How to reconcile biodiversity conservation and agricultural development?

CIRAD has chosen to present two examples of research – one concerns the Amazonian forest and the other the W Regional Park in West Africa – which show how to reconcile biodiversity conservation and agricultural development. With the world population increase, societies will in fact have to extract more natural resources, which are already under threat, and put more pressure on ecosystems, with the danger of weakening them.

How can we ensure that agricultural development is sustainable and equitable in southern countries and preserve biological diversity from now on? CIRAD is working to help societies in the South to produce according to their needs and to preserve rural and natural spaces, by taking account of the plurality of uses and interests linked to the biodiversity management (joint management of natural spaces, rational regional development, careful resource use, etc.).

The Amazonian forest represents half of the planet’s tropical rainforests (500 million hectares) and constitutes the largest area of tropical forest in the world. Over the last 10 years, it has seen a rate of deforestation varying from between 1.3 and 2.5 million hectares per year. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges – simultaneously technical, social, political, cultural and economic - of our century is the conservation of the largest area of tropical forest.

“Land without man for men without land was the slogan of the seventies for the colonisation of the Brazilian Amazon. It had a considerable impact on the disappearance of the largest tropical rainforest in the world. In Brazil alone, 17% of this forest (a region as big as France) has been converted into pasture or agricultural land or simply abandoned because of soil degra dation”, explains Plinio Sist*, a CIRAD scientist.

For 30 years, land use has followed the same pattern: the settler obtains a 100-ha plot, clears an area (2-4 ha) for food crops for 2-3 years and then establishes extensive pasture. After 20 years, the property has been totally cleared, the soils are generally very depleted and grassland productivity diminishes because of unsuitable management. The settler then migrates to other forest plots in order to ensure his family’s subsistence and repeats the same cycle, etc.

Proposing technical itineries, which allow both the establishment of sustainable agriculture on limited areas of land (maize and rice crops, grassland management, agroforestry systems) and management systems capable of adding value to forestry resources is, therefore, a question of survival for family agriculture in Amazonia. This is where the project Floagri comes in (2005-2009). It is financed by the European Union and coordinated by Plinio Sist. It also means that direct-sowing techniques under cover crops (SCV), introduced in the cerrados several decades ago, and the parallel development of forest resources (wood, sheaths, latex, etc.), can be used in the Amazon region in order to ensure a long-term complementary income for farmers. The Floagri project includes three Amazonian countries, namely, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador and five institutions: CIRAD, EMBRAPA, IPAM, Universidad agronoma de la Selva (UNAS) and Instituto nacional de investigaciones agropecuarias (INIAP).

The project’s final seminar will be held from 29 to 30 September 2009 in Lima (Peru).

The W Regional Park was declared a “trans-border reserve of the biosphere” by UNESCO and represents a natural reserve of 1 million hectares, within three African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. It owes its name to the meanders in the form of a W, that the River Niger describes across it. It is also one of the last refuges of West African fauna typical of the great expanses of savanna: elephants, buffaloes, sea cows, giraffes, lions, birds, etc.

These protected areas are nonetheless within landscapes that are increasingly agricultural and marked by intensification. The periphery of these protected areas is, thus, the object of increasing competition between expanding cotton production, the production of essential food crops and the grazing needs for large transhumant herds. This conflictual situation repeats itself logically in the neighbouring protected areas, which are considered to be sources of forage, protein (poaching) or agricultural land and are used illegally.

From 2001 to 2007, thanks to funding from the European Union, CIRAD worked directly with Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger and insured the scientific coordination of the Ecopas project (Protected Ecosystems of Sahelian Africa), a support programme for the sustainable conservation of the W Regional Park to help the local populations.

As Marie-Noël De Visscher **, a CIRAD scientist, explains: “we were there to help find a solution through research work to questions of local development and the management and conservation of biodiversity, at the same time as developing skills. We were particularly interested in the management of periphery land conflicts, local development of natural and crop resources and the ecology of the large emblematic animals ”.

In order to achieve this, CIRAD organised a scientific network with the park managers, bringing together the universities in the three W countries and European research institutions. Apart from its direct support for management, the network has supervised eight doctoral theses and about 20 masters’ courses (both northern and southern), and produced about 50 technical and scientific publications. The Ecopas project has also welcomed an ecology research project supported by ANR (national research agency).

* Scientist in the research unit for natural forest dynamics
** Scientist in the research unit Agirs (Animal and integrated risk management)