Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-4 (section)

=== 4.8.2 Local and indigenous knowledge for addressing land degradation ===

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In practice, responses are anchored in scientific research, as well as local, indigenous and traditional knowledge and know-how. For example, studies in the Philippines by Camacho et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r25|25]]</sup> examine how traditional integrated watershed management by indigenous people sustain regulating services vital to agricultural productivity, while delivering co-benefits in the form of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience at a landscape scale. Although responses can be site specific and sustainable at a local scale, the multi-scale interplay of drivers and pressures can nevertheless cause practices that have been sustainable for centuries to become less so. Siahaya et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r1026|1026]]</sup> explore the traditional knowledge that has informed rice cultivation in the uplands of East Borneo, grounded in sophisticated shifting cultivation methods ( ''gilir balik'' ) which have been passed on for generations (more than 200 years) in order to maintain local food production. Gilir balik involves temporary cultivation of plots, after which, abandonment takes place as the land user moves to another plot, leaving the natural (forest) vegetation to return. This approach is considered sustainable if it has the support of other subsistence strategies, adapts to and integrates with the local context, and if the carrying capacity of the system is not surpassed (Siahaya et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1027|1027]]</sup> ). Often gilir balik cultivation involves intercropping of rice with bananas, cassava and other food crops. Once the abandoned plot has been left to recover such that soil fertility is restored, clearance takes place again and the plot is reused for cultivation. Rice cultivation in this way plays an important role in forest management, with several different types of succession forest being found in the study by Siahaya et al. (2016). Nevertheless, interplay of these practices with other pressures (large-scale land acquisitions for oil palm plantation, logging and mining), risk their future sustainability. Use of fire is critical in processes of land clearance, so there are also trade-offs for climate change mitigation, which have been sparsely assessed.

Interest appears to be growing in understanding how indigenous and local knowledge inform land users’ responses to degradation, as scientists engage farmers as experts in processes of knowledge co-production and co-innovation (Oliver et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1028|1028]]</sup> ; Bitzer and Bijman 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1029|1029]]</sup> ). This can help to introduce, implement, adapt and promote the use of locally appropriate responses (Schwilch et al. 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r1030|1030]]</sup> ). Indeed, studies strongly agree on the importance of engaging local populations in both sustainable land and forest management. Meta-analyses in tropical regions that examined both forests in protected areas and community-managed forests suggest that deforestation rates are lower, with less variation in deforestation rates presenting in community-managed forests compared to protected forests (Porter-Bolland et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1031|1031]]</sup> ). This suggests that consideration of the social and economic needs of local human populations is vital in preventing forest degradation (Ward et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1032|1032]]</sup> ). However, while disciplines such as ethnopedology seek to record and understand how local people perceive, classify and use soil, and draw on that information to inform its management (Barrera-Bassols and Zinck 2003 <sup>[[#fn:r1033|1033]]</sup> ), links with climate change and its impacts (perceived and actual) are not generally considered.

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