362 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
agroforests and small-scale oil palm plantations. These are the best-bet alternatives
for minimizing the trade-offs between carbon sequestration and farmer profitability,
and one can envision how policies or programmes could be established to promote
these systems to replace the other systems with low carbon and low profits.
Researching and implementing policies
Once the diverse stakeholders have decided which land-use systems provide the
desired combination of production, human welfare and environmental services,
such as the example just described, it is necessary to search for policy instruments
that can balance these trade-offs and that will lead to a broad-based adoption of
those desired systems. Typically, there are few (if any) proven policy or institutional
mechanisms to address these environment–development trade-offs. ASB has been
involved with various partners in policy research at different levels.
Assessing impact and providing feedback
The last step in the ASB research and development framework is the assessment of
the impacts of the options thus devised (Figure 15.2). Although implementation
of the various land-use alternatives that have been identified as best bets is still in
progress, in its first decade of existence the ASB consortium has had impacts on
scientific methods and improved datasets, national research institutions, global
forums concerned with poverty, the environment, and deforestation in the tropics,
and policy makers. A summary follows.
Impact on science
Perhaps the greatest impact on science has been the research process and frame-
work designed and implemented by ASB. The research framework established the
basis for integrated natural resource management research of the CGIAR centres
(CIFOR, 2000). The ASB matrix and trade-off analysis provides a way to tackle
complex problems and reconcile the interests of different stakeholders. ASB has
also shown how the disciplinary strengths in climate change, biodiversity, agron-
omy, policy reform and adoption can be used in a balanced and positive way, with
combined, mutually accepted standard methods.
Other scientific contributions relate to improved methods of data collection
and analysis and include improved equations for estimating carbon in young and
regrowing trees, where the original equations overestimated carbon by as much as
100 per cent (Ketterings et al, 2001); refinement of the concept of time-averaged
carbon for comparing carbon stored in land-use systems with different rotation
times (van Noordwijk et al, 1998); validation of the use of plant functional
attributes for above-ground biodiversity assessment; methods for assessing below-
ground soil biodiversity by the use of functional groups (Swift and Bignell, 2001);
and the identification of agronomic sustainability indicators, which is a major
advance in the concept of soil quality.