Revista de ecosistemas y ecografía

Abstracto

Livelihood Implications of Redd+ and Costs-Benefits of Agricultural Intensification in Redd+ Pilot Area of Kilosa, Tanzania

Khamaldin D Mutabazi, George CK, Dos Santos AS and Felister MM

Agriculture is the primary driver of deforestation and degradation. This makes addressing deforesting and degrading agricultural practices highly pertinent in the REDD+ planning and implementation. REDD+ interventions target to mitigate deforestation and degradation by addressing underlying drivers such agricultural expansion into forestland. In tropical Africa, encroachment of forests in search of fertile virgin land has been a common practice. Inevitably, the REDD+ processes will impact on the local livelihoods in different ways – positive and negative. The local-level land use plans promoted under REDD+ are likely to alter how much land a farmer would access and where. Different groups of the poor will be affected differently. Land use alterations will impact on the local food security and food systems at large. In view of such impacts, compensations are made integral of REDD+ programming and delivery. REDD+ projects promote agricultural intensification practices such as conservation agriculture in order to attain higher food production per unit land while mitigating deforestation and degradation. As REDD+ concept is being piloted in the country, we have limited understanding of the livelihood implications of REDD+ interventions. Furthermore, local-scale economic viability of measures used to address drivers of deforestation and degradation such as agricultural expansion is empirically not well understood. This paper is a modest attempt to illuminate the livelihood implications of REDD+ interventions and estimate the economic viability of agricultural intensification practices in the REDD+ pilot area in Kilosa district, Tanzania.