Journal seeks proposals for special feature

As biodiversity loss and food security challenges threaten the ongoing viability of the global wild meat sector – which plays key nutrition, livelihood, cultural, and social functions in many of the world’s rural communities – the journal People and Nature is calling for submissions for a special feature, ‘Achieving sustainable and equitable consumption of wild meat’.

The issue will bring together a wide range of papers to build a contemporary and transdisciplinary picture of wild meat use across different settlements and groups, offer recommendations for effective policy and practice in this complex and critical arena, and draw on lessons learned from around the world.

The editors particularly welcome submissions that are relevant to policy and practice; address people’s interaction with nature; are inter– and transdisciplinary; and are by authors from the Global South. “Invited papers will be those that provide information that can help to move the policy and practice of sustainable, equitable, and safe wild meat governance and management forwards, demonstrating how the needs of both people and nature can be met,” they said.

Proposals must be submitted on or before 15 November 2023.

CIFOR-ICRAF CEO Éliane Ubalijoro opened the GLF Nairobi 2023 Hybrid Conference: A New Vision for Earth on Wednesday at the CIFOR-ICRAF Nairobi campus. The two-day event, running from 11 – 12 October, brings together global audiences to focus on two key themes: African sovereign solutions and crafting a guide to overcome the effects of climate change, which will set the stage for a fairer world ahead of the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28).

The full transcript of her speech is below.

Good morning, and welcome to GLF Nairobi: A New Vision for Earth. Karibuni!

Thank you for being here with us today – whether you are on our beautiful CIFOR-ICRAF campus in Kenya – or joining us virtually from across the globe. And a special thank you to representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development in Kenya and all the dignitaries here.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Global Landscapes Forum, an initiative born out of CIFOR-ICRAF. It’s dedicated to realizing sustainable and inclusive landscapes. And today, it stands as the world’s largest knowledge-led platform for this broad and important topic.

It has a reach of 2 billion. It links over 10,000 organizations in its network. It engages 185 countries in its events. And it continuously drives transformative change. We are delighted to welcome you to this two-day conference.

I am so inspired as I look around – there are people from all walks of life and from all sectors joining us: youth, journalists, policymakers, women-led organizations, members of government, Indigenous community leaders, farmers, activists, artists, authors, chefs and more.

We have invited 200 speakers from around the world and are ready to hear from them and to hear from you.

Photo by GLF

What are your ideas for a new vision for Earth? How do you envision an equitable, healthy, and livable planet? What solutions are you eager to share? It’s clear we need transformative change.

Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest assessment report. It was hailed as “A Survival Guide for Humanity.” And it highlighted the devastating impact of weather and climate extremes.

Extremes which the world’s most affected people and areas face most acutely. Especially in Africa, my home continent.

However, we can go beyond developing a survival guide.

We have existing solutions and the tools to develop new ones that the world truly needs. And if we come together, we can go beyond surviving – to thriving.

We are living in a digital age, characterized by interconnectedness and interdependence. It’s time to take the best of this era – employing tools like artificial intelligence and cutting-edge research to address global challenges in an inclusive and responsible way.

It’s time to ensure that knowledge and wisdom from around the world are shared with those who need it most. And it is time to harness our collective intelligence for the greater good.

Photo by Joyce Wambui/CIFOR-ICRAF

We are already equipped with solutions; our challenge is to better harness them. And so we need a new vision to guide us.

Over the next two days, this conference will address two key topics. Today, our focus is on Africa and the utilization of sovereign solutions for the continent. The sovereign solutions of local communities play a crucial role in addressing climate change and building resilient food systems.

Imagine the impact of these solutions with enhanced support from our collective intelligence and interconnectedness. Youth, women, and Indigenous Peoples are champions of landscape restoration and management, often operating with limited resources and against all odds.

What could they achieve with better access to resources to strengthen their stewardship of nature in a changing climate? How could rural communities benefit from improved access and partnerships in green jobs through restoration enterprises? How can we promote more nature-based solutions to support local efforts in addressing humanitarian challenges? How can we unite against the unsustainable use of natural resources and bring together diverse stakeholders for inclusive decision-making, that supports locally-led climate action, landscape restoration, and food system transformation?

