Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn 363The ASB has enriched the scientific literature substantially, particularly with
articles written by national colleagues in international journals, with almost 450
publications by the end of 2003.
Impact on national institutions
The country chapters in part IV of Palm et al (2005) identify many of the effects
of the ASB consortium on the collaborating national institutes including imple-
menting the cross-disciplinary research approach, moving much of the work away
from experiment stations to farmer fields and communities, and developing mean-
ingful dialogues with policy makers. In addition, the ‘south–south’ exchange between
scientists and policy makers visiting the ASB sites has spurred the imagination of
many, resulting in the direct transfer of knowledge generated at one site to another.
Such visits and workshops, along with the publication efforts, have ‘international-
ized’ many national partners, but this is an area in which a great deal of potential
for impact remains to be tapped.
Impact on policy makers
Substantive and long-term interactions have developed between ASB researchers
and national policy makers, based on the solid scientific foundation ASB brings to
the discussions.
At the national level, work with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry resulted
in a presidential decree that recognized the property rights of the people managing
the complex agroforests on government lands in Sumatra (Fay et al, 1998). ASB
has also worked with the Indonesian government to address the devastating forest
fires associated with El Niño events. Suggestions include selective restrictions on
burning during El Niño events, monitoring and penalizing large companies that
misuse fire to clear land, recognizing long-standing land claims to help minimize
conflicts over land allocation, reducing or eliminating policies that depress timber
prices, and encouraging people who clear land to sell excess wood rather than burn
it. At the regional level ASB scientists have promoted enabling policies to support
community-based forest management plots with the government of the State of
Acre in Brazil and to provide credits for on-farm reforestation with the Ucayali
regional government in Peru.
Impacts on global organizations and forums
ASB is now a systemwide programme of the CGIAR and an NGO accredited by
the Global Environment Facility. The ASB network of well-characterized bench-
mark sites in the world’s tropical moist forests has attracted the attention of other
groups concerned with the issues of poverty, the environment and deforestation at
the forest margins. This includes the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), many bilateral donors,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Millennium Ecosys-
tem Assessment, the Rainforest Challenge Partnership and many others. Many of
the approaches and results are being mainstreamed as new projects emerge. The