The contribution of agroforestry systems to reducing farmers' dependence on the resources of adjacent national parks: a case study from Sumatra, Indonesia

There is much debate about the way conservation and development are best in tegrated to reduce the encroachment pressures of poor rural communities on the biodiversity resources of protected areas in the tropics. One frequentl y recommended instrument is to intensify farming systems in the adjacent ar eas, so as to decrease the need to harvest resources from national parks. T his study examined this issue by analyzing the effects of different househo ld land uses in villages near a national park on their propensity to harves t resources from the park. In the northern part of the Kerinci Seblat Natio nal Park (Sumatra Island, Indonesia) the park buffer zone is comprised larg ely of community or village forests and human settlements. The village fore sts were formerly managed as production forests and provided significant ca sh income to the village. They were converted into farmland, particularly t o mixed-tree gardens or agroforests. Natural forest coverage has now declin ed to 10% of the former area within village forest land. We analyzed the ch aracteristics of the mixed gardens and village forests, and their practical contribution to reducing farmers' dependence on the adjacent national park resources. Households with farms that were more diversified were found to have much less dependency on the national park resources. Households that f armed only wetland rice fields registered the highest value of forest produ cts obtained from inside the park. Households that farmed only mixed garden s had an intermediate level of park resource extraction, while those that h ad farms composed of both components (i.e. wetland rice fields and mixed ga rdens) had a dramatically lower level of economic dependency on park resour ces than households in either of the other two categories.