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A Year in the Grove 1 AA yearyear inin thethe grovegrove A collection of papers based on coursework at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies 2000-2001 Diane Russell, PhD, MEM World Agroforestry Centre Photo: Bruce Marcott A Year in the Grove 1 Table of contents THE VIEW FROM 2005 ............................................................................................... 4 CONSTITUENCY BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES IN CONSERVATION PLANNING FOR THE DR CONGO ............................................... 5 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 5 Overview of the Congo Basin Ecosystem ................................................................ 5 Development Options and Consequences .............................................................. 7 The Use and Abuse of Carbon ................................................................................ 9 Reassessing Threats ............................................................................................. 10 Towards a New Paradigm ...................................................................................... 11 References ............................................................................................................. 16 SILVICULTURE FOR NON TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS IN THE HUMID FOREST ZONE OF CENTRAL AFRICA ................................................................... 21 Overview ................................................................................................................ 21 Ecogeography of the Site ....................................................................................... 22 Silvics of the Key NTFP Producers ........................................................................ 27 Silvicultural methods .............................................................................................. 30 Socioeconomic considerations in management objectives .................................... 34 Integration of NTFP management and other goals ................................................ 35 Next steps .............................................................................................................. 38 Conclusion: Draft Silvicultural Prescriptions for Community Based Management in Cameroon .............................................................................................................. 40 References and Resources ................................................................................... 42 NATURE OR NURTURE? CULTURE, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES ................................................................................................................................... 48 RETHINKING ENCROACHMENT ............................................................................. 51 LAND REGISTRATION: KEY TO SUSTAINABILITY? ............................................ 55 SOCIAL RESEARCH ON VALUES AND THE ENVIRONMENT .............................. 59 STRENGTHENING SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS THROUGH COMMUNITY LINKS ........................................................................................................................ 62 THE DEBATE ON TIMBER CERTIFICATION .......................................................... 66 TRACHEIDS IN CONIFERS AND HARDWOODS: STRUCTURE, FUNCTION AND RECENT FINDINGS .................................................................................................. 71 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 71 Tracheids ............................................................................................................... 71 Differences between Conifer and Hardwood Tracheary Elements ........................ 74 Evolutionary Implications ....................................................................................... 76 New Findings ......................................................................................................... 76 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 80 Annex: Gallery of the Torus in Woody Dicot Tracheids ......................................... 83 A Year in the Grove 2 INTIMATE WILDERNESS: REFLECTIONS ON THE GROVE ................................. 84 Psyche ................................................................................................................... 84 Space ..................................................................................................................... 85 Science .................................................................................................................. 86 Society ................................................................................................................... 88 Spirit ....................................................................................................................... 89 Symbol ................................................................................................................... 93 Strategy .................................................................................................................. 95 Scenarios ............................................................................................................... 96 ENDNOTES ............................................................................................................. 100 A Year in the Grove 3 THE VIEW FROM 2005 From September 2000 to May 2001 I had to privilege to take a year off from work and shelter in the groves of academe at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES) for the one-year Masters in Environmental Management. There I encountered brilliant minds, both professors and students, who helped me to grow in understanding and knowledge. I would like to single out Professors Mark Ashton, Graeme Berlin, Robert Repetto, Stephen Kellert, Charles Peters, Herb Boorman, and Bill Burch for whom the papers in this collection were written and who advised me. My time at F&ES allowed me to take my field and project experience to another level, to place it within emerging frameworks and debates. It provided me with a whole new body of knowledge: on silviculture, plant physiology and tropical forest ecology. A few themes run through these papers: § The Congo Basin and central Africa, where I carried out fieldwork in 1986-88 (in Democratic Republic of the Congo, ex-Zaire) and in 1991-93 (in south-central and eastern Cameroon); comparing and employing solutions from other parts of the world to assist the region. § Socially-sound conservation strategies, as a result of my work with the Central African Regional Program on the Environment (CARPE) in 1999-2000. § Creative integration of social and biophysical data gathering and knowledge. § Increasingly, non-economic approaches to conservation and natural resource management. § Love for trees, even as in F&ES we are not supposed to admit that! F&ES enabled me to develop some principles that I tried to deploy during my four years at the World Agroforestry Centre (see “a method to my madness,” my papers from 2002-5): § Community-based conservation is not a buzzword. Conservation requires community but community can form and be defined in many ways. Virtually all “traditional” communities now have a diaspora, as well as attracting “stakeholders” who are interested in more than just exploiting natural resources. Please read Russell & Harshbarger 2004 for more on this. § Sustainability is also not a buzzword. It has been studied extensively from many angles and dserves continued attention. § Globalization may wreak havoc on local economies and ecologies but it provides forums for a global community to emerge that places value on beauty, equity, bio and cultural diversity. § Good science is the most valuable asset of modern society: it is not just biophysical science but critical thinking, deep knowledge of a subject, peer review mechanisms and challenging assumptions at every turn. § Progress will come from evidence and science-based adaptive management, with creative integration of local knowledge, for conservation and environmental planning. NB: I made some updates to some of the papers but not consistently, so in general they reflect the state of (my) knowledge in 2000-1. I converted all footnotes to endnotes because to transform the endnotes into footnotes was more than I could cope with. This makes for cumbersome reading but as the endnotes contain lots of interesting details, I urge you to browse them. Figures were removed so that this document could be transmitted by email but for the CD-Rom version I will replace them. Permission to duplicate tables in the text has not been obtained so please do not use them in any publications without permission. Some reference sections remain incomplete, notably the DRC conservation strategy paper. Such were the exigencies of getting term papers in on time! Over the months I will try and fill these gaps. Eva this is for you and for Benjie de los Reyes who took really good care of us during this time. Yaounde, Cameroon, May 8, 2005 A Year in the Grove 4 CONSTITUENCY BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES IN CONSERVATION PLANNING FOR THE DR CONGO “There is great potential for conservation within Zaire because many of its forested lands are pristine” –World Conservation Monitoring Center (1998) “The rain forest, far from being an evolutionary Eden, is a dangerous,
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