By the end of today, I hope we can better answer these questions.

And tomorrow, we will shift our focus to the planet as a whole. We’ll explore strategies for stabilizing the climate. We’ll think critically about how we can solve this challenge together. And we’ll compile the solutions we already have available in the lead-up to COP28.

I invite you to view this conference as a celebration – a celebration of what is possible and a celebration of the solutions we already possess. While we face significant challenges, our potential to overcome them is immense.

However, charting a new vision for Earth is not a task that any one organization or individual can achieve alone. It’s together – with the collective knowledge, expertise, and wisdom of everyone here – that we can make a difference.

As the CEO of CIFOR-ICRAF, I have the privilege of interacting with dedicated scientists daily. I see firsthand the planet-saving work in our state-of-the-art soil lab, geospatial lab, tree ring lab, gene bank, and more. Our work, in collaboration with our partners, provides tangible solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

So when we think about a new vision, and what that could entail, I want you to think about the solutions we already have. And I want you to think about how we can better share them and implement them worldwide.

This global event is the ideal forum to discuss solutions ahead of COP28. All key stakeholders are here – scientists, policymakers, Indigenous Peoples, practitioners, youth, financiers, activists, artists…

And we need everyone for a new vision for Earth. A vision that takes us beyond surviving – a vision that charts the way forward to thrive.

Thank you so much for joining us and I wish you a wonderful conference!

Asante sana.

To join GLF Nairobi: A New Vision for Earth, please register here. The conference runs from 11 – 12 October both online and in person in Nairobi, Kenya. 

CIFOR-ICRAF honours M.S. Swaminathan for his role in the establishment of ICRAF and his unique contributions to agricultural science and food security. Swaminathan died in Chennai, India, on 28 September 2023 at the age of 98.

By David Henry

M.S. Swaminathan is considered one of the fathers of modern-day food security and a creator of institutions dedicated to biodiversity conservation, including ICRAF.

In 1977, the Indian-born plant geneticist was among a few key advisers who endorsed a proposal to set up a research body promoting the “trees on farms” concept, resulting in the founding of the International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF). 

Swaminathan became its second chairman – while he was still secretary to the government of India in the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation – and held this post at ICRAF from 1979 to 1982. During this period, the organization moved from the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands to its permanent home in Nairobi, Kenya.

“I am probably one of the few here who has seen the birth and growth of ICRAF,” Swaminathan said in an address at the World Congress on Agroforestry in New Delhi in 2014. “ICRAF was an institutional mechanism for providing an opportunity for research, development, extension, training and education in the field of agroforestry.” 

The original document that prompted the establishment of ICRAF was “Trees, Food and People: Land Management in the Tropics” by J.G. Bene, H.W. Beall and A. Côté in 1977, with the support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

In the same year, Swaminathan attended a small meeting convened by David Hopper, then president of IDRC, where it was decided to support the recommendation of Bene and his colleagues to set up a council for research into agroforestry.

“I am glad that ICRAF has grown and has also become a member of the larger family of CGIAR,” Swaminathan said in the 2014 address. “Agroforestry is a pathway to food and nutrition security, livelihood security, ecological security, and climate risk mitigation and adaptation.”

In 2002, ICRAF acquired the brand name “World Agroforestry” to reflect its global leadership in agroforestry research and development. ICRAF merged with the Center for International Forestry Research to form CIFOR-ICRAF in 2019.

“We are so grateful for the far-reaching contributions that M.S. Swaminathan made during his long and distinguished career,” says Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of CIFOR-ICRAF. “His passion to build a more equitable world laid the foundations for the unique culture of CIFOR-ICRAF and helped make the organization what it is today.”

Green versus evergreen

Swaminathan is remembered as a leading figure in Asia’s Green Revolution of the 1960s when he collaborated with U.S. agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug to develop new varieties of wheat with high-yielding characteristics. The rapid transformation of India’s food system saved millions of people from famine and paved the way for the country’s future status as one of the world’s largest producers of wheat, rice and other crops.

However, the Green Revolution came at a heavy cost to the environment. In the 1990s, Swaminathan therefore called for an “Evergreen Revolution” to avoid chemical use, groundwater pollution, soil erosion and the loss of biodiversity.

“About 15 years ago, I stressed the need for developing a technology and public policy for an evergreen revolution designed to improve the productivity of crops in perpetuity without associated ecological harm,” he said in 2010.

The Evergreen Revolution is based on an appropriate blend of different approaches to sustainable agriculture, such as organic farming, green agriculture, eco-agriculture, and agriculture based on effective micro-organisms, Swaminathan said.

Institution builder

Swaminathan, who held a doctorate in genetics from Cambridge University, was also instrumental in establishing institutions tasked with conserving crop genetic diversity, including the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (now the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT). 

In addition, he headed the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) during the 1980s.

“I had a ringside seat to learn from the most inspiring man I’ve ever known,” says Dennis Garrity, a distinguished senior research fellow and former director general of ICRAF, who was the first scientist hired under Swaminathan’s leadership at IRRI. “His book on the Evergreen Revolution was the source of the concept of evergreen agriculture. And so much more.”

Swaminathan, who won the World Food Prize in 1987, was also the first chairperson of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to world food security and nutrition, and whose work involved several  CIFOR and ICRAF scientists in landmark global reports. 

“He had a unique capacity to handle difficult and controversial issues in a truly inclusive way,” says Vincent Gitz, CIFOR-ICRAF director of programme and platforms who coordinated HLPE from 2011 to 2015. “In his words, the role of science was not to solve all contended issues, but to make people understand why they eventually disagree, and therefore to help dialogue and progress on more solid and shared grounds.”

CIFOR-ICRAF CEO Eliane Ubalijoro with State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Jochen Flasbarth. Photo supplied

CIFOR-ICRAF CEO Dr Éliane Ubalijoro has been appointed to the advisory board for the Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC), a newly announced initiative to build global solutions for the social-ecological transformation our planet desperately needs.

“I am honoured to be serving on the advisory board of this critical new conference, which is bringing leaders from around the world together to develop an action plan for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” said Ubalijoro.

“At CIFOR-ICRAF, we envision a world where the private sector takes a greater role in transformative change, and our work is already helping achieve that,” she said. “I look forward to supporting a push for investment into innovative solutions developed for countries that need it – and by those impacted by crises such as biodiversity loss, climate change and food insecurity.”

The HSC, which will take place on June 20 and 21, 2024 in Hamburg, Germany, is a new development policy platform to establish a trustful and collaborative exchange among world leaders from the Global South and the Global North, as a means to accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

It is an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, in close cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Michael Otto Foundation, and the City of Hamburg.

The conference will provide an opportunity to discuss critical topics such as making value chains more sustainable, barriers to sustainable development goal implementation, and how the private sector can support SDG achievement. It aims to foster new partnerships and collective action amongst committed global policymakers, private sector leaders, academia experts, and civil society. The HSC’s joint solutions will be incorporated into the UN’s high-level Summit of the Future in September 2024.

For more information, please contact:
Azzura Lalani
Head of Global Outreach and Engagement
Bonn, Germany
Email: a.lalani@cifor-icraf.org

A renewed formal collaboration between the university and the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) will stimulate research into ways to effectively and efficiently restore landscapes and address other critical issues.

Universitas Sriwijaya is based in Palembang, in Indonesia’s South Sumatra Province, which has hundreds of thousands of hectares of degraded peatland. The renewed research agreement contributes to the global community’s effort to intensify restoration of the world’s degraded land through mechanisms such as the Land Degradation Neutrality framework of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the Bonn Challenge. The agreement also contributes specifically to the Government of Indonesia’s efforts to restore an estimated 12 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, of which 2 million is degraded peatland. Research into site-specific techniques, especially in populated landscapes, is crucial for ensuring the success of such programmes; many restoration projects have failed by not fully understanding their landscape and the people in it.

Achieving this ambition in a mere seven years will require all stakeholders to work together in a coordinated manner, with appropriate funding, monitoring and adjustments. The two organizations are keen to assist the government achieve its goals through applied research into new restoration methods – particularly those suited to degraded peatland – and ways of increasing the scale of successful methods efficiently and effectively.

