possible to
Introduce mechanization thank you uh yeah there have been efforts um in other countries but also in Madagascar to you know we we showed those seed balls or seed bombs um some people are just flying over in helicopters Distributing you know hundreds of thousands of those seed
Balls or even using drones and you know I got excited when I first heard about it but then when I see how uh low the probability of success is with some of these if we were just dumping them everywhere I can’t imagine that the success would be very high you
Know they when they just land on the on the soil surface they’re now still exposed to that hot sun um they’re they’re they’re drying out and the and and I I just can’t imagine that or even also rat predation I I wanted to mention that as well predation by rats is a big
Problem for the seeds as well as the seedlings so I I really feel feel like it requires uh also you know you would just end up by chance you’re going to have these clusters where you know 10 or 15 seat balls have now fallen in this small area we’re trying to very
Specifically space them out two by 2 by two meters to have a planting density of a thousand seedlings per he a things like that so I’m I’m a little bit less excited about you know the the mass spreading of the seeds by drones or helicopters um and also it would just
Make it so hard to evaluate right like how many do we really think land did successfully in such a way and how do we go back and count them um I I wish we could have a more effective and a method like that but right now I’m not
Convinced and sorry right next to you Barbara I had seen the question yeah yes thank you for uh you just mentioned within your presentation um there was a um individual involvement in tree planting right I just a bit curious about if the government involved in this kind of recognitions if after he planted
History or how the government help him or promote the others communities to see as him like oh he did a great job and then you need to follow or something like that so just want to in the the role of the government and my second question is what is the key challenge
For your projects that you are implementing uh since the uh Farmers they are looking what are they going to eat today tomorrow but your project is like a longterm long goal so the key challenge would be what and how do you solve these kind of challenges yeah MH thank you to respond uh
Me so the um role of government for sure is uh an important one if there aren’t policies in in place to promote these kinds of uh restoration efforts it really just comes down to individuals and communities and it may not scale so I I think that Madagascar has had a long
Uh history of positive government influence in the environmental regulation so going back as far as I’ve been um working in Madagascar to 2007 and before um the previous president was uh very Pro conservation he participated in the Durban challenge to increase the amount of protected areas three-fold and
And they did it uh the current president signed on to the bond challenge so that the U you know restoration efforts in Madagascar were government mandated um all the ministry of environment uh staff that I’ve met are fully dedicated to not only restoration but also protecting uh
The forest but it it really does come down to the financial mechanisms to get it done um and unfortunately medic Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world as I think many of you know and without significant um external funding a lot of these projects
Just can’t even get off the ground but um there has been quite a bit of international funding from the World Bank and FAO and and a lot of uh other organizations that have made a lot of this work possible and at the same time there have been a couple of interesting
Publications to show that despite you know tens of millions of dollars of external conservation investment we’re still facing Forest loss and and endangered species so you know um it’s it’s not perfect and uh we’d love to see more policy in place that could um subsidize a lot of these activities for
Example I was having some really great conversations earlier where you know if you think about other countries subsidies is a is a big reason why people will make a shift a farmer might make a shift from a monoculture culture to a polyculture because there’s a government policy in place that
Incentivizes it so if we had more of that I think uh we could make a bigger difference but uh I think that may also be a long-term Vision or goal that you know we’re not going to see very soon in terms of um like we said these are long-term investments in restoration but
We still need to make the meet these short-term needs of you know what are we going to eat today uh I think that’s where the Agro forestry and Copic farming where we’re including annual crops within the same space as those tree crops especially during those first
5 years until the cash crops start to produce you know we we often think that it has to be one or the other but it can very easily be both depending on how you’re managing the land and the people’s goals so I think I’m getting a
The hook but I would love to talk to you more about it afterwards up James gave us such a good talk and also such enriching enriching discussion but now I think we are also approaching the end so I would like to thank the audience to attend tonight I think for all the
Question I would like to invite you to come here next week we will have another great talk it will be most interesting but for today I do thank James I thank you Mary also for coming and giving us this wonderful talk sharing your idea and And discussing with us and yeah
Thank you for coming [Applause] over