Dry forests provide fodder, fuel, medicines, income and building materials. They also restore soil fertility, sequester carbon, and prevent erosion and desertification. Recently overharvesting of the dry forests in Africa has been gaining attention because of its perceived connection with the food crisis in the Horn of Africa. Former CIFOR Principal Scientist Tony Cunningham believes that much could be learned from comparing and contrasting the dry forests of Africa with better-understood dry forests elsewhere (such as those in India). He explores the opportunities for global comparative dry forest research in this keynote address for the First Conference on Managing Non-Wood Forest Products for Sustained Livelihood, held in Bhopal, India on 17–19 December 2011.

1. SEEING BEYOND CARBON:
OPPORTUNITIES FOR GLOBAL COMPARATIVE
RESEARCH IN DRY FORESTS
Dr A.B (Tony) Cunningham, Principal ScienVst, Forests & Livelihoods
First Conference on NWFP for Sustained Livelihood in Bhopal, India, 17–19 December 2011.

2. OVERVIEW
• Background;
• Context & dry forests;
• Research themes “beyond carbon”
• Conclusions.

3. WET TROPICAL FORESTS ARE
THE “POSTER CHILD”……
….& tropical dry forests a somewhat neglected orphan….

4. IMPACTS OF DRY
FOREST LOSS
• Reduced carbon
storage above &
below ground (total
1Pg C/yr – if half of
miombo cleared in
30 yrs – 0.2 Pg C/yr)
(Scholes, 1996);
• Biodiversity loss.

5. LEARNING FROM INDIA: CARBON
• In many African dry forests, we know liLle about
what’s ”in the bank” ‐ parQcularly the underground
vaults (ie: below ground biomass) – or interest rates
(producQvity);
• Basic management plans oSen outdated;
• Opportunity to learn from “carbon accounQng” &
management in South Asian dry forests (e.g:
Gunimedia et al., 2007)
Ref: Gundimeda, H., P. Sukhdev, R. K. Sinha and S. Sanyal. 2007. Natural resource accounQng for Indian states — IllustraQng the case
of forest resources. Ecological Economics 61: 635‐649

6. BACKTO THE FUTURE….
MulVple‐use management in a globalized world…

7. Many ecological & taxonomic similariVes: for example,
Boswellia & Commiphora in India and Africa

8. WHAT ARE DRY FORESTS?
• Africa is widely considered to have the largest area of
tropical dry forest (Murphy & Lugo, 1986);
• Important forest type in South Asia (eg: sal forests);
• but different interpretaQon over what “dry forests” are can
lead to very different conclusions;
• Miles et al (2006) concluded that “more than half of the
forest area (54.2%) is located within South America” (by
leaving out miombo woodland).

9. SHOULD DRY FOREST DEFINITIONS BE POLITICALLY
OR ECOLOGICALLY DRIVEN?
Scholes, RJ and BH Walker (1993) An African Savanna: Synthesis of the Nylsvley Study. Cambridge University Press.
9

10. Research themes beyond carbon..
• 1. Understanding impacts spatially & over time;
• 2. Landscape level conservation & incentives;
• 3. Livelihoods, resilience & vulnerabilities;
• 4. Citizen science: monitoring & implementation;
• 5. Understanding “hidden economies”;
• 6. Looking after the bank: governance & dry forests;
• 7. Values, value-adding & market integration;
• 8. The need for an integrated approach to sustainable
resource use.

11. 1.
UNDERSTANDING
IMPACTS
SPATIALLY &
OVER TIME

12. WHAT FACTORS AFFECT DRY FORESTS &
WOODLANDS?
Mean annual rainfall Frost Conversion to
PREDICTABLE EFFECTS
(influencing fire) farmland
LARGE SCALE IMPACTS
Commercial charcoal & Elephant impacts (in some
ON PREDICTABLE PARTS
fuelwood producVon African protected areas)
OF THE LANDSCAPE &
SPECIES SPECIFIC
Unmanaged Grazing (caele, goats, wild
PARTICULAR SPECIES?
logging animals)
IMPACTS
Loss of large mammals due
to hunVng
Subtle, species specific impacts
(eg: bark removal)

13. REPEAT PHOTOGRAPHY AS A TOOL TO
GET “TIME‐DEPTH”
Bolago, Ethiopia
Nyssen, J et al. 2009. DeserQficaQon? Northern Ethiopia re‐photographed aSer 140 years.
Science of the Total Environment 407:2749‐2755.

