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> Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a growing forest to get back the common graz

> Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a growing forest to get back the common grazing land on which the trees had been planted. In two Nigerian projects, villagers cut all the planted non-fruit trees for firewood, while protecting those that bore fruit. Recommended reading: "Seeing Like A State" by James Scott. The first section on Scientific Forestry directly applies, and the rest of the book conceptually does too. In summary, the state seeks to render its resources and populace legible, because local arrangements are very hard to quantify (and tax) from the center. This drive to achieve legibility inevitably distorts the world they are attempting to understand, for example by incentivizing monoculture forestry (easier to count the trees) instead of natural forest growth (providing many communal resources that are impossible to measure such as firewood, foraging, grazing, and so on). There is a very prevalent idea that "subsistence farmers" know little about the land they work. It's usually the opposite; they tend to have far more practical expertise than the centralized planners. If instead of planning these projects centrally, they were planned and executed by locals in collaboration with central funding sources, you'd be much more likely to get good results. The local farmers can usually tell you what trees will grow, where they will survive, what the village needs more of, and so on. To be more concrete -- why not provide a centralized program that subsidizes villages to plant trees, but does not specify which trees to plant? If the incentives are high enough you'll get people to plant anything (as the OP shows). But at a lower level of incentive, they will only do the work for something that they actually value. That's the sweet spot.

empyrrhicist 4y ago
That's the idea behind community-based participatory research. Some people get it.
pstuart 4y ago
You're spot on with your assessment, the only thing I'd change is that the centralized management does more than funding -- it provides a library of possible projects with expert assistance as needed. Locals still get control and ownership of their efforts but they have help when they want it.
- theptip 4y ago
  Indeed. Given the starting point, and the major shift in world-view required to do this kind of thing, I think of that library as a "phase 2" kind of thing. First get a few successful projects under our belt, then think about how we can add more leverage. But I strongly agree that the end point to envision is the center acting as a library/facilitator to share knowledge between different groups, rather than The Source of Truth in itself. Local farmers that succeed in these sort of programs would likely be happy to go share ideas and experiences with other farmers, and the government can certainly provide funding and logistical support to facilitate these small-scale collaborations. And it's certainly the case that there are some scientific advances that farmers aren't aware of, that "the center" can help to introduce; things like sensors, democratized GM technology, and so on, could all be developed centrally and made available to the periphery. Farmers tend to be quick to adopt new tools and practices that actually help them.
  - smaudet 4y ago
    "The Source of Truth" - what harmful notion. Truth simply is, there is no source. Speak for Source of Lies. Never trust any centralized agency - even if it did honestly represent what was true at some point it cannot hope to be what is true.
PicassoCTs 4y ago
Thats the problem with all these projects though, they are situation brittle, depending on a situation not changing for the worse and a constant economic drip keeping them alive. The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically modified Bamboo.The past is gone, it cant be restored, but the danger can be contained with no constant costs and outside of the containment vessels, something like the past one day might return.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically modified Bamboo" Bamboo needs lots of water, and I am unaware of a modified version that does not, so is not really suitable in many areas. How about low tech solar cookers instead?
  - PicassoCTs 4y ago
    Which provide a meal in the midst of the day, while its custom to eat in the cooler evenings. Concept failed. Sorry, my uncle tried to convince people of that in africa. Also watched those funny conflicts between nomads and farmers..
- xkcd-sucks 4y ago
  > drone planting... Variations of genetically modified Bamboo In many places "naturally evolved" bamboo varietals outcompete most vegetation to the extent where many people want to eradicate the bamboo
DoreenMichele 4y ago
Seeing like a state is a terrific book. It's possible that I learned the idea of forest death from it rather than a college class.[1] The German word for it is waldsterben and there seem to be few English language resources about it.[3] My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death. Diversity is critical to a thriving forest. [1] Or both. I was an Environmental Resource Management major. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749891
- gerdesj 4y ago
  "My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death." Quite, and I'll venture that any form of monoculture is generally in an unhealthy state or will eventually cease to function. At best it will be sub-optimal. Diversity must be encouraged. Whether you look at woods/forests, dogs, people, entire ecosystems, gut bacteria or whatever, you generally see rude health associated with diversity. English is of course a (somewhat) Germanic language but as far as I know we don't even have a concept of forest-death or anything like it. We'd probably go for something like "dying-forest syndrome" instead. Actually, we'd probably call it something really stupid and contentious like: "German forest disease" or similar nonsense and then rapidly give it a Greek and Latin combo name when the sheer racism of the original name is called out. Anyway, I recall wandering the forest near to this (1983ish): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsdenkmal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsdenkmal My Dad was a British Army Officer and he very carefully got us lost via a complex "contouring" maneuver. We escaped eventually but it is said that to get properly lost involves a British Occifer and a map. Give them a compass and you are totally doomed! Errr, anyway, we are wandering through the woods at Herman's Denk. Lots of trees and a lot of species seen. The woods looked and felt healthy. Any decent sized wood is a pleasant place for good reason - that's where we (humans) should be. We are a species of tree huggers 8) My company owns a bit of land and we have three huge oaks (40' plus height, at least eight foot girth) on it. I will eventually kick my local council into bestowing "tree preservation orders" (TPO) on them because allowing harm to them will we environmental vandalism.
  - thedailymail 4y ago
MichaelZuo 4y ago
The problems start when each empowered locality starts demanding exemptions to laws that must be enforced consistently to be credible, or even viable. It's a very difficult problem to resolve as coordination problems get exponentially costly as the number of parties grow. In organizational terms, once there's two or more layers of middle management, delegating decision making to frontline managers create wicked problems.
beezlewax 4y ago
Maybe they should plant in areas where people aren't struggling to make ends meet. Plenty of deforestation has happened all over Europe for example.
- veqq 4y ago
  Europe is more forested today than in 1900: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04...

