Restoration 
Plantations and tree crop commodities 
Enhanced nutrition and food security 
Biodiversity, safeguarding and conservation 
Nationally determined contributions 
Bioenergy and biomaterials 
Blue carbon and peatlands 
Climate change adaptation 
Landscape governance 
Gender 
Silvopastoral systems 
Market-based agroforestry-forestry 
Farm-forest policy interface 
Agroecology 
Livelihood trajectory modelling and assessment 
Inclusive finance and business models 
Innovating finance for sustainable landscapes 
Public and private commitments to zero deforestation 
Orphan tree crops 
Effectiveness of approaches to sustainable supply 
Quality of FTA research for development 
Sentinel landscapes 
Foresight 
Seeds and seedlings delivery systems 
Smallholder tree-crop commodities 
This meta-analysis of land-cover transformations of the past 10-15 years in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers world-wide shows that swidden agriculture decreases in landscapes with access to local, national and international markets that encourage cattle production and cash cropping, including biofuels. Conservation policies and practices also accelerate changes in swidden by restricting forest clearing and encouraging commercial agriculture. However, swidden remains important in many frontier areas where farmers have unequal or insecure access to investment and market opportunities, or where multifunctionality of land uses has been preserved as a strategy to adapt to current ecological, economic and political circumstances. In some areas swidden remains important simply because intensification is not a viable choice, for example when population densities and/or food market demands are low. The transformation of swidden landscapes into more intensive land uses has generally increased household incomes, but has also led to negative effects on the social and human capital of local communities to varying degrees.From an environmentalperspective, the transition from swidden to other land uses oftencontributes to permanent deforestation, loss of biodiversity, increased weed pressure, declines in soil fertility, and accelerated soil erosion. Our prognosis is that, despite the global trend towards land use intensification, in many areas swidden will remain part of rural landscapes as the safety component of diversified systems, particularly in response to risks and uncertainties associated with more intensive land use systems.
Authors:
Van Vliet, N.; Mertz, O.; Heinimann, A.; Langanke, T.; Pascual, U.; Schmook, B.; Adams, C.; Schmidt-Vogt, D.; Messerli, P.; Leisz, S. J.; Castella, J.C.; Jørgensen, L.; Birch-Thomsen, T.; Hett, C.; Bech-Bruun, T.; Ickowitz, A.; Vu, K.C.; Yasuyuki, K.; Fox, J.; Padoch, C.; Dressler, W.; Ziegler, A.D.
Subjects:
land use change, cultivation, impact, meta-analysis, forests, agriculture
Publication type:
ISI, Journal Article, Publication
Year:
2012
ISSN:
0959-3780
