The challenge of HIV/AIDS: Where does agroforestry fit in? - World ...

44World Agroforestry into the Futureand quantity of available water, and loss ofvegetative cover and biological diversity.These have knock-on effects on the prevalenceof disease – of plants, animals andhumans – and, most importantly, on humanwelfare and well-being by the disruptionof food production and other ecosystemservices. The causes of land degradationare multiple and interactive. This complexchain of cause and effect has been analysedand documented in detail; most recently inthe proposal by the Forum for AgriculturalResearch in Africa (FARA) for a ChallengeProgramme for sub-Saharan Africa and itsmany supporting documents (FARA 2003).The bottom line is that problems of thiscomplexity require holistic solutions.At different scales in space the associatedinterests of different sectors of society becomedominant and the issues of importanceto these stakeholders also change(Figure 1). It is at the plot and farm scalesthat the natural resources of soil, waterand biota are often most intensively managedand their dynamics altered by theinterventions of humans. For the farmers,therefore, the availability, quantity andquality of resources at this scale, and thefactors influencing their capacity to convertthese resources into food and marketableSCALENRMPERSPECTIVEproducts, is their major (but not their only)concern. At higher-level scales, movingthrough the hierarchy of catchments acrossthe landscape to the aggregate of riverbasins, additional issues become the concern,not only of farmers and other directland users, but also of urban society. Theseinclude ecosystem goods and services beyondfood production, such as the impactof land management on water availabilityand quality. At a global level, the effects ofland use on climate and biodiversity havebecome issues of significance. ResourceSECTORS OFSOCIETYThe challenge of scales andemergent propertiesIn proposing a holistic response to theproblems of land degradation, one of themajor structuring features must be a multiscaleapproach, embracing both space andtime. Learning to work across scales (plot,farm, land use type, landscape) with the associatedhuman perspectives (farmer, farmfamily, community, district planner, forestrymanager, etc.) is already one of the majorconcerns of the Consultative Group on InternationalAgricultural Research (CGIAR).The World Agroforestry Centre has mademajor contributions in this respect andChapters 7 and 10–13 illustrate many ofthe innovative and successful advancesthat have been made as well as addressingmany of the most important methodologicalissues (see for instance the scalar approachesin the work of the Alternatives toSlash and Burn (ASB) Programme as describedin Palm et al. 2000). Nonetheless,our facility in moving between scales, andin translating results learned on one scaleinto possible implications on scales aboveand below, remains limited.GlobePoliticalzoneCatchmentlandscapeFarmand plotBiologicaldomainsResourceconservationResourcerightsResourceallocationResourceuseResourcedynamicsGlobalconventionsNationalpoliticsCommunityrulesFarmers’decisionsScientificadviceFigure 1. Perspectives on natural resource management at different scales. The left-handcolumn provides a convenient classification of scales. The middle column indicates someof the major issues in resource management at each of these scales (although of coursethey overlap). The third column designates stakeholders with the dominant role in tropicalland management at each of the given scales.