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Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a rapid, low cost and easily replicated approach to restore and improve degraded agricultural, forest and pasture lands. The study was conducted in low (500–1500 m.a.s.l) and mid (1500–2300 m.a.s.l) altitude agro-ecologies of Tigray region assessing farmer’s perception and reasons to practice FMNR. Purposive sampling was used to select three peasant associations (PA’s) from each agro-ecology. Simple random sampling was used to select respondents from household heads practicing FMNR. There were 15 respondents from each PA. Total respondents used for the study in both agro-ecologies were 90. All the data required for the study was collected through in-depth household survey and group discussions. Forty two percent (42.2%) of the respondents had 21–30 years of FMNR experience. Seventeen percent of the respondents with FMNR experience were from lowland and 26% were from mid land agro-ecology. FMNR has been practiced for more than two decades in the study areas. In both low and midland agro-ecologies, motivation of the respondents to practice FMNR was the training received from expert’s (37.1%) and neighbors’ success (29.2%). In the lowland, respondent’s main purpose to practice FMNR was fuel wood and fruit collection (49%) while in the midland the objectives were for fuel wood (50%), soil conservation (47%) and fodder (47%). FMNR has enormous importance in the livelihoods of the rural people especially in providing fuel wood, food/fruits, construction materials and farm equipment.

Farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is being promoted for restoration beyond its original range in the Sahel. FMNR involves farmers selecting and managing natural regeneration on their fields, while keeping them under the primary function of agricultural production. However, little is known about what regenerates in different contexts, even though this underlies potential restoration impact. Here we assess how human impact, land degradation and dispersal limitation affect structural and functional properties of regeneration across 316 plots in agroforestry parklands of Ghana and Burkina Faso. We found that intensity of land use (grazing and agricultural practices) and dispersal limitation inhibited regeneration, while land degradation did not. Functional composition of regenerating communities shifted towards shorter statured, small-seeded and conservative strategies with intensity of land use. We conclude that the presence of trees of desired species in the vicinity is a precondition for successfully implementing FMNR for restoration, and that regeneration needs to be protected from grazing. Assessment of regeneration potential is imperative for scaling out FMNR and where natural regeneration will be insufficient to achieve restoration targets, FMNR needs to be complemented with tree planting.

Where poor people rely on land that is degraded or vulnerable to degradation, they are at high risk of being locked into a downward spiral of poverty. It is estimated that over 1.5 billion people are affected by land degradation (UNCCD, 2014). The World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) and Both ENDS and their networks of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), promote sustainable land management (SLM) as a necessary shift from degrading the land to sustainable use and restoration. However, many SLM initiatives started by communities remain below the radar of policy makers and government institutions and therefore, being unrecognised for what they are, do not get institutional support, i.e. an enabling policy environment, economic incentives, and the technical support that they need to develop and be adopted by others. This paper analyses the contribution of community-based initiatives to SDG15.3: Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), and the three LDN indicators: land cover, land productivity and carbon stocks. In addition, enabling conditions for community-based initiatives to contribute to the implementation of LDN are identified and discussed. The contribution of community-based SLM initiatives to LDN will be illustrated by the SLM practices documented in WOCAT’s global database and by the example of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). It is concluded that community-based SLM initiatives can make a relevant contribution to addressing land degradation and achieving LDN, particularly so by improving land productivity and carbon stocks, and to some extent and in the case of FMNR, vegetation cover also. Creating enabling conditions for community-based initiatives to develop include: knowledge development by scientists, local communities and policy makers, inclusive land governance (land tenure security, strengthening institutions and the recognition of local knowledge), and access to technical and financial resources.

Achieving social equity in land and forest restoration is a key objective of major international frameworks and commitments, including the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Meeting this objective requires consideration of key governance ques- tions such as who makes decisions about what is restored, where, and how? And how do factors specific to local contexts influence which decisions are made, and, in turn, the distribution of benefits? Despite the demonstrated importance of social equity on project outcomes in many natural resource-based fields, there have to date been no assessments of social equity of farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), an approach used mainly for restoring degraded agricultural land. Drawing on findings from community-based fieldwork in 2019–2020 in northeastern Ghana, this paper aims to fill this void. We address the following question: How do historical, socio-ecological, and political processes condition prospects for social equity in FMNR interventions? Key findings were: 1) Preexisting hierarchies in authority, control, and access over land and trees shaped decision-making in project design and the potential distribution of benefits from FMNR 2) FMNR, when implemented on farmland, generally aligned with local agroecological practices; but, when implemented to restore communal lands, it created tensions with local perceptions of equity as well as traditional land and natural resource management practices, and 3) The FMNR project reflected the continuing salience of dominant political and environmental discourses, which carry implications for restoring landscapes with FMNR. To support practitioners, we provide several recommendations for strengthening social equity of FMNR project designs.

Despite the fact that land degradation is both natural and human-induced, it is proven that human activities pose greatest threat and these include unsustainable land management practices such as destruction of natural vegetation, overcultivation, overgrazing, poor land husbandry, and excessive forest conversion. Other than reduced productivity, land degradation also leads to socioeconomic problems such as food insecurity, insufficient water, and regular loss of livestock which exacerbate poverty, conflicts, and gender inequalities that negatively impact mostly women and children especially the rural population. Increased efforts by governments, donors, and partners toward reversing land degradation through community-led, innovative, and effective approaches therefore remain to be crucial today than never before!Farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is a proven sustainable land management technology to restore degraded wasteland and improve depleted farmland. This approach has been tested across Africa with high success rates. In spite of the huge local, regional, and global efforts plus investments put on promoting FMNR across different landscapes among vulnerable communities for climate resilience, the implementation of such projects has not been as successful as intended due to slow women uptake and participation in the approach. In order of ensuring women who are mostly at highest risk to impacts of climate change enjoy the multiple benefits that come along with FMNR, the success rate for uptake of FMNR especially among women need to be enhanced.This chapter seeks to explore drivers and barriers of women participation in uptake of FMNR for climate resilience. Findings will be shared from a 3-year project dubbed Integrated Management of Natural Resources for Resilience in ASALs and a Food and Nutrition project both in Laisamis, Marsabit County, Kenya. The program interventions on natural resource management for livelihoods seek to integrate gender and conflict prevention and prioritize sustainable, market-based solutions to address the persistent challenges. The chapter discusses findings, successes, and lessons learned from the actions and the requirement to position women as vulnerable groups at the center of initiatives designed to address the climate change crisis. The outcome of this chapter will enhance gender-responsive FMNR programing through awareness creation, effective organization/project designs, strategies, and plans together with advocacy and policy influence. Limitations of the study and main recommendations for future programing in similar contexts are also shared.

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) comprises a set of practices used by farmers to encourage the growth of native trees on agricultural land. FMNR is reported to deliver a number of positive impacts, including increasing agricultural productivity through soil fertility improvement and feed for livestock, incomes, and other environmental benefits. It is widely promoted in Africa as a cost-effective way of restoring degraded land, that overcomes the challenge of low survival rates associated with tree planting in arid and semi-arid areas. Despite being widely promoted, the evidence for these bold claims about FMNR has not been systematically analyzed. This paper reviews the scientific evidence related to the contexts in which FMNR is practiced across sub-Saharan Africa, how this influences the composition of regenerating vegetation, and the resulting environmental and socio-economic benefits derived from it. This reveals that quantitative evidence on FMNR outcomes is sparse and mainly related to experience in the Maradi and Zinder regions of Niger. There is little mechanistic understanding relating how context conditions the diversity and abundance of regenerating trees and how this in turn is related to ecosystem function and livelihood benefits. This makes it difficult to determine where and for whom FMNR is an appropriate restoration technique and where it might be necessary to combine it with enrichment planting. Given the need for viable restoration practices for agricultural land across Africa, well beyond the climatic and edaphic contexts covered by existing FMNR studies, we recommend research combining functional ecology and socio-economic assessments, embedded as co-learning components within scaling up initiatives. This would fill key knowledge gaps, enabling the development of context-sensitive advice on where and how to promote FMNR, as well as the calculation of the return on investment of doing so.

International audience; Developing relevant decision-support tools for policymakers to support large-scale implementation of climate-smart agriculture in the Global South is challenging given the great diversity in biophysical, socio-technical, and organizational conditions. This article describes a pilot exercise inspired by the recommendation domain literature that aimed at mapping, beyond “classical” biophysical and socio-technical variables, the institutional variables (i.e., the existence of policy incentives in national policy documents) that could influence the large-scale implementation of climate-smart agricultural practices. Four practices were considered: cereal-legume intercropping, fodder legume cultivation, farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) of Parkia biglobosa, and crop residue mulching. The biophysical and socio-technical variables were classified based on thresholds identified in the literature and mapped with a geographic information system. The policy documents considered were investment plans, adaptation plans for climate change, nationally determined contributions, and Technology Needs Assessments project reports. Sixteen policy documents for four countries were thoroughly reviewed and classified as unfavorable, intermediate, and favorable for the four selected practices, based on a decision tree built for that purpose. Our analysis shows that areas where biophysical, socio-technical, and institutional variables are aligned for the four practices considered are small, particularly for fodder legume cultivation and crop residue mulching. For cereal-legume intercropping, incentives from national policies strongly differ from one country to another while for FMNR of Parkia biglobosa policies are more homogeneously conducive across countries. Nonetheless, it was possible to identify areas where biophysical, socio-technical, and institutional dimensions of the transition toward climate-smart agriculture (CSA) were aligned, for example, cereal-legume intercropping in southern Mali. The delineating of favorable and unfavorable areas allows specific recommendations to be made for policymakers as levers for action differ in favorable, intermediate, and unfavorable zones. Based on the exploration made for the four practices, this study highlights the need for further articulations from local to national scale to implement CSA.

Scattered Faidherbia albida trees provide multiple ecological and production benefits across the Sahel. The intensive management and use of this important tree may impede its regeneration. Regeneration bottlenecks were explored and population dynamics modelled. On experimental plots in which seed of F. albida was sown, exposure to the first 2 months of dry season resulted in a quarter of seedling mortality. Exposure to season‐long free grazing and browsing caused significantly greater seedling mortality. Results from monitoring 100 permanent plots scattered over the landscape showed that adult population density was 4.2 ± 0.3 (mean ± SE) trees ha−1 and dominated by old age classes. Sixty percent of the total population were older than 30 years. The mean density for juveniles was 1.4 ± 0.2 (mean ± SE) individuals ha−1. The annual rates of decline were 1.2%, 51.3%, and 63.2% for adults, seedlings, and saplings, respectively. Our model predicted that the F. albida population will start to decline within 1–2 decades to eventually fall below 1 tree ha−1 within 60 years under current management. The model highlighted that the limited seed source, caused by excessive pruning, was the main constraint for recruitment. Appropriate land management policy to ensure adequate seed production would avert current trends in decline of F. albida population.

Declining agricultural productivity, land clearance and climate change are compounding the vulnerability of already marginal rural populations in West Africa. 'Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration' (FMNR) is an approach to arable land restoration and reforestation that seeks to reconcile sustained food production, conservation of soils and protection of biodiversity. It involves selecting and protecting the most vigorous stems regrowing from live stumps of felled trees, pruning off all other stems, and pollarding the chosen stems to grow into straight trunks. Despite widespread enthusiasm and application of FMNR by environmental management and development projects, to date, no research has provided a measure of the aggregate livelihood impact of community adoption of FMNR. This paper places FMNR in the context of other agroforestry initiatives, then seeks to quantify the value of livelihood outcomes of FMNR. We review published and unpublished evidence about the impacts of FMNR, and present a new case study that addresses gaps in the evidence base. The case study focuses on a FMNR project in the district of Talensi in the semi-arid Upper East Region in Ghana. The case study employs a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis, which identifies proxy financial values for non-economic as well as economic benefits. The results demonstrate income and agricultural benefits, but also show that asset creation, increased consumption of wild resources, health improvements and psycho-social benefits created more value in FMNR-adopting households during the period of the study than increases in income and agricultural yields.

This paper used a multivalued treatment framework to assess the effects of farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) on selected outcomes among 1080 rural household farmers in the Sahelian and Sudano-Sahelian ecozone of West Africa Sahel. The results indicate that keeping, protecting and managing trees in the farmland have significant effects on the livelihoods of the rural poor in the Sahelian countries. If 1000 households in a community decide to practice the FMNR continuously, it results in an increase in the gross income by US$ 72,000 per year. Noticeable changes are also observed on the value of tree products, with an observed significant increase in the value of the products harvested from tree by about 34–38 % among those actively practicing FMNR as compared to their counterparts. The results also lend support to the household resilience hypothesis of FMNR in that it leads to a significant increase of the dietary diversity by about 12–14 %. However, it also appeared that several factors impeded the regeneration of trees on farms. To foster the widespread dissemination and enhance the capacity of farmers to increase, diversify and sustain tree-based production systems, an enabling institutional, technical and policy environment needs to be promoted.

