Publisher : World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2003
Thematic : Payments for Ecosystem Services
Language : English
Note
About 70% of the country’s total land area consists of watersheds. A watershed is a land area that catches and drains water into particular catchments downstream. The ability of the watersheds to regulate the quantity and quality of water depends on its land cover. Forests have traditionally been associated with watershed protection since trees can regulate the flow and cleanse water that drains to the catchments. The forestlands (accounting for 53% of total land area or 15.88 M-ha) are mostly found in the watersheds. In the mid 1990s, however, the land area with natural forest cover was reduced to only 5.49 M-hectares (National Watershed Management Program, 1998). The rapid rate of deforestation over the last fifty years was attributed to rampant logging activities, both legal and illegal, which paved the way for forestland conversion into agricultural lands and settlements. The practice of shifting cultivation also played an important part in the rapid denudation of the country’s forests. The situation was aggravated by the high population growth, tolerated and even encouraged, in a Christian dominated country. This puts extreme pressure on the nation’s fixed land resources, a big part of which is under the control of a few, politically influential, families. It was estimated in 1988 that 18M people are already residing in the now fragile upland watersheds, which at the growth rate of more than 2% would have risen to 25 Million in year 2000 (Lim Suan and Rosario 1995). Knowing the importance of the forests for watershed protection, the challenge is to protect the remaining natural forest, encourage nondestructive/ pro-environment land uses in secondary forests, and promote sustainable land uses/practices1 in deforested areas, including cultivated areas. Natural forests and tree-based land uses are important not only because of the critical role they play in providing adequate quantity and quality of water to consumers/users. Their role is also important in maintaining high biodiversity of flora and fauna and also in contributing to reduction of global warming. These environmental services are very important since they serve as the base of economic activities; they support ecological balance, and provide nature-based amenities that make living an enjoyable experience. These are in addition to the life support function that a forest based ecosystem provides to all life forms, other than humans. It is also important to point out that fortunately, the provision of watershed protection, biodiversity maintenance, and carbon sequestration are joint products, with minimal tradeoff to be expected at some point in time (e.g. cutting down of trees to increase quantity of water may entail loss of biodiversity). These three-fold benefits are important considerations that must be weighed visà - vis the cost of maintaining the desired land uses. The results of this benefit-cost balancing process seem to yield obvious implications—but this could only be true from society’s perspective! Unfortunately, land use decisions in a big part of the uplands cum watersheds are private decisions2, made by farmers whose main concern are benefits that accrue to their households in terms of returns from land-based production and forest-extraction activities. Oftentimes, the preferred land uses are those that yield short-term private benefits but at the expense of environmental services that are important to society, at the national and global level. It is the recognition of these potentially non tangential interests of society and upland farmers (albeit, only a short-run perception) that led to the dominance of community-based project initiatives of the government and other development agencies in upland areas. Under this approach, upland communities are engaged as partners in efforts to protect the environment. Cooperation is oftentimes achieved through provision of various forms of assistance directed at improving the socioeconomic conditions of the upland communities.
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Keywords : Alcippe danisi
Encoded by : Mae Belen Llanza