The collaboration document, in the form of a memorandum of understanding (MoU), was signed by the Rector of Universitas Sriwijaya Anis Saggaff and CIFOR-ICRAF’s Chief Operating Officer Robert Nasi at the university’s campus in Palembang on 21 August 2023.

“We have been collaborating under the first 5-year MoU as part of the project, Sustainable Community-based Reforestation and Enterprises or SCORE,” said Nasi during the signing ceremony. “The research has already been successful after just two years of implementation: we have developed a new ‘agrosilvofishery’ approach that can be increased in scale across related peatlands.”

Led by Himlal Baral, a senior restoration scientist with CIFOR-ICRAF, the research team, which includes researchers from UNSRI and the National Institute of Forest Science of the Republic of Korea, have created a 13-hectare demonstration site in collaboration with farmers that showcases the agrosilvofishery approach, which combines rice, trees and fishponds on a single plot.

CIFOR-ICRAF has also engaged with universities, including UNSRI, to conduct two series of a Young Scientist Incubator Programme, which involved more than 100 fresh graduates in training, field data collection and writing of site-specific cases of peat ecosystem livelihoods in the province.

“We can further strengthen the relationship between CIFOR-ICRAF and UNSRI in conducting studies and research, especially related to peatland and mangrove restoration,” said Saggaff. “The peatland restoration pilot project is in Perigi Village, Ogan Komering Ilir District. We also have another collaboration activity in mangrove restoration in Sungsang Village, Banyuasin District. I believe that this cooperation can be further expanded into other aspects of forestry to gain new knowledge in order to improve the recovery of degraded natural resources and also improve the welfare of surrounding communities.”

The mangrove project is just beginning. It aims to contribute to understanding how best to restore mangroves in Indonesia, where around 1.82 million of the 3.31 million hectares covered with mangrove forests are currently degraded – another large figure that creates an equally large challenge for restoration programmes. The collaboration expects to provide models for restoration that address the drivers of deforestation by creating economic and environmentally friendly solutions.

Other projects by CIFOR-ICRAF in South Sumatra Province include: Improving the Management of Peatlands and the Capacities of Stakeholders in Indonesia (Peat-IMPACTS Indonesia), funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV); and Sustainable Landscapes for Climate-Resilient Livelihoods (Land4Life), funded by Global Affairs Canada. Both projects are aligned with the national target of restoring and rehabilitating peat ecosystems in Indonesia, and cover 18 villages in Ogan Komering Ilir, Banyuasin and Musi Banyuasin districts. The Government of South Sumatra is also receiving assistance to develop a Peat Ecosystem Protection and Management Plan. In addition to providing education on sustainable peatland management to youth, CIFOR-ICRAF has been working with the provincial and district governments to produce local curricula on sustainable peat ecosystems that are now part of formal processes in elementary schools in Ogan Komering Ilir and Banyuasin districts.

For more information, contact Himlal Baral: h.baral@cifor-icraf.org.

Trees do many things for cities, and the potential for change led by urban forestry is huge, according to Cornell and Yale university fellows who spoke at an event in Nairobi.

By Cathy Watson

Recently, the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) held its first-ever science talk on urban forestry, the practice of cultivating trees and green spaces within cities for environmental, social and economic benefits.

“Trees in cities in relation to adaptation and mitigation are very important,” said Vincent Gitz, CIFOR-ICRAF’s director of programme and platforms. “We can develop an agenda on the role of trees in cities that is as strong as the agenda we have for forests and trees in agriculture.”

The speakers included urban forestry research fellows at CIFOR-ICRAF, namely Alice Gerow, who is pursuing a master’s in forestry at the Yale School of the Environment, and Kate Chesebrough, a professional landscape architect who is studying for a master’s degree at Cornell University’s Department of Landscape Architecture.

Gerow shared some early observations from her field inventory of Nairobi’s street trees. Her census asks how the abundance, size structure and species composition of street tree assemblages differ across neighbourhoods along a socio-economic gradient.