14. 1950
REPEAT PHOTOS: POPULATIONS
• Cost effecVve;
1995 • Slow, subtle changes visible;
• Finding historical photos &
relocaVon can give Vme depth;
2004
• Scale, measurements & “digital
calipers”

15. c. 1970
Great opportuniVes for
parVcipatory
methods in photo
interpretaVon that link
to local knowledge.
2011

16. c.1970
Detail of terraced fields from photograph taken by B. Clamagirand, c. 1970 (CL-TIM 0283) showing Ficus tree on grassy hill
2011
Same hill, with the Ficus tree, taken from a slightly different angle due to trees & houses in the foreground.

17. 2.
LANDSCAPE LEVEL
CONSERVATION &
INCENTIVES

18. Conventional Research Process:
“disconnect” between research solution
& outcome
Basic Strategic Adaptive
Research
solution Outcome
….a key challenge in conservaVon of species & at the landscape level.

19. KNOWING BUT NOT DOING….
Ref: Linklater, W. L. 2003. Science and management in a conservaQon crisis:a case study with rhinoceros. ConservaQon Biology 17:968–975

20. SystemaVc ConservaVon Planning
ConservaVon Development
assessment:
of an
IdenQfying species & implementaVon
spaQal prioriQes for strategy and acVon
conservaQon acQon plan
“Assessment‐
planning gap”
The “planning‐acVon” gap
ImplemenVng effecVve conservaVon
Needs stakeholder support: Controls, incenVves &
development strategies
Knight, A.T et al. 2006. An OperaQonal Model for ImplemenQng ConservaQon AcQon. ConservaQon Biology 20: 408–419

21. Site selecVon is the easy part…
Persistence over a century or more is harder to achieve.
Need to think laterally about threats to evoluVonary, ecological & cultural
processes affecVng landscapes, species & geneVc diversity – current and
future…..& the role for ethnoecology & natural product enterprises.

22. CREATIVE STRATEGIES
Economic
incenQves Pro‐
vital conservaQon PES
subsidies,
taxes & off‐ CERTIFICATION Land
USE OF ECONOMIC
sets & BRANDING acquisiQon &
INCENTIVES
private
conservaQon
CBFM areas
ICDPs SFM &
& JFM
producQon
“Fences
& fines”
No
economic Integrated Direct
incenQves conservaQon DIRECTNESS conservaQon
Ref: Wunder, S. 2006. Are direct payments for environmental services spelling doom for sustainable forest management in the tropics? Ecology
and Society 11(2): 23. [online] URL: h<p://www.ecologyandsociety.org/ vol11/iss2/art23/

24. WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM PAST
MANAGEMENT “EXPERIMENTS”?

25. 3.
LIVELIHOODS,
VULNERABILITIES
& RESILIENCE

26. VULNERABILITY & LIVELIHOODS
• Vulnerability = “the state of suscepQbility to harm
from exposure to stresses associated with
environmental .... change and from the absence of
capacity to adapt” (Adger 2006)
• Resources available to cope and adapt to shocks and
stresses
• Level of reliance on ecosystem services for
livelihoods
• Grazing, resource harvesQng, culQvaQon
• For provisioning, savings, income ,and safety‐net

27. MRA (mixed, rain‐fed, livestock & crop) & LGA (livestock only) systems
projected to undergo >20% reducVon in length of growing period by 2050 ‐
Ref: Boko, M., I Niang, A Nyong and C Vogel. 2007. Chapter 9: Africa, IPCC WGII AR4.

28. LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES: BUSHBUCKRIDGE, SOUTH AFRICA
Variable %
Own caLle 11.3
Earn income from caLle 26.6 (3.0)
Own goats 10.8
Earn income from goats 29.5 (3.1)
Planted crops 96.7
Sold crops 4.0
Use edible wild herbs 96.5
Use firewood 92.5
Use edible wild fruit 53.9
Use edible insects 51.9
Sold natural products 10.8
Ref: Twine & Hunter, in press)

29. 4. CITIZEN SCIENCE:
MONITORING &
IMPLEMENTATION

30. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE “DRY RUN” FOR
CLIMATE CHANGE
30

31. ETHNOECOLOGY & LOCAL WORLDVIEWS
Folk Landscapes
Taxonomy Social institutions
& resource WORLDVIEW
(species, management & tenure
genotypes,
chemotypes)
systems

32. MONITORING: CAN WE BE MORE
EFFECTIVE?
• scientist-executed
monitoring:
– little impact at the village
scale, where many natural
resource management
decisions are made;
– informed larger decisions
(regions, nations &
international conventions)
…but took 3–9 years to be
implemented;
Danielsen, F et al. 2010. Environmental monitoring: the scale and
speed of implementation varies according to the degree of peoples • participatory monitoring:
involvement. J Applied Ecology
faster to implement, but
smaller scale.

33. HOW RELIABLE IS THE DATA?
When entered into a computer database in Windhoek, it gets its own
reality…or may not yield anything useful at all.

34. GETTING SMART:
TECHNOLOGY
FOR MONITORING
& MANAGEMENT
• How can tracking
technology be used for
better impacts?
(research, “citizen
science” & policy in
practice)?

35. 5.
UNDERSTANDING
“HIDDEN ECONOMIES”
& “DISTANT DRIVERS”

36. DAYLIGHT ROBBERY?
• Global scale: illegal logging costs governments US
$10 billion per year in lost revenue (World Bank
2002);
• What is the extent of lost revenue in dry forests?
• Why does crime pay? Benefits from illegal acQviQes
oSen exceed costs to local people.

40. URBANIZATION & FORESTS
• by 2030, 70% of urban dwellers will be
in Africa or Asia;
• world wealth & political power
concentrated in cities;
• simultaneously, centers of poverty for
hundreds of millions.

42. PRODUCTS & PREDICTABLE PLACES

43. WHERE ARE THE INCENTIVES
FOR VILLAGE LEVEL MGMT?
• incentives are often low;2010
World Bank,
• woodland tenure is weak;
• but are JFM or PFM workable if
incentives increase?
Kambewa et al,
2007

44. 6.
LOOKING AFTER
“THE BANK”:
GOVERNANCE &
DRY FORESTS

45. WHO SHOULD LOOK AFTER THE BANK?
• In many African cases, weak capacity of relevant
government insQtuQons to effecQvely monitor,
manage and control many dry forests & woodlands;
• Under‐development, poverty & widespread
corrupQon;
• Need to deal with contradicQons: adding high value
= increased incenQves to “rob the bank”.

46. POLICY vs. PRACTICE….
Officially sancQoned commercial logging of a “protected” IUCN “red‐list” species in Namibia

47. CORRUPTION & MARKET CHAINS:
TANZANIA
Timber trade “bribery index” – a guide to beLer governance strategies?
• “culture of corrupQon” difficult to deal with;
• different scales of corrupQon, from peLy corrupQon to poliQcal elites;
• Overlapping forms (bribes, kick‐backs, fraud, favouraQsm and patronage)
Milledge, S. et al. 2007 Forestry, governance and naVonal development: lessons learned from a logging boom in southern
Tanzania. TRAFFIC, Tanzania.

48. BUT FOR LOCAL PEOPLE, ANYTHING IS
BETTER THAN NOTHING
• A low cost school build in exchange for illegal logging: Mozambique

49. LEARNING FROM TANZANIA’S
“RESOURCE MINING”
• Dry forests low market share of
Chinese log imports, but
significant impact
• Tanzania:
‐Up to 96% lost royalQes
‐Loss of $58M annually
‐1400% increase in value
(’97‐’05)
‐ExporQng new species
‐Concealed transacQons
(Milledge 2007)
Mismatch in Qmber export & import figures (TZ)

50. OPPORTUNITIES
FOR
OVERLAYING
DATA SETS
• supply chains, volumes & governance
Asner et al. 2010.High-resolution forest carbon stocks and emissions in the Amazon. PNAS. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.
1004875107

