Exploring the ecosystem limits to poverty alleviation in African forest-agriculture landscapes

Agricultural development is a major pathway out of poverty in rural Africa. The cultivation of cash crops for sale alongside subsistence crops helps improve livelihoods and alleviate poverty in rural communities. The productivity of these farming systems relies on services provided by the agro-ecosystem within which they occur. These services include fertile soils, the control of pests and diseases, and crop pollination by wild animals. We know that some agricultural systems can damage these services in the longer-term - soil fertility declines, pest and disease outbreaks become more common, pollination levels are reduced. This means that although rural livelihoods might be improved by agricultural development in the short-term, ecosystem degradation and the associated loss of ecosystem services might threaten these gains in the medium to long-term.

Has agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa exceeded the capacity of ecosystems to support it? If so, what implications does this have for poor people in rural communities? Are there pathways rural communities might choose to take that enable them to benefit from agriculture-based livelihoods without risking longer-term ecosystem damage? Answering these questions is currently very difficult because a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between agricultural development, wealth distribution and socio-economic opportunity, governance systems, and ecosystem health is largely lacking for the smallholder farming systems typical of sub-Saharan Africa. There is, therefore, a major research challenge in this area that our proposed project aims to address.

We plan to explore the ecosystem limits to poverty alleviation in African forest-agriculture landscapes. Specifically, we plan to focus our work on a cocoa farming landscape in Ghana, and a coffee farming landscape in Ethiopia. Ghana and Ethiopia provide an opportunity to study forest-agriculture ecosystems that have contrasting recent development trajectories, levels of rural poverty and ecosystem health. In Ghana, agricultural development has significantly contributed to improved rural livelihoods but may have pushed forest-agriculture ecosystems beyond their limits; whereas in Ethiopia agricultural development is an important potential pathway out of poverty for the rural poor but it is unlikely to have pushed ecosystems beyond their limits yet.

By studying these contrasting situations, we hope to provide the scientific evidence that helps rural communities avoid the potentially detrimental effects of ecosystem degradation and hence have more sustainable livelihoods in the longer-term. To do this, we plan to explore (i) the limits to the services provided by forest-agriculture ecosystems resulting from agricultural expansion and intensification; (ii) the key social processes that maintain forest-agriculture ecosystems within these limits or move them beyond them; (iii) the role poverty plays in the processes that determine whether or not ecosystem limits are reached and exceeded; and whether ecosystem limits in turn affect poverty; and (iv) the potential pathways out of poverty rural communities might take; the potential risks ecosystem limits pose to these pathways; and how communities might act to reduce or minimize these risks.

Who will benefit from our research?

The ultimate beneficiaries of our research will be poor people and local communities in rural areas in Ethiopia, Ghana and more widely in Africa whose lives and livelihoods depend upon forest-agriculture ecosystems. Our project aims to identify who in these communities is most dependent upon or vulnerable to ecosystem change in terms of poverty alleviation. We also plan to determine how these dependencies and vulnerabilities may change across communities in the future for better or for worse. In this way, our project will produce important contextual information about the specific groups of people in rural communities who are likely to benefit most from our research.

An important organisation that will benefit directly from our research is the Nature Conservation Research Centre (NCRC), who are an NGO based in Ghana working with local rural communities, and policy and decision-makers in Government, NGOs and business on a variety of issues related to the conservation of biodiversity and natural resources. They are a co-applicant of our proposal.

Our work will benefit policy and decision-makers in Government, NGOs and business who have an interest in agriculture, environment and rural development in the context of forest-agriculture ecosystems in Ethiopia and Ghana, and ultimately more widely in Africa.

Our project focuses on forest-agriculture ecosystems in Africa that cultivate important cash crops such as cocoa and coffee, so consumers of chocolate and coffee products could potentially benefit from our research.

How will these groups benefit from our research?

Understanding whether farm management practices are likely to push forest-agriculture ecosystems beyond their limits to sustain these practices is challenging because ecosystem changes can be relatively slow, complex and non-linear. Our project is designed to unravel this complexity in a way that enables farmers to better understand the relationships between their farming activities and ecosystem services, and potentially avoid any adverse impacts of ecosystem degradation. It will also help individual farmers and their communities to plan more effectively for change by developing a process that enables them to consider the potential economic, social and ecological consequences associated with a series of possible future actions. Ultimately, we aim to enable rural communities to make more sustainable decisions about how they manage and develop their agriculture-based livelihoods. Within our project, we plan to work directly with rural communities associated with our study landscapes, but we will also develop plans with policy and decision-makers in Government, NGOs and business to engage with rural communities more widely in Ethiopia, Ghana and potentially elsewhere beyond the lifetime of our ESPA project.

We plan to establish NCRC as a regional knowledge hub with expertise on the links between agriculture, environment and development that they can then use to provide improved assistance and advice to rural communities, policy and decision-makers, business and civil society in Africa within and beyond our ESPA project. Our research provides the major evidence-base for this work, and NCRC's active participation in our research provides hands-on experience for key members of its staff.

Decisions by Government, NGOs or business in the areas of agriculture, environment or development often focus on issues within these areas rather than on the inter-dependencies between them. The new knowledge generated by our research provides the evidence-base that enables decision-makers to consider issues in a more integrated way. This has potential implications for Government policy, assistance and advice given by NGOs, and sourcing policies by agri-buisness.

Our research provides new knowledge that potentially helps consumers make more informed decisions about the food and drink products they purchase.