labor and capital constraints, characteristics of the agroforestry technology
including labor and capital intensity, riskiness and sustainability, markets for
agricultural produce and labor, and land tenure. These ideas are illustrated in
Chapter 6 with a historical analysis of the contradictory role that one tropical
tree crop, cocoa, has played in tropical deforestation and forest conservation
over the centuries. On one hand, cocoa is grown in several tropical regions in
complex agroforests that are among the most forest-like agricultural ecosys-
tems and that nourish hopes for a profitable tropical agriculture that conserves
many of the environmental services of the forest. On the other hand, cocoa
has often been grown in an unsustainable way and has acted as a major driver
of tropical deforestation. This chapter looks at the factors that determine how
cocoa was and is being grown, with a focus on the Côte d’Ivoire, Brazil,
and Cameroon, and tries to isolate the lessons that can help agronomists and
resource managers promote sustainability in tropical tree crop agriculture.
The concepts and historical experiences laid out in Chapters 5 and 6 show
clearly that even land use practices such as agroforestry that could be used in
a sustainable, forest-conserving way will not necessarily be so used as long as
forest is freely available for further agricultural expansion. A solution to this
dilemma could be legal protection of forest areas and its strict enforcement,
but this often meets difficulties in tropical countries with weak institutions.
Conservation concessions are an emerging concept in conservation economics
and may be an ideal complement to agroforestry practices in conservation
strategies (Chapter 7). Conservation concessions may involve direct payments
to land users or investments in health or educational infrastructure in
exchange for conservation set-asides or the adoption of sustainable land use
practices such as agroforestry. Using case studies from Colombia and Bahia,
Brazil, the chapter shows how this approach can be used to integrate conser-
vation set-asides and biodiversity-friendly agroforestry practices in regional
conservation plans.
66 II. The Ecological Economics of Agroforestry