The present study aims at (1) assessing how the existing local formal and informal institutions affect farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) practices and, (2) evaluating the benefits of such practices on livelihoods. The propensity score with continuous treatments was used to assess the effects of a set of covariates on FMNR as well as the impacts of that practice on income, cereal production and caloric intake using data collected from 1,080 rural households in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Senegal. This study demonstrated that regeneration of trees on farms, whereby farmers play an active role in the types of trees and their densities, is important as a practice and safety-net by providing cash income, caloric intake and diet, and crops supplements throughout dryland areas of West Africa. Overall, FMNR cannot be excluded as a recommendation in any geographical region. In addition, the study concludes that the effects of institutions in fostering FMNR practices in the Sahel are mixed. In areas with well-structured formal and informal institutions, populations seem to have adopted a better collaboration attitude with the local government by developing plans for a good management and protection of natural resource including FMNR practices. However, in areas where these commissions are being assimilated to governmental institutions, the willingness to raise incentives towards a better management of natural resources is less perceived. While recognizing the benefits of trees and tree products on caloric intake and diet, there is a need to explore in much more details, the FMNR-food nexus in future researches by going beyond what was covered from this study.

In the Sahel, the climate and the agricultural practices are the main factors used to observe regreening process. But the extension of the latter not being uniform in the farming fields, we can suppose that there are other factors that contribute to the re-greening of certain zones and not others. The infiltrability of soils is considered as an important factor for these changes in the last decades. The influence of re-greening on the infiltrability of soils in the southern strip of Niger was studied through a comparison of zones according to the type of sandy soils (Jigawa/Rerey), siltyclay (Guieza), silty-sandy (Hako) and clay-silty-sandy (Laka). The evaluated parameters are the texture, the infiltrability and the ecological characteristics (specific index of regeneration “SIR” and the Importance Value Index “IVI”). The main conclusions were: the soils of Niger South-Central are characterized by a sandy texture for more than 80%. The soils which are very sandy (“Jigawa”, “Rerey” and “Guieza”) are more permeable and have more trees contrary to the soil Hako and Laka. Their encrusting has the tendency to reduce the vegetation cover on the soil. The infiltration measurements indicated that the rate of initial and stationary infiltration diminishes while going down towards the South. In fact, it has been recorded a rate of 123 mm/min of initial infiltration and 87 mm/min stationary in Dan Saga on the sandy soils against 76 mm/min and 65 mm/min in Dare respectively for the initial and stationary rate. Therefore, the infiltration seems to influence the density, the SIR and the IVI of the trees from the North towards the South. Some additional work is necessary in order to determine the contribution of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) in the improvement of the quality of soils and the movement of water in the superficial zones of the soil.

Effective natural resource management requires interrelated technical practices and social arrangements that are appropriate to a region’s biophysical characteristics and that address protection and sustainable management of resources. This is illustrated from our experience in the Republic of Niger, West Africa. In 1980 barren plains, infertile soils, drought, dust storms, severe fodder shortages, and agricultural pest outbreaks were normal occurrences in Niger’s rural regions. In general, despite large investments of time and funding, conventional reforestation efforts had little impact. However by 2008 over five million hectares of once barren land had been transformed through wide adoption of an agroforestry method known as ‘Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration’ (FMNR), introduced in 1983. In the Aguie Department, the practice of FMNR was formalized through the Desert Community Initiative (DCI), addressing interrelated technical and social issues in resource management. New governance structures, which include marginalized groups, implement monitoring and enforcement systems enabling communities to manage land and regenerating trees. These, together with technical solutions that build on local knowledge and skills and use previously undervalued indigenous tree species, have generated a sustainable fuel-wood market for the first time. Increased linkage and compatibility between institutions at local and national levels and strengthened social capital have been crucial to these impacts. Food security and community resilience to drought have been markedly enhanced and local incomes have increased. The experience provides important lessons for approaches to addressing environmental degradation and poverty in other semi arid areas and facilitating the spread and adoption of new agroforestry systems.

"The societies and ecosystems of the Nigerien Sahel appeared increasingly vulnerable to climatic and economic uncertainty in the late twentieth century. Severe episodes of drought and famine drove massive livestock losses and human migration and mortality. Soil erosion and tree loss reduced a woodland to a scrub steppe and fed a myth of the Sahara desert relentlessly advancing southward. Over the past two decades this myth has been shattered by the dramatic reforestation of more than 5 million hectares in the Maradi and Zinder Regions of Niger. No single actor, policy, or practice appears behind this successful regreening of the Sahel. Multiple actors, institutions and processes operated at different levels, times, and scales to initiate and sustain this reforestation trend. We used systems analysis to examine the patterns of interaction as biophysical, livelihood, and governance indicators changed relative to one another during forest decline and rebound. It appears that forest decline was reversed when critical interventions helped to shift the direction of reinforcing feedbacks, e.g., vicious cycles changed to virtuous ones. Reversals toward de-forestation or reforestation were preceded by institutional changes in governance, then livelihoods and eventually in the biophysical environment. Biophysical change sustained change in the other two domains until interventions introduced new ideas and institutions that slowed and then reversed the pattern of feedbacks. However, while society seems better at coping with economic or climatic shock or stress, the resilience of society and nature in the Maradi/Zinder region to global sources of uncertainty remains a pressing question in a society with one of the highest population growth rates on Earth."

