From wasteland to oasis: Transformative effects of trees on farmland and livelihoods

Abstract

In face of today's alarming trend of resource degradation and reversal of poverty reduction, path-breaking strategies are needed. However, there is limited evidence to inform the design of policies. We scrutinized an agricultural development program that follows a holistic approach and includes the cultivation of fruit trees, to tackle this natural resource degradation and human vulnerability nexus. Can it transform so-called wastelands and lift marginalized smallholders out of poverty? The geographic rollout of the program produced a natural experiment that allowed for an evaluation design with treatment and control groups and a survey of 2000 households randomly sampled from 188,231 participants in four Indian states, covering geographically diverse areas. This is the first time that the livelihood impacts of such farming systems have been analyzed on such a large scale and over a 23-year period. Our results show that degraded farmland can be transformed into green assets if poverty alleviation and environmental regeneration are tackled in a holistic manner. We find a clear and significant trend in the improvement of socio-economic factors, including higher income and positive life changes, as well as ecological benefits. By assessing the potential of trees to reverse environmental degradation and alleviate chronic poverty, this study provides much-needed evidence for the science-policy dialog of development programs. This video (3 minutes) gives an impression of the context of the study (Video S1).