AGRICULTURE & RURAL DEVELOPMENT JOINT NOTES From Degraded Pasturelands to Climate-Smart Livestock Production Systems in Northwest Cameroon DANILO A. PEZO, 1 MUHAMMAD IBRAHIM, 2 AJAGA NJI, 3 JONATHAN AGWE, 4 AND CHICK HERMAN AZAH 5 The Tugi Silvopastoral Project (TUSIP) is a climate- smart livestock and pasture management pilot program that was introduced in the village of Tugi in the Gutah Hills of the Northwest Region (NWR) of Cameroon in January of 2010. TUSIP is a World Bank- supported initiative of South-South Cooperation be- tween the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Centre (CATIE) based in Costa Rica, and the Akwi Memorial Foundation, which is an NGO based in the NWR. Crop-livestock systems are the most prevalent form of agricultural land use in the Gutah Hills of Cameroon. Livestock production is one of the main livelihood strategies used by families living in the area, and throughout the larger NWR enabling them to accumulate assets and capital that can be crucial in ensuring the survival of their households in times of crisis. Livestock also provides a major pathway through which poor rural families can improve their incomes and social status. However, the combined threats of food insecurity, under-nutrition, poor health conditions, and climate change subject these communities to serious stress, limiting their ability to cope with each respective threat and undermining efforts to reduce poverty. Livestock in the NWR is managed using traditional technologies in an extensive agro-pastoral system that regularly encroaches on fragile and protected areas. These traditional technologies and practices are markedly unsustainable, and entail poor integration of crops, trees, and livestock. They include the use of fire to control weeds and external parasites in cattle as well as to eliminate residues and the over-matured grasses that are less nutritious for animals. Combined with a continual increase in stocking rates over time, these practices have resulted in widespread decline Source: Authors. in soil fertility and loss of soil cover that leaves the land more prone to erosion. Pasture degradation is characterized by the loss of edible forage species and its replacement by less palatable grasses and weeds. Patches of bare soil are observed in the pastures, and are easily eroded by rains. The incursion of pasture land into what little forest area remains has led to substantial biodiversity loss, and to reductions in available water. Water quality has also been adversely affected because animals are watered directly from the streams, damaging the existing vegetation and soils in the adjacent riparian forest as well. This pattern of land use has also increased emissions of greenhouse gases and severely diminished the volume of carbon that is sequestered in local soils and biomass. Poor pasture management is moreover a source of frequent conflict between pastoralists and farm- ers because animals invade croplands in search of food they cannot find in the overgrazed, degraded pastures, particularly during the dry season. ISSUE 58 FEBRUARY 2012 AKWI MEMORIAL FOUNDATION Dedicated to Touching Lives, Fighting Poverty Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized