Dear Colleagues, Many queries and comments sent to this list seem not to receive a reply..... I hope that this message doesn't receive the same fate ! >From a casual review of the topics covered in this list, it is obvious that list participants are from a very wide range of backgrounds and disciplines. Recent interventions range from precise technical themes/queries for specific information/position announcements, to broad (and heated) debates for and against the practice of industrial forestry. However there seems to have been little serious discussion of themes in two interlinked areas: these neglected disciplines are, in my view, Rural Development Forestry and, within this, Agroforestry, both highly relevant to the role of trees/forests in tropical and temperate landscapes. RDF is understood to include, amongst others, the following topics: farming systems analysis, forestry extension methodologies and promotion of local participation, policy and institutional arrangements as well as institutional change, forest-agriculture boundaries, protected area/buffer zone management, sustainable forest management, social and economic aspects including incentives for improved land husbandry, community-based timber production, non-timber forest products and the study of deforestation processes. Agroforestry, as a recently established discipline (about 20 years ago), draws on forestry and agricultural science as well as social and economic elements, in order to develop and promote sustainable, productive land-use systems based on combinations of trees, crops and animals. On the other hand, Agroforestry, as many landowners, farmers and indigenous people understand it, is a new word for an set of traditional systems and practices that are used to provide important tree/forest products and services within a predominantly agricultural landscape. Neither RDF nor Agroforestry are limited to tropical/sub-tropical latitudes, though it is in the latter zones that R & D activities have been most sustained. 1. Is there a particular reason why so few queries and comments on this list deal with topics related to these two disciplines? Has anyone ever carried out an analysis of the topics discussed on this list during its lifespan, to review whether the topics discussed so far have covered the full scope of 'forestry' within land use, or to ascertain any bias in the topics addressed? It struck me that there is a heavy emphasis on forest industry (thus the vigorous ongoing debates on plantations and the impact of industrial scale forestry) and that this might explain the limited attention to the nuts-and-bolts of RDF/agroforestry research, extension and project management. 2. Is this the RIGHT LIST for making substantive comments and raising issues that relate to the rural development forestry, as practised? Or is discussion on this list bound to be principally generalist, and, on some 'hot' topics, inherently polarised? Or have I misunderstood the objectives and potential role of this kind of list? 3. If this is NOT the right list for discussion of RDF as practised in the field, I would be most grateful for indications from other list participants of other discussion groups and lists that do cover RDF and agroforestry topics. Please mention any web sites and groups that you may know of. I am sure these would be of interest to many of the participants in this list. Finally, I would like to mention that the recent critique of plantation forestry and the debate that followed, raised issues that have been discussed for some years by RDF and agroforestry practitioners. Would more sustained discussion, on this list, of topics relating to RDF/agroforestry, go some way to address the need for solutions to the pressing conflicts over forest and tree resources, in sites on-farm, in-forest and on the boundary in between? Yours sincerely, Torsten Mark Kowal ************************ Rural Development Forestry Consultant, Apartado 189, Siguatepeque, Honduras, Central America. Tel. (504) 7730686 Fax. 7734863 ************************
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