Conclusions
Although swidden agriculture has long been at the center of the debates
over climate change and biodiversity, it remains an essential livelihood
source for hunter-gatherers and become an increasingly important farming
system for global ongoing initiatives. Global rising demand of food,
commodities and bio-energy by a growing population have telecoupling
effects on tropical commercial plantation expansion. Meanwhile, land
scarcity and loss due to dispossession and grabbing in the name of
forest conservation and development diminish swiddening practices and
shorten fallow cycles, which undermine the sustainability of swidden
agriculture in this century. In view of the importance and research
status of swidden agriculture, we proposed the framework of
forest-swidden-plantation (FSP) nexus in the tropics and highlighted the
processes, mechanisms, scenarios of the dynamics of the FSP nexus on one
hand, and to promote the sustainable development of swidden agriculture
for sake of a synergetic goal of global climate mitigation and tropical
poverty alleviation on the other hand.