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), a set of practices farmers use to foster the growth of indigenous trees on agricultural land, has drawn substantial attention as a contributing factor to a trend of increasing vegetation greenness in the Republic of Niger. This paper identifies drivers of FMNR adoption and assesses its impacts on rural households in the Region of Maradi, Niger, an area covering 42,000 square kilometers. The results show that 26% of households practice a form of FMNR involving both pruning and protecting woody vegetation. Adoption is strongly linked to soil type, market access, and the education level of the head of household. FMNR raises household income and increases crop diversity, household migration rates, and the density and diversity of trees on farmland. It is estimated that FMNR raises the annual gross income of the region by between 17 and 21 million USD and has contributed an additional 900,000 to 1,000,000 trees to the local environment. These findings support the value of continued promotion of FMNR as an inexpensive means of enhancing rural livelihoods and an attractive alternative to reforestation efforts relying on tree planting.

Poverty, hunger and demand for agricultural land have driven local communities to overexploit forest resources throughout Ethiopia. Forests surrounding the township of Humbo were largely destroyed by the late 1960s. In 2004, World Vision Australia and World Vision Ethiopia identified forestry-based carbon sequestration as a potential means to stimulate community development while engaging in environmental restoration. After two years of consultation, planning and negotiations, the Humbo Community-based Natural Regeneration Project began implementation--the Ethiopian organization's first carbon sequestration initiative. The Humbo Project assists communities affected by environmental degradation including loss of biodiversity, soil erosion and flooding with an opportunity to benefit from carbon markets while reducing poverty and restoring the local agroecosystem. Involving the regeneration of 2,728 ha of degraded native forests, it brings social, economic and ecological benefits--facilitating adaptation to a changing climate and generating temporary certified emissions reductions (tCERs) under the Clean Development Mechanism. A key feature of the project has been facilitating communities to embrace new techniques and take responsibility for large-scale environmental change, most importantly involving Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). This technique is low-cost, replicable, and provides direct benefits within a short time. Communities were able to harvest fodder and firewood within a year of project initiation and wild fruits and other non-timber forest products within three years. Farmers are using agroforestry for both environmental restoration and income generation. Establishment of user rights and local cooperatives has generated community ownership and enthusiasm for this project--empowering the community to more sustainably manage their communal lands.

Trees on farms are a widespread feature of landscapes across a large part of Ethiopia with an important role in enhancing the resilience of smallholder livelihoods through the provision of ecosystem services. Despite their importance, little is known about what trees are planted or retained from natural regeneration by different types of farmers that results in the pattern of tree cover found in the region. We address this knowledge gap through analysis of household survey data from semi-arid and sub humid areas of Oromia regional state. A set of composite variables that represent distinctive patterns of tree cover on farms were derived from principal component analysis and Pearson correlation analysis. This revealed two major tree adoption strategies: farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) of trees to meet subsistence needs as well as contributing to other ecosystem services; and, high value agroforestry (HVAF) involving planted trees used largely to produce fruits, timber and fodder. Regression analysis further identified fine-scale variation in ecological and socio-economic factors that affect which of these two broad strategies are adopted by farmers. Favorable climatic conditions coupled with institutional arrangements to control free grazing were pre-conditions for HVAF, whereas poor biophysical potential and sloping land provided a positive incentive for farmers to adopt FMNR. Farmers with preferences for tree species with multiple utilities and locational flexibility favored FMNR while adoption of HVAF was more asset-driven. Our findings reveal that farmers integrate many native and exotic tree species on their farms to meet their variable farm conditions, needs and asset profiles in stark contrast to most tree promotion efforts that focus on a few, usually exotic, tree species. We recommend that future agroforestry promotion should embrace a diversity of tree species appropriate to matching the fine scale variation in ecological conditions and farmer circumstances encountered in the field.