Evergreen Agriculture success stories featured at COP 17

By Elizabeth Kahurani

As drylands ambassador of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Dr. Dennis Garrity, a Distinguished Board Research Fellow at ICRAF, highlighted success stories of the evergreen climate smart agriculture initiative at the Dryland Forest Summit and Land Day 5 events in Durban, South Africa.

Dr. Dennis Garrity (left) with the Deputy President of South Africa, Kgalema Motlanthe, at the opening of Land Day 5 which was held at the margins of COP 17 in Durban, South AfricaThe events were held at the 2011 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 17^th Conference of Parties.

At the Dry Forest day held on December 1, 2011, Dr. Garrity noted the need for government policy frameworks that recognize and support the contribution of dry forests. He said that these forests, account for 10 to 20 percent of the agricultural landscape and provide social, economic and ecological functions.

“Dry forests are inextricably linked to agriculture and livestock systems as they provide fodder for livestock, food, fuel and fruits,” Dr. Garrity noted, adding that the fate of dry forests is linked to the fate of agriculture in forests and interventions should therefore be in form of a whole landscape system.

A similar message resonated in his speech at Land Day 5 on December 6. The theme of the event was on ‘achieving zero net land degradation.’ Dr. Garrity emphasized that land regeneration is the key to ending hunger while achieving zero land degradation. He said that drylands account for 44% of the world's cultivated ecosystems and degradation is occurring on 20% of these lands, while regeneration occurred on 16% between 1981 and 2003.

To succeed in regenerating healthier land and forests, Dr. Garrity said it was important to identify and understand success stories. Some of these include evergreen practices in Shinyanga, Tanzania where over 5,000 hectares have been regenerated into healthy woodland systems. The experience provides a classic example of how research underpins the up-scaling of traditional land management processes.

In Niger, high density agroforests involving 200 trees per hectare have made the landscape look like forests, but it is all farmland with millet and sorghum. New agroforests across the farmlands of the Seno Plains in Mali account for 450,000 hectares over the past 15 years, while Faidherbia albida is now found in cereal crop systems in Ethiopia.

In Kenya, the policy directive to have 10% tree cover on farms will be achieved through a National Evergreen Agriculture Programme.  For more information on the Evergreen agriculture initiative spearheaded by Dr Dennis Garrity at ICRAF, visit the Evergreen website.

The Dryland Forest and Land Day 5 events saw participation from other ICRAF scientists. Dr Peter Minang, Global Coordinator of the ASB Partnership, facilitated a session in Dry forest day while Constance Neely made a presentation at the Land Day 5 event.