Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 4.17
Adaptive Management Applied: Sustainable Agriculture in Guatemala and Mexico
In the 1990s two organizations, Defensores de la Naturaleza
in Guatemala and Línea Biósfera in Mexico,
wanted to understand how effectively sustainable agriculture
was reducing deforestation and the conditions
under which it was effective. Like many conservation
or development organizations, these two groups had
been using sustainable agriculture under the assumption
that it would reduce forest clearing for agriculture,
yet they had no concrete evidence that the use of sustainable
agriculture actually led to reduced deforestation.
To explore this question, Defensores de la Naturaleza
and Línea Biósfera partnered with the Biodiversity
Support Program to implement a learning process
to determine the utility of sustainable agriculture as a
conservation tool.
As a first step, the organizations had to make
explicit the assumptions they were using in promoting
sustainable agriculture techniques. One of the main
assumptions is articulated in the results chain in the
figure:
Promotion of
sustainable
agriculture
techniques
Farmers
adopt
techniques
Increase in
yield/unit
labor
Farmers
reduce area
planted
Reduction in
clearing for
agriculture
Forest
habitat
maintained
The groups in both countries collected data related
to each of the factors in the results chain and came up
with some surprising conclusions. The assumptions in
the first two rectangular boxes in the chain held, but
there were differences regarding the third rectangular
box, “Farmers reduce area planted.” In Guatemala,
farmers who used the sustainable agriculture techniques
promoted by the project planted more area to
maize than farmers who did not use sustainable agriculture.
In Mexico, farmers who used the same sustainable
agriculture techniques planted less area (thus, the
assumptions in the results chain held true in Mexico).
Through more analysis, the groups were able to determine
that, in Guatemala, sustainable agriculture led to
decreased investments in labor per hectare, and the
farmers used the saved labor to increase the amount of
area planted or to establish cash crops in forested areas.
In addition, access to land was an important factor
affecting area planted and, thus, deforestation. In
Guatemala, where land is relatively available, farmers
lacked incentives to be efficient in their land use, so
increased their maize production by increasing area
planted. In Mexico, where land access is restricted,
farmers were much more efficient in their use of land
and increased maize production by increasing yield.
As a result of this work, the organizations concluded
that sustainable agriculture programs that promote the
same techniques used in these sites are unlikely to contribute
to decreased rates of deforestation if access to
land is not restricted. This is an important lesson—not
just for the organizations carrying out this research,
but for any organization working under similar conditions
and using the same sustainable agriculture techniques
to discourage deforestation. Adaptive management
is about testing assumptions, learning, and
adapting. When project teams can identify these types
of general but nontrivial principles, they are helping to
promote learning beyond their own project.
Source: Margoluis and others 2001.
LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR PRACTITIONERS
Adaptive management should involve all team members, to
the extent possible. 4 Plans developed by higher level managers
or offices and handed down to field staff do not have
buy-in from the field staff and do not represent the assumptions
held by project teams familiar with the site.
Encouraging an adaptive management approach will
help program managers overseeing multiple projects. If the
projects they are supervising have followed good adaptive
management practices, managers should be able to readily
assess if a project is on track and, ultimately, how well the
project performed. Obviously, there is an upfront investment
in helping teams do adaptive management, but that
investment can make overall portfolio management easier
and more reliable for program managers.
Ideally, teams should integrate adaptive management
into their projects from the beginning—as soon as they
begin to conceptualize their project and think about who
will be involved and where or on what they want to work.
This helps them be explicit and systematic early on. Never-
148 CHAPTER 4: OPTIMIZING FOREST FUNCTIONS IN A LANDSCAPE