Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn 343lower than those in the degraded state. This is the right-hand side of Figure 15.1,
line a. In some cases, the policy environment does not provide incentives to reha-
bilitate these degrading lands (line b in Figure 15.1), and the challenge is to find
policy tools that will provide those incentives.
Alternative land-use intensification pathways that do not first involve severe
land degradation (line c in Figure 15.1) do exist in the form of the complex agro-
forests that have been developed by indigenous communities (Padoch and de Jong,
1987; Michon and de Foresta, 1996; Duguma et al, 2001). The challenge is, first,
to identify and understand barriers to adoption of other systems by smallholders
when such systems are superior alternatives in terms of their environmental impacts
and sustainability as well as their profitability, food security, riskiness and other
measures of acceptability to smallholders. When such superior win–win alterna-
tives exist, the next challenge is to identify means to reduce barriers to adoption by
smallholders before land degradation occurs to such an extent that ecosystems
Note: Line a represents the usual pattern of land degradation and eventual rehabilitation when
the proper policies and institutions are in place, line b represents the continued state of
degradation that can occur in the absence of appropriate policies and institutions, and line c
represents the desired course where there is little degradation of the resource base yet
improved livelihoods are achieved.
Source: Sanchez et al, 1998
Figure 15.1 Land-use intensification pathways and changes in stocks of natural
capital such as carbon and nutrient stocks, biodiversity and other ecosystem services,
with time and increasing population density in the tropics