"Incentives for Sustaining Ecosystem Services in Multi-functional Landscapes: A Pentagon of Research Questions for the World Agroforestry Centre" with Brent Swallow :: Frontiers in Sustainable Development Seminar Series :: Events :: Center for International Development at Harvard University (CID)

Frontiers in Sustainable Development Speaker Series

"Incentives for Sustaining Ecosystem Services in Multi-functional Landscapes: A Pentagon of Research Questions for the World Agroforestry Centre"

Speaker: Brent Swallow, Principal Economist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi and Global Coordinator of the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins

Hosted by Professor William Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development, HKS
Sponsored by the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard's Center for International Development

Tuesday, 6 May 2008
12:00 - 1:30 PM, Lunch provided
Perkins Room, 4th Floor, Rubenstein Building, HKS

Abstract:

Both the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (2008) focus on the multiple benefits generated by agro-ecosystems. The FAO State of Food and Agriculture Report (2007) focuses on the prospects for paying farmers for environmental stewardship that maintains environmental services of value to the wider society and economy. Due in part to the Stern Report (2006), there currently is a flush of interest in the potential for rewarding the owners of trees and forests for maintaining and expanding the carbon stored in tropical forests and multi-functional landscapes. The World Agroforestry Centre has been conducting research on rewards for environmental services in multi-functional landscapes since the late 1990s, particularly on the potential for rewards to be propoor and to provide incentives for farmers to invest in agroforestry. This work is conducted across the tropics, particularly through the RUPES project in Asia, the PRESA project in Africa, and the pan-tropical ASB Partnership. Research is guided by a pentagon of research questions, addressing issues summed up under the topics of: realistic, efficiency, sustainability, poverty and acceptability. This seminar will present those research questions and a quick summary of some of the evidence pertaining to those questions.

Biography:

Brent Swallow is a Principal Economist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, and Global Coordinator of the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins. Brent leads ICRAF’s work on payments and rewards for environmental services, which is implemented through networks of field sites and partnerships stretching across Asia and Africa. Since becoming Global Coordinator in early 2007, Brent has led the ASB Partnership to focus attention on the avoided deforestation debate within the UNFCCC, particularly the potential for Reduced Emissions Deforestation and forest Degradation to be attained with sustainable benefits for forest margin communities. He is the lead author of a major cross-site study of the opportunity costs of avoided deforestation that the ASB Partnership released at the UNFCCC COP in Bali in December 2007. Brent is a national of Canada and holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Please RSVP by May 2 to maryanne_baumgartner@harvard.edu