trends in shifting cultivation and the redd mechanism

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Trends in shifting cultivation and the REDD mechanismOle Mertz

In many parts of the forest-agriculture frontiers of the tropics,

particularly in Southeast Asia, shifting cultivation is rapidly

being transformed to other land uses. Yet, there is rather limited

knowledge on the spatial and demographic extent of shifting

cultivation and the consequences of the transitions taking

place. The proposed mechanism for reduced greenhouse gas

emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) can be

both a challenge and opportunity for shifting cultivators. Very

limited literature is available on this dilemma, but a few sources

point to benefits from ‘compensated reductions’ if carbon

prices are sufficiently high. The main challenges will be to first

ensure that poor farmers have access to the products they no

longer farm, second, clarify land tenure of disputed farm and

fallow land, and third, provide a guarantee that the

compensations will be paid and not be lost in systems of poor

governance.

AddressDepartment of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen,

Øster Voldgade 10, 1350 Copenhagen K, Denmark

Corresponding author: Mertz, Ole ([email protected])

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2009, 1:156–160

This review comes from the inaugural issues

Edited by Rik Leemans and Anand Patwardhan

Available online 6th November 2009

1877-3435/$ – see front matter

# 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

DOI 10.1016/j.cosust.2009.10.002

IntroductionDespite a global focus on intensification of agricultural

production and almost a century of bad publicity, shifting

cultivation is still carried out in 40–50 countries. In many

places it remains the mainstay of local livelihoods, but it is

also undergoing rapid and sometimes forced transitions to

other forms of land use. With the possibility of including a

new mechanism for reduced emissions from deforestation

and degradation (REDD) in a post-Kyoto climate change

agreement, a new challenge — or perhaps opportu-

nity — for shifting cultivators is likely to arise. Will they

benefit from this mechanism and how is it likely to be

implemented in areas dominated by shifting cultivation

under rapid change? In this paper I briefly review the

trends in land use transitions in areas currently or recently

dominated by shifting cultivation as well as the recent

debates in the literature on the link between REDD and

shifting cultivation.


The debate on change in shifting cultivation areas is

linked to wider debates carried out in international land

change science networks such as Land Use/Cover

Change (LUCC) [1] and the Global Land Project [2],

which aim at developing a more coherent science for

understanding the scale, drivers, and consequences of

global changes in land systems [1,3]. The specific focus on

shifting cultivation is important, however, as it is — or

was — carried out in vast areas of tropical forests, which

are of global importance for biodiversity and carbon

sequestration. Many studies have underlined that shifting

cultivation in many cases is a rational economic and

environmental choice for poor farmers in the tropics

[4–6], but negative opinions dating back to the 1950s

still prevail [4,7,8��,9�] with accusations that shifting

cultivation keeps people in poverty and causes environ-

mental degradation. The details of this debate is beyond

the scope of this paper, which deals more with the (lack

of) prerequisites for having a qualified debate on this

issue: knowledge on the current extent of shifting culti-

vation, the number of people dependent on this system,

the rate with which it is being replaced by other land-use

systems, and the environmental consequences of these

changes — all of which are basic facts, which, to a large

extent, are not known. Moreover, the cost and benefits for

shifting cultivators if the proposed REDD mechanism is

implemented are also not well understood.

The paper is structured around analyzing the changing

landscapes and demography in shifting cultivation areas

and an assessment of the opportunities that may arise

from REDD. The review focuses on Southeast Asia and

includes internationally accessible peer-reviewed litera-

ture, mainly from the period of 2007–2009, but a few older

sources are used as well. I use the term shifting cultivation

(similar to swidden cultivation or slash and burn agricul-

ture) to describe a wide range of land-use systems, where

fallow is a main component for restoring system pro-

ductivity [10]. ‘Classical’ shifting cultivation — if such

a thing exists — would generally include a short cropping

phase of 1–3 years followed by a longer fallow period of 5–20 years, but many systems are much more complex with

productive fallows [11�], use of fertilizers and pesticides

[12,13], and composite systems with integration of per-

manent farming components. For a further discussion of

definitions of shifting cultivation, see other reviews

[7,8��].

Change in shifting cultivation landscapes anddemographyThe technological development within earth observation

has greatly improved our ability to identify and follow

www.sciencedirect.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2009.10.002

Shifting cultivation and REDD Mertz 157

trends in global land use transitions. However, the tech-

niques are still fairly inadequate when it comes to analyz-

ing trends in complex land-use systems characterized by a

mix of different land-use types. Shifting cultivation sys-

tems are particularly difficult to capture because of the

complex spectral signature of fields, fallows of various

length, and often some permanent farming of, for

example, tree crops and wet rice as well as more or less

untouched forest areas. This often leaves shifting cultiva-

tion areas in land-use categories such as ‘degraded’ or

‘idle’ land that do not recognize the presence of an

agricultural system [8��,14��]. The land-use systems that

replace shifting cultivation are more easily detected.

