Abstract
Agroforestry is one of the most conspicuous land use systems across landscapes and agroecological zones in Africa. With food shortages and increased threats of climate change, interest in agroforestry is gathering for its potential to address various on-farm adaptation needs, and fulfill many roles in AFOLU-related mitigation pathways. Agroforestry provides assets and income from carbon, wood energy, improved soil fertility and enhancement of local climate conditions; it provides ecosystem services and reduces human impacts on natural forests. Most of these benefits have direct benefits for local adaptation while contributing to global efforts to control atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This paper presents recent findings on how agroforestry as a sustainable practice helps to achieve both mitigation and adaptation objectives while remaining relevant to the livelihoods of the poor smallholder farmers in Africa.
Highlights
Conclusion and key messages This paper shows how agroforestry systems readily bundle both mitigation and adaptation strategies and provide several pathways to securing food security for