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Sustaining societies through forests and trees:
agroforestry and the United Nations conventions
Kate Langford, World Agroforestry Centre, Kenya
C
limate change, biodiversity loss, and land and water
degradation are inextricably linked. It is widely
acknowledged that to lessen the impact of these global
problems on ecosystem services and human well-being, innova-
tive approaches are urgently needed which balance environment
and development needs.
Agroforestry – the integration of trees into agricultural systems
and/or the management of forests by farmers – is one such approach,
with the ability to reduce poverty, improve productivity and achieve
environmental sustainability.
For historical reasons, we tend to make clear divisions between
what we consider to be agriculture and what is forest. Statistics,
institutions and scientific traditions follow this divide, however in
the actual landscapes we care about there is no such division. Trees
exist outside of forests in agricultural landscapes, and in
many cases farms encroach upon forests. In reality, there
is a gradient of tree densities for which no single forest
definition, and certainly not those currently used, makes
sense. Agroforestry sits at the interface between forests
and agriculture.
Far from a new practice, agroforestry is a traditional
land use that has been developed by subsistence farmers
throughout most of the world. A study in 2009 found that
48 per cent of the world’s farmland has greater than 10 per
cent tree cover which represents over 1 billion hectares of
land and 558 million people.
1
Six million square kilome-
tres – or 27 per cent of agricultural land globally – has
more than 20 per cent tree cover. Beyond this, large areas
which are classified as forest provide a living to farmers
A farmer extracting rubber in Indonesia
Image: Charlie Pye-Smith/World Agroforestry Centre