The Role of Sustainable Land Management for Climate ... - CAADP

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is not known. For example, even if farmers did not use minimum tillage before a payment
scheme, it doesn’t prove that they wouldn’t have started using it even without the payments,
especially if the practice is profitable without the payments.
Indeed, given the small value of payments per hectare that are likely to be available for
most AFOLU activities and the transaction costs required to obtain them, AFOLU payments are
likely to have at best a marginal impact on the profitability of such practices. 15 For widescale
adoption to occur, AFOLU projects therefore will need to focus on promoting practices that are
already profitable. Assuring additionality in this case will require emphasizing promotion of
practices that are limited by other constraints than low profitability, such as farmers’ lack of
awareness of the practices or their lack of technical, financial or organizational capacity to use
them effectively. Hence, rather than making payments directly to farmers, AFOLU payment
schemes are more likely to be effective (and to limit transaction costs) if the payments are used
to support development of effective agricultural extension or credit mechanisms or farmer
organizations that can overcome such constraints.
Potential problems of leakages resulting from AFOLU payments also appear to be less of
a concern than leakages potentially caused by REDD payments. If a group of farmers begins to
use conservation tillage or some other sustainable land management practice on their own land, it
does not seem likely that this would cause other farmers to start using less sustainable land
management practices. One exception to this could be if the new management practice causes
farmers to obtain lower yields, which might require them to farm more extensively, potentially
causing land degradation as cultivation expands into rangelands or forest areas. Another source
of leakage could be if the new SLM practice involves restricting access to some resource (for
example, controlled access to grazing areas), which could cause livestock herders to shift to other
areas, potentially causing degradation of other grazing areas. Such potential negative impacts of
promoting particular land management practices need to be carefully considered within the
context in which the payment scheme is used. Applied research and knowledge management
would be needed to better understand how and in what contexts such impacts are likely to occur,
and the lessons incorporated into the design of payment schemes.
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15 Agroforestry, especially in more humid areas, is an exception because of large above ground biomass potential.
For example, the farmers participating in the Nhambita Community Carbon Project in Mozambique receive a cash
payment of $243 per ha over seven years; averaging $34.70 per household per year and representing a significant
increase in cash incomes for most households (Jindal, et al. 2008).!
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