Solutions for risks to agriculture production in Viet Nam's Central Highlands
Deforestation-free jurisdictional approaches are increasingly of interest as a means to address unsustainability in land use. Viet Nam is exploring this concept in four districts of the Central Highlands region, with support from UN Environment, UNDP, CIAT, and IDH.
The Central Highlands is one of the country’s main agriculture production areas, supplying most of the nation’s coffee, pepper, cashew, flowers and other agricultural products. Viet Nam is the world’s second largest exporter of coffee after Brazil and the largest exporter of Robusta coffee in Asia, contributing USD$ 3 billion to the Vietnamese economy. However, this production comes at cost to Viet Nam’s forests and soils, and its smallholder farmers.
The Central Highlands lost almost 600,000 ha of natural forest between 2005 and 2015, and most forests outside of protected areas are highly degraded.
Farmers reap very low prices for Robusta coffee, and the livelihoods of 600,000 smallholder farmers depend on environmental conditions that are increasingly at risk due to poor management practices in the past, and future climate impacts.
By 2050 almost 50% of current Robusta coffee growing areas, and 60% of Arabica growing areas, will be unsuitable for coffee production.
Research by Conservation International and CIAT on future climate change modelling shows how vulnerable coffee is to a changing climate—by 2050 almost 50% of the current coffee growing area for Robusta, and 60% of the current area for Arabica will be unsuitable for coffee production. The climate models suggest Robusta will increasingly need to expand up the forested hillsides, and the demand for forested hillsides exceeds the supply. Climate change will also reduce the water available for irrigation needs.
Smallholders are incentivized to encroach on forests, for many reasons that are far beyond their control, including unclear or weak rights to land and forests, high rates of poverty, and lack of access to finance to invest in improved production on existing cropland. There is almost no economic incentive to pursue any sustainability practices, such as certification of coffee production, or better management (e.g., reduced use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers). Supply chain sustainability requires traceability of coffee beans to the farm level, as well as overall traceability in the sector, both of which are lacking in the present context.
What to do?
The ‘lowest-hanging fruit’ is intercropping. Intercropping coffee trees with other fruit and nut trees has been found to be a solution that could be highly effective. Farmers can diversify with fruit, nut or multi-purpose trees on their coffee farms, without suffering large impacts in coffee yields, while simultaneously diversifying and increasing their income. Coffee-avocado and coffee-durian systems have highest economic potential. The priority is to introduce fruit, nut or multi-purpose forest trees to increase and diversify smallholder livelihoods, reduce exposure to commodity price fluctuation, improve farming practices, reduce environmental impacts of farming practices, and provide protection from future climate-driven impacts. Many more interventions will need to implemented beyond intercropping, but this is a safe place to start.
The complexity of the solution set seeks to respond to the ‘wickedness’ of the problems that besets this region, and will only get worse. The concepts of the Deforestation-free Jurisdictional Approach would seek to implement actions in a coordinated and comprehensive manner, in order to address the direct and underlying drivers of unsustainable land use, by working in partnership with government, agribusinesses, farmers, and public and private financial institutions. Key interventions have been identified in the sectors of coffee, rubber, pepper and cassava. Interventions to support non-timber forest products and community-based eco-tourism have also been identified to provide income and stability. Enabling and governance elements include monitoring, integrated planning based on consideration of ecosystem services and long-term sector planning, land tenure options for people in forests, safeguards, and innovations in finance.
If you are interested in learning more about initiatives around sustainable land use practices in Viet Nam or other vulnerable agricultural regions, please contact me for more information. Please also see this story on the UN-REDD Programme website.
