Evaluation and Impact Assessment of the Alternatives to Slash and Burn Program

The CGIAR Systemwide Program on Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) was born out of recommendations agreed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It has operated as a CGIAR Program since 1994. The Program has an ecoregional focus on the forest-agriculture margin in the humid tropics, with benchmark sites in the Amazon of Brazil and Peru, the Congo Basin forest of Cameroon, the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, the northern mountains of Thailand, and the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Its current goal is to “raise productivity and income of rural households in the humid tropics without increasing deforestation or undermining essential environmental services.” It approaches this goal though a strategy of integrated natural resource management (iNRM), emphasizing long-term engagement of researchers with farmers, local communities and policymakers at various level.

The summary findings and recommendations of this Review are presented in this Chapter. The body of the Review, backed by a number of Appendices, provides the detailed evidence and discussion supporting this summary. An intermediate level of detail is provided by the final “Summary of Findings” section located at the end of each Chapter.