51. 7.
VALUES & VALUE-
ADDING

52. VALUES, VARIATION,
LIVELIHOODS & LAND-USE
• Dry forests in eastern India (Orissa) net present value of
revenues from NTFP were US$1016 /ha (coastal DF) & US
$ 1348/ha (inland DF);
• PotenQal Qmber revenue was US$ 268 /ha) & much
higher than the returns from alternaQve land uses.
• Need to develop beLer valuaQon protocols that include
Qmber & non‐Qmber products instead of conversion to
other land‐uses.
Mahapatra, A K & Tewari. 2005. Importance of non‐Vmber forest products in the economic valuaVon of dry deciduous
forests of India. Forest Policy and Economics 7: 455– 467

53. LINK TO CARING & CREATIVE MARKETS
• CerQficaQon;
• Value‐adding & “the future of music”;
• Traceability & “rules with teeth”.

54. QUALITY, TRACEABILITY & LIVELIHOODS
• Bar & QR codes are everywhere & on everything in
our urban lives….so is RF technology - but underused
in linking rural enterprises & “green consumerism”;
• Powerful data collection tool (business & research)

55. LIVELIHOODS & PRIVATE ENTERPRISE:
risks & returns of “formalizing the
informal sector”
• long history of trade, but research on successful impacts for
“scaling out & up” is an emerging opportunity

56. ENTERPRISE LESSONS & THE TIME CRUNCH:
Peak
adopQon “green business & the “adopVon curve”
Year of peak adopVon
• Wrong products/partners;
Often problems • Site specificity stops scaling out
in scaling up or
NUMBER OF ADOPTERS
• Donor Qme vs. real Qme scales
scaling out. • Costs exceed benefits
• Mismatch: producers vs. buyers
• Poor supply chain mgmt
Time to • Equipment for demonstraQon vs.
adoptable results
commercial scale
• boLlenecks & barriers to trade
0 10 years
TIME

57. 8.
THE NEED FOR AN
INTEGRATED
APPROACH TO
SUSTAINABLE
RESOURCE USE

58. CRUCIAL TO HAVE AN INTEGRATED
PERSPECTIVE
PLANT USE BY
PEOPLE
ANIMAL
Social & cultural
POLITICAL & POLICY
IMPACTS ON
TREES
Focal
TIMBER
EXTRACTION
areas &
context
CONTEXT
species
FIRE GRAZERS

59. FIRE: THE “MEGA‐HERBIVORE”
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center ScienQfic VisualizaQon Studio

60. SINGLE PRODUCT, SUBTLE CHALLENGES
• Hive “doors” from
Parinari in synergy
with fire locally
threaten a mulQ‐use
species.

61. CONCLUSIONS

62. MANY OPPORTUNITIES
FOR GLOBAL
COMPARATIVE
RESEARCH
• Added value from comparisons
& contrasts;
• …but a need for common
methods.

63. WHY?
• Survey methods influence our understanding but it
maLers:
– how & where we collect data;
– how widely we read in research papers
– how we analyze and interpret data
• One soluQon is a “nested” method, hierarchical, cross‐
disciplinary approach – but this adds cost & requires
high levels of coordinaQon & cooperaQon among
scienQsts;
• 3 examples.

64. EXAMPLE 1: FOREST INVENTORIES &
COMPARISONS
• Mean annual changes in basal area (13 forests,
different management & ownership regimes) in
Tanzania (Blomley, 2008)…but what about species?
64

65. EXAMPLE 2: THE POVERTY & ENVIRONMENT NETWORK
THINKING beyond the canopy

66. EXAMPLE 3: ENCOURAGING
QUANTITATIVE METHODS IN APPLIED
ETHNOBOTANY
Methods from economic geography, social sciences,
ecology & applied ethnobotany

67. BIOMASS & IMPACTS: LOCAL vs.
TRAINED SCIENTISTS
• Danielsen et al. 2011. At the heart of REDD?: a role for local people in monitoring forests?
Conserv LeL 4:158–167

68. THANK
YOU