These can be plantation agriculture with oil palm and

rubber, cattle pasture, smallholder permanent farming,

protected areas and others, and they will often be

represented in national land cover maps as improvements

since a label with negative connotations is frequently

attached to the shifting cultivation dominated land cover

they replace. Moreover, people are rarely identified as

shifting cultivators — usually only as farmers — in cen-

suses and household surveys making it difficult to assess

the number of people dependent on this farming system

[7,15��]. The figures of 200–300 million people globally

have been mentioned frequently in the otherwise author-

itative literature on shifting cultivation, but the origin of

these figures is obscure and current estimates range from

35 million to almost a billion people [15��].

In the case of Southeast Asia shifting cultivation is rapidly

declining in many areas [8��,16], but the scale of change is

not well known. A case study based meta-analysis of

possible transitions in Southeast Asia found that changes

to plantation crops such as oil palm and rubber are most

frequent [14��]. The Southeast Asian population depend-

ent on shifting cultivation is probably within a range of

14–34 million people (excluding China and Cambodia

where no estimates were found), which is the closest

estimate possible based on the literature [15��]. This

situation is partly caused by the problems of detecting

shifting cultivation landscapes as mentioned above. More

importantly, when agricultural censuses are carried out,

the focus is mainly on the field cropped the year analyzed,

and thus the dynamic nature of shifting fields and fallow

areas is not captured. With a few exceptions, census data

do not identify shifting cultivators directly and thus

knowing how many people depend on it becomes very

difficult. It is obvious that if such basic information is

unavailable, planners and policy-makers have no sound

basis for decisions on land-use and development in the

poorest regions of their countries; and the consequences

of land-use transitions become very difficult to quantify

and understand if there is little knowledge on what

people were doing before. In Laos, a recent study ident-

ified landscape mosaics as proxies for shifting cultivation

areas and carried out GIS-based overlays of census data.

This approach is promising [17��] and if applied in other


countries it may increase our knowledge of the extent of

shifting cultivation.

Consequences of change for environment andthe possible role of REDDThe fragmented landscapes in shifting cultivation areas

provide a range of environmental services in terms of

hydrology, biodiversity, and carbon storage in soil and

vegetation [18,19��,20,21], and many local studies on the

effects of shifting cultivation systems on biodiversity and

soil and water resources point to a balanced system if a

minimum fallow period is retained [19��,20,21]. It is,

however, often assumed that replacing shifting cultiva-

tion leads to improvements in environmental services as

land-use is intensified in smaller areas and larger areas left

to forest regrowth. There is evidence for this to be true in

certain areas [22,23], but negative feed-backs on liveli-

hoods can be the result [24,25]. In most cases shifting

cultivation areas are converted to plantation or tree crops

rather than to natural forest [26,27].

Globally, land-use change accounts for 15–18% of

anthropogenic carbon emissions and the vast majority

of these come from deforestation and forest degradation

in the tropics [28,29], with shifting cultivation often

being mentioned as one of the main sources. At the same

time, tropical forest ecosystems have been shown to be

considerable carbon sinks [30]. This spurred the Con-

ference of the Parties (COP) 13 to the UNFCCC in Bali

in 2007 to agree on a negotiation pathway for the

inclusion of a mechanism to avoid further release of

green house gases from forested areas in the post-Kyoto

climate change agreement scheduled to be agreed upon

at COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009. The ration-

ale behind most REDD proposals is to fund countries at

national level for avoided deforestation by a system of

‘carbon rental’ [31��,32��] subjected to long-term

monitoring, although several papers argue for a ‘nested

approach’ integrating subnational levels in the mechan-

ism [32��,33] (for a more detailed description of the

proposed REDD mechanism and the challenges associ-

ated with its implementation such as leakage, transaction

costs, additionality, and long-term monitoring, see sev-

eral recent special issues [34,35�,36��] and other articles

[31��,32��,37,38�,39–41]). The question remains to what

extent REDD will address the complex reality of forest

dependent shifting cultivators, in terms of both securing

reduced emissions and ensuring their livelihoods.

Very few papers on REDD specifically address this

problem. It is acknowledged by some that shifting culti-

vation belongs to the category of ‘forest degradation’

rather than ‘deforestation’ [38�] and that ‘degradation’

in the case of shifting cultivation should be excluded from

REDD as it can be beneficial to the poor and may give a

further reason for governments to ban shifting cultivation

[42]. A key issue for understanding shifting cultivation


158 Inaugural issues

induced degradation is that knowledge on overall carbon

(C) storage in soil and vegetation of shifting cultivation

systems is not very advanced. A recent review showed

that time averaged C reduction in long fallow shifting

cultivation compared to mature forest is negligible, but of

course increases as fallow periods are reduced and culti-

vation intensity increases [19��]. The problem is the

assessment of C storage in soil which is largely ignored

in estimating and monitoring C stocks in tropical forests

[38], mainly because they are not well researched

[19��,43–45]. In fact, some studies point to a positive

effect of shifting cultivation compared to alternative tree

based land-use systems [45], and certainly compared to

other arable farming systems. With respect to storage of

soil C, long fallow shifting cultivation may even in some

cases compete with forests [44]. Hence, treating shifting

cultivation as degradation in terms of C stocks may not

have the desired effects of reducing CO2 emissions unless

it is a very intensive system with short fallow periods and

few large trees, which store most of the carbon [43].

Preventing further land use transitions toward more

intensified agriculture may indeed be beneficial and it

would be appropriate if the REDD mechanism could

reward the maintenance of long fallow systems rather

than just focusing on natural forest conservation.

Turning to Southeast Asia, only few published articles

referring to the coupled shifting cultivation–REDD chal-

lenge were found. In East Kalimantan, Indonesia, optimal

areas for REDD were identified [46] in a study that looks

only at conservation areas and do not consider the impacts

of conservation on shifting cultivators. Shifting cultivation

is still important in many parts of East Kalimantan [47], but

in this case it is considered only as a deforestation threat

along with logging and tree crop plantations [46]. Other

countries in the region such Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia

are, like Indonesia, strongly interested in REDD, but there

is no published, peer-reviewed research available assessing

the link to shifting cultivation. A case study from Cameroon

may provide some insights for how a future REDD mech-

anism can work in Southeast Asia. The potential economic

benefits of a shifting cultivation system were compared

with that of compensated reductions (CR) in emissions

[48��]. Under ideal conditions, the CR would be economi-

cally feasible with a price of $2.85 tCO2�1 or higher, but the

authors acknowledge a wide range of caveats including the

need for subsistence production in an imperfect market

and the problems of ensuring CR payments to farmers in a

nation with high levels of corruption. Moreover, the study

does not account for the uncertainties in carbon stock

estimates in the shifting cultivation system. This is to

my knowledge the only peer reviewed study that directly

addresses the comparative benefits of REDD to shifting

cultivators.

Most other studies on the benefits of REDD to local

communities tend to underline the added benefit of


secured access to forest products, which the avoided

deforestation will ensure [49,50] — if indeed this access

is secured in the REDD mechanism rather than making

forests completely off-limits [42]. However, forest pro-

ducts may not be sufficient for shifting cultivators. While

they may still be partially dependent on these, local

production of staple foods such as rice and maize is often

considered important, especially in areas where market

conditions do not provide adequate access to affordable

food products of sufficient quantity and quality. Indeed,

food production under shifting cultivation — despite low

overall productivity — has been shown to be competitive

with alternative income sources [12]. The REDD mech-

anism may therefore potentially increase the vulnerability

of shifting cultivators unless their ‘forest degrading’

activities are excluded from the mechanism rather than

being listed alongside logging and large scale land con-

version to plantations and annual crops — the global

environmental rhetoric of ‘forests versus shifting cultiva-

tion’ is unproductive and not likely to be successful.

Moreover, many shifting cultivation areas are in a land

tenure vacuum as rights to farm, fallow, and forest land are

often not secured [8��,9�] and they may be skeptical

whether payments for their REDD efforts will indeed

be disbursed in full or partially lost in administrative

systems. The proposals to design REDD with a ‘nested

approach’ is therefore important [32��,33]. Finally, it is

imperative that the REDD mechanism specifies what will

happen if funded carbon stocks are later cleared — will

farmers be penalized or asked to repay the compensation?

Shifting cultivators are often relatively poor farmers

and — like farmers everywhere else — opportunistic in

nature: if new or old crops suddenly give good profits,

farmers are likely to convert, such as is the case in parts of

montane mainland Southeast Asia, where vast areas are

being converted to rubber plantations [51].

ConclusionsShifting cultivation is under rapid transformation in many

parts of the tropics, but still remains an important land-

use system for many farmers at the forest-agriculture

frontiers in Southeast Asia. Despite the limited number

of studies looking at how shifting cultivators may benefit

from REDD, it appears that there could be economic

gains from maintaining forests rather than clearing new

land for cultivation — and shifting cultivators may indeed

be interested in such programs if the conditions are

favorable. However, it assumes a market where adequate

and affordable food products are available for purchase to

substitute production, it requires clear and undisputed

land rights and that CRs are paid to farmers in a well

functioning governance system. Moreover, in order to

obtain the desired climate effects, better knowledge of

particularly soil carbon stocks in tropical ecosystems and

shifting cultivation systems is required to ensure that

there will indeed be emission reductions. Finally, it is

unclear whether penalization should occur if funded


Shifting cultivation and REDD Mertz 159

carbon stocks are suddenly removed by farmers because

new opportunities arise. REDD has great potential, but

the benefits of fallow systems must be recognized in the

REDD mechanism and monitoring of REDD projects

must focus not only on carbon stocks but also on how the

livelihoods of shifting cultivators develop if they are

prevented from producing food locally and live under

fragile tenure and governance regimes. REDD payments

are proposed to be made to nation states but as the

potential negative consequences of REDD are likely to

be felt locally, nested approaches that include subnational

levels are likely to be most beneficial.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Daniel Muller, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, andthe anonymous reviewers for useful comments on this paper.

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