empyrrhicist 4y ago

That's the idea behind community-based participatory research. Some people get it.

pstuart 4y ago

You're spot on with your assessment, the only thing I'd change is that the centralized management does more than funding -- it provides a library of possible projects with expert assistance as needed. Locals still get control and ownership of their efforts but they have help when they want it.

theptip 4y ago
Indeed. Given the starting point, and the major shift in world-view required to do this kind of thing, I think of that library as a "phase 2" kind of thing. First get a few successful projects under our belt, then think about how we can add more leverage. But I strongly agree that the end point to envision is the center acting as a library/facilitator to share knowledge between different groups, rather than The Source of Truth in itself. Local farmers that succeed in these sort of programs would likely be happy to go share ideas and experiences with other farmers, and the government can certainly provide funding and logistical support to facilitate these small-scale collaborations. And it's certainly the case that there are some scientific advances that farmers aren't aware of, that "the center" can help to introduce; things like sensors, democratized GM technology, and so on, could all be developed centrally and made available to the periphery. Farmers tend to be quick to adopt new tools and practices that actually help them.
- smaudet 4y ago
  "The Source of Truth" - what harmful notion. Truth simply is, there is no source. Speak for Source of Lies. Never trust any centralized agency - even if it did honestly represent what was true at some point it cannot hope to be what is true.

PicassoCTs 4y ago

Thats the problem with all these projects though, they are situation brittle, depending on a situation not changing for the worse and a constant economic drip keeping them alive. The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically modified Bamboo.The past is gone, it cant be restored, but the danger can be contained with no constant costs and outside of the containment vessels, something like the past one day might return.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically modified Bamboo" Bamboo needs lots of water, and I am unaware of a modified version that does not, so is not really suitable in many areas. How about low tech solar cookers instead?
- PicassoCTs 4y ago
  Which provide a meal in the midst of the day, while its custom to eat in the cooler evenings. Concept failed. Sorry, my uncle tried to convince people of that in africa. Also watched those funny conflicts between nomads and farmers..
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
> drone planting... Variations of genetically modified Bamboo In many places "naturally evolved" bamboo varietals outcompete most vegetation to the extent where many people want to eradicate the bamboo

DoreenMichele 4y ago

Seeing like a state is a terrific book. It's possible that I learned the idea of forest death from it rather than a college class.[1] The German word for it is waldsterben and there seem to be few English language resources about it.[3] My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death. Diversity is critical to a thriving forest. [1] Or both. I was an Environmental Resource Management major. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749891

gerdesj 4y ago
"My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death." Quite, and I'll venture that any form of monoculture is generally in an unhealthy state or will eventually cease to function. At best it will be sub-optimal. Diversity must be encouraged. Whether you look at woods/forests, dogs, people, entire ecosystems, gut bacteria or whatever, you generally see rude health associated with diversity. English is of course a (somewhat) Germanic language but as far as I know we don't even have a concept of forest-death or anything like it. We'd probably go for something like "dying-forest syndrome" instead. Actually, we'd probably call it something really stupid and contentious like: "German forest disease" or similar nonsense and then rapidly give it a Greek and Latin combo name when the sheer racism of the original name is called out. Anyway, I recall wandering the forest near to this (1983ish): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsdenkmal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsdenkmal My Dad was a British Army Officer and he very carefully got us lost via a complex "contouring" maneuver. We escaped eventually but it is said that to get properly lost involves a British Occifer and a map. Give them a compass and you are totally doomed! Errr, anyway, we are wandering through the woods at Herman's Denk. Lots of trees and a lot of species seen. The woods looked and felt healthy. Any decent sized wood is a pleasant place for good reason - that's where we (humans) should be. We are a species of tree huggers 8) My company owns a bit of land and we have three huge oaks (40' plus height, at least eight foot girth) on it. I will eventually kick my local council into bestowing "tree preservation orders" (TPO) on them because allowing harm to them will we environmental vandalism.
- thedailymail 4y ago

MichaelZuo 4y ago

The problems start when each empowered locality starts demanding exemptions to laws that must be enforced consistently to be credible, or even viable. It's a very difficult problem to resolve as coordination problems get exponentially costly as the number of parties grow. In organizational terms, once there's two or more layers of middle management, delegating decision making to frontline managers create wicked problems.

beezlewax 4y ago

Maybe they should plant in areas where people aren't struggling to make ends meet. Plenty of deforestation has happened all over Europe for example.

veqq 4y ago
Europe is more forested today than in 1900: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04...