PNG farmers use agroforestry to fight crop diseases and reduce labor

In Papua New Guinea, agroforestry--an old method of farming that more closely mimics natural ecosystems--has provided the Gildipasi community with diverse crops and greater food security. And in a boom for wildlife, the practice has allowed the community to set aside 4,940 protected acres of forestland, as well as a marine protected area, over the past two decades.

Despite the Yucatan Peninsula being known as a hotspot for deforestation, the Tres Garantías cooperative has found a way to source sap from the forest's trees that doesn’t permanently damage the tree. The sap is used to create organic gum – the only of its kind – and is then shipped out around the world. This practice is not only sustainable for the rainforest, but it also sustains the livelihoods of the indigenous communities that are doing the work.

A former illegal logger in Sumatra transformed into a forest protector by planting 1,000 trees and leading his Indigenous community to secure legal recognition of 521 hectares as customary forest, creating sustainable income alternatives while restoring damaged ecosystems.

A community of mananambal, or healers, in the Philippines are helping to conserve the forests around their community by practicing their sustainable, healing traditions and spiritual beliefs. They protect the nature around them because it is considered a source of healing and home to spirits, and they only prune trees and gather herbs in ways that promote growth.

A team of rangers primarily made up of women is protecting 620 acres of forest around their village in Damaran Baru, Indonesia. The rangers' main priority is having conversations with squatters to prevent them from clearing the trees to use the soil, but they also provide important ecological information to researchers and act as environmental stewards.

Farmer associations and Indigenous and local communities across Guatemala are working together to recover ancestral agricultural practices and educate farmers in agroecology. The collective, called the Utz Che’ Community Forestry Association, is building agroecology schools that are free to attend and facilitate co-learning in which students learn from each other. Their work protects native forests and local livelihoods from the damage caused by intensive monoculture.

In the 1990s, Guatemala established the Maya Bisphere Reserve to stop the burgeoning rates of deforestation. However, some communities lived within this region. The organization tasked with overseeing the MBP decided to let the communities stay in the area as long as they agreed to a tight supervision of how they used the forest. The arrangement is known as a forestry concessions. Community-owned concessions must follow strict guidelines or face eviction. It worked. Deforestation rates are low, wildlife is thriving, and communities earn an income without depleting the forest.

After remote Indigenous communities in Papau New Guinea set aside some of their land as conservation areas, they wanted to know if it was working. With the help from scientists and The Nature Conservancy, they were able to use bioacoustics or audio recordings of the rainforests to map out the biodiversity. Using 34 recording devices, they were able to record the forest, listen to them, analyze the sounds, and determine that these areas had a healthy biodiversity.

After there was a fungal disease outbreak in the 1990s that affected cacao crops in Brazil, a group of 150 community members got together to collectively manage a farm to grow back cacao trees using agroforestry techniques. Because of their efforts, they sell their cacao to major chocolate brands and have seen their monthly income more than double.

Under an innovative scheme in the Democratic Republic of Congo, indigenous communities are obtaining the legal right to own and manage the forests where they reside. This ownership has shown success in slowing deforestation of the Congo rainforest and creating new economic opportunities for residents in these villages. “Rather than just being an add-on, community forestry is now being considered as a mainstream model for forest management,” says a coordinator for the Rainforest Foundation UK.