![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The long-term contributions of agroforestry to landscape restoration should be carefully managed. Agroforestry began as early as 1977, meanwhile, landscape restoration, gained traction after the 2011 Bonn Challenge. Since missing the 2020 Bonn Challenge targets, there’s urgency to hit 2030 ambitions and secure the gains later. We use here, the participatory domestication of Irvingia wombolu, as an agroforestry pathway to mosaic landscape restoration. This paper describes the transfer of planting materials of this species between two agroecological regions of Cameroon. Over a twenty-year period; 2003 to 2023. we analyze the steps; reflections; performance of the transferred materials; and mixed fortunes they brought to beneficiary communities. A number of lessons emerge for agroforestry and landscape restoration practices; (i) there is need for future technical and social safeguarding, to support vulnerable segments of beneficiary communities; (ii) the cost of safeguarding should be anticipated; (iii) as the ‘decade of restoration’, looms models are necessary to anticipate the future; (iv) user-friendly models of ecosystem services of agroforestry systems are needed to leverage private sector funding; and (v) a ‘maintenance mentality’ and mechanism for restored landscapes, need to be developed.
Acknowledgements
We hereby thank IFAD for financing the tree domestication program. We thank ICRAF for their agroforestry research and for supporting and guiding the transfer of propagation materials. We thank the communities in Manyu, NDONG-Soa for their collaboration. We extend gratitude to IBAY-SUP and the students who helped collect the 2015 field data. We extend our thanks to WRI and IUCN for their leadership in the ROAM Methodology. We thank the WWF FLR in Africa Initiative and WWF Cameroon for their data on restoration opportunities in the Faro/Benoue and Kadey/Sanaga watershed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. World Resource Institute (WRI), World Conservation Union (IUCN), South Dakota State University (SDSU), and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC).
6. This program was supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
7. Outset of the IFAD supported tree domestication project in Cameroon.
8. ‘Off-season’ here refers to the fact that most indigenous trees species are in fruit within the region during the rainy season periods June – September, and any fruiting outside that, is considered ‘off-season’.
9. In the provenance areas commercialization has evolved to a point where buyers/collectors negotiated and paid for the products while still in the trees and are generally responsible for organizing cracking and marketing.
10. The farmers from the Centre region are French speaking while the provenance farmers spoke English and pidgin English.
11. Healthy trees that consistently produced large fruits with large kernels, based on the farmer/owner’s knowledge.
12. This consideration was not made before the collection exercise, but was noted when the collection areas (Manyu) was mapped and compared to the NDONG area receiving the materials.
13. The villagers said I. gabonensis has existed in the area before but had either died-off, but could not provide reasons why they disappeared.
14. Irvingia wombolu has been confirmed in Sa’a in the Lekie Division; 39 km to the Northwest of the NDONG
15. This aspect was overlooked in the social safeguards. So, depending on the socio-cultural context, it is advisable to ensure buy-in by extended family members when integrating trees in permanent tree-crop systems owned and controlled by widows or women in general.
16. Ménagères Rurales de Ngalli II.