364 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
methods for assessing carbon stocks and the improved estimates from the ASB
assessment have been recognized and used by the IPCC (Paustian et al, 1997;
IPCC, 2001).
External reviews
The ASB consortium has been periodically evaluated by external teams (Eswaran,
1995; Hansen et al, 1997; Technical Advisory Committee [TAC], 2000). The
review by the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment
Facility considered ASB ‘exceptional and pioneering in its design, coverage, meth-
odology, organization and scope for transferability and replicability’ (Hansen et al,
1997, p1). According to TAC (2000, pxxi), ‘the Alternatives to Slash and Burn
Programme has gone further than others in relating its research sites to the whole
area over which the problem occurs, and in scaling up to the global level in its find-
ings on trade-offs. This is very helpful for the global debate on sustainability issues’.
These positive reviews should be balanced with the real limitations of the ASB
consortium, including recurring funding shortfalls and the communication chal-
lenge of keeping culturally diverse partners informed across the tropical belt.
The way forward
The first decade of the consortium was evaluated in 1999 at a conference in
Chiang Mai on environmental services and land-use change. Details of the find-
ings and recommendations are found in van Noordwijk et al (2001b) and Tomich
et al (2004). Two of the major gaps that were identified included the assessment of
hydrologic, ecological and other environmental services at the watershed or com-
munity scale and methods for the various stakeholders to develop workable
responses and monitor the impacts of ongoing change.
A range of flexible tools will be identified and developed for communities,
local government agencies, NGO activists, research managers, policy makers and
other officials. Diverse stakeholders can then better explore their options to influ-
ence the individual choices that really determine the rate and pattern of land-use
change (van Noordwijk et al, 2001b).
Conclusion
The ASB consortium has contributed scientifically and from a policy perspective
to addressing the issues of poverty and deforestation in the humid tropics and has
complied with the two Agenda 21 recommendations that formed the reason for its
existence: ‘Limit and aim to halt destructive shifting cultivation by addressing the
underlying social and ecological causes’ and ‘Reduce damage to forests by promoting
sustainable management of areas adjacent to the forests’. But tropical deforestation