So far, in 90 locations, she has found over 1,500 street trees and treelike monocots of approximately 130 species. Confirming what many botanists suspected, three-quarters of the species do not naturally occur in Kenya, and five exotic tree species account for more than a quarter of the trees, among them Brazil’s Jacaranda mimosifolia; Howea forsteriana, a palm from an island in the Tasman Sea; and Filicium decipiens, a native of India’s Western Ghats mountain range and Sri Lanka.

“Diversity of species composition is key to the resilience of urban forests. Awareness raising is needed if Nairobi is to maintain the benefits of street trees over time,” said Gerow, who also noted the paucity of indigenous trees. One participant also observed that “indigenous trees host more birds than exotics do.”

Partly bearing out her hypothesis that lower-income neighbourhoods will have lower tree density and different species composition, Gerow found that in high-income areas, 100 percent of her transects – lines used for measurement between two points – had trees, with an average of more than 30 trees every 200 metres. This was approximately 15 times more than what she found in low-income and informal settlements.

“It is easier to address inequity in access to green infrastructure by planting a street tree than creating a park,” said Gerow, who has also worked for parks departments in Paris and New York. “Street trees are key pillars of an urban forest that benefits all residents. Goodwill towards street trees could lead Nairobi to be a model.”

Chesebrough spoke about landscape architectural design thinking for a robust urban forest at large and small scales over time. Her ultimate goal is to support urban forestry in Nairobi with informed and actionable takeaways.

The Cornell master’s student called for the availability of seedlings from a palette of native urban-adapted trees and defined urban forestry as the “entire network of trees within an urbanized context: individual and community, ecological corridors, patches and nodes.”

“Urban forestry is therefore networked – created and performed differently depending on actors and conditions,” she said.

Conducting research largely on trees in informal settlements, Chesebrough stressed the importance of maintenance: “Trees are about time, and urban forestry is about adopting and growing trees, not simply planting. Workers are an integral part of this. Maintenance must be considered in budgets.”

The care and management of urban trees strongly affect perceived safety, according to Chesebrough. Nairobi slum dwellers associate “bushy” and overgrown vegetation with crime, echoing the crime-related hesitancy about trees that Gwedla and Shackleton (2019) found in South African townships, she said.

“Urban forestry can do many things for cities, and the potential for change led by urban forestry is huge,” Chesebrough said. She referred to a project by CIFOR-ICRAF staff to restore road reserves in Nairobi, describing it as a “model partnership for roadside forests” and a “linear public space,” as defined in the 2020 UN-Habitat Nairobi City County: Public Space Inventory and Assessment.

“The planet is warming up, and people living in big cities are highly affected,” said Ann Degrande, CIFOR-ICRAF’s coordinator in Cameroon. “Studying the presence of urban trees and understanding people’s perceptions are extremely relevant. Finding ways of getting as much green as we can in our cities matters as much as trees in rural landscapes.”

“In government, we do not have this background,” said Lawrence Wachira, an environment manager at the Kenya Urban Roads Authority. “We are struggling with expertise. A road engineer may have to act as landscape architect, and you end up doing very little urban forestry. But we have road reserves amounting to 7,000 hectares that we need to plant.”

It sounded like an invitation.

“We are entirely committed to urban forestry,” says Éliane Ubalijoro, chief executive officer of CIFOR-ICRAF. “The abrupt dichotomy between rural and urban is no more. We address all ecosystems where there are trees. Trees in urban landscapes combat heat islands, bring flood resilience and are critical contributors to livable cities.”

For more information, please contact Cathy Watson at c.watson@cifor-icraf.org.

Further background and tools:

• CIFOR-ICRAF’s TreesAdapt Platform is designed to support all actors, including those in cities, to use to tree for their solutions to adapt to climate change.
• CIFOR-ICRAF’s Regreening App is ideal for urban foresters to map polygons and tag, label and record important attributes of individual street trees such as height, DBH and species.
• UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Guidelines on urban and peri-urban forestry. FAO Forestry Papers No. 178.
• Reuters editorial: “Nairobi recovers its green spaces during pandemic. Other cities can too”.
• In US cities, American Forests leads thinking to address inequity in tree cover. See https://www.americanforests.org/our-programs/tree-equity/