Opportunities and Constraints for Using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for Land Restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

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 socioeconomic 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 socioeconomic assessments, embedded as colearning 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.

Assessing Social Equity in Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) Interventions: Findings from Ghana

“…For instance, a young man from Namoligo explained how he learned from his father about how to weed around trees on his farm in order to protect them from fire, while another farmer referenced the thinning techniques they traditionally used to manage shrubs on farms. While FMNR is often characterized as supporting the natural regeneration of native tree species (Chomba et al 2020), participants in our study indicated using FMNR on exotics. Some farmers also reported using FMNR on trees growing from planted seed or seedling (both exotics and natives), reflecting changing NTFP preferences in the region.…”

“…The tenure diagnostic proposed by McClain et al (2020), which was designed for use in Forest Landscape Restoration, is a model for such an assessment. Finally, if FMNR is paired with enrichment planting due to insufficient natural regeneration (Chomba et al 2020), special attention needs to be paid to how tenure regimes condition control over and access to tree products, as well as whether planting a tree constitutes a claim of land authority, as is the case in many customary tenure systems (Boffa 2015).…”

“…Given the long-established concerns about social equity in the wider natural resource governance literature (Edmunds andWollenberg 2003, Ribot 2004), it is slightly surprising that so little attention has been paid to social equity of farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), although a few have identified the gap Winterbottom 2015, Binam et al 2017). FMNR is a type of agroforestry based on managing plants arising from resprouting rootstock or from seeds in degraded agricultural land (Chomba et al 2020). FMNR was developed as a land restoration approach in the 1980s by Tony Rinaudo, an NGO practitioner (Tougiani et al 2009).…”

“…As Hansen et al (2012) and Binam et al (2017) note, FMNR, given its focus on managing and protecting naturally regenerating trees and shrubs, shares similarities with the traditional agroecological practices of farmers in the West African parklands, an agroforestry system based on the deliberate retention of scattered trees in continuously cropped fields and long-term fallows (Boffa 1999). While a recent systematic review raises important questions regarding the attribution of certain environmental and social outcomes to FMNR (Chomba et al 2020), evidence links FMNR to improvements in carbon sequestration, biodiversity, crop yields, and poverty alleviation Garrity 2016, Bayala et al 2020), and it has been credited with restoring seven million hectares of agricultural land in Niger (Smale et al 2018).…”

“…While mainly used to restore farmland (Chomba et al 2020), FMNR has also been implemented by NGOs to restore degraded woodlands and forests in Ghana and Ethiopia (Brown et al 2011. FMNR in this context therefore shares similarities with assisted natural regeneration (ANR) (Haglund et al 2011), which more often refers to a suite of approaches for regenerating secondary forests (Chazdon et al 2020b).…”