Shifting cultivation policies: balancing environmental and social sustainability

Malcolm Cairns grew up on a dairy farm in eastern Canada, attended agricultural college, before interests in overseas development took him to Asia to work with a Canadian NGO. By 1991, Malcolm decided that he was more interested in research, and left Laos to return to Canada to complete a Masters degree in Environmental Studies. During fieldwork for this degree, he worked under the auspices of IRRI in the Philippines and ICRAF in Indonesia, whilst studying shifting cultivation in both countries. After completing this degree, he returned to Indonesia to work as an Associate Scientist with ICRAF. He developed a keen interest in how shifting cultivators were adapting to increasing pressures on their farming systems and began to focus on indigenous strategies for fallow management. This work continued until he left Indonesia in 1998 to begin work on a doctoral program at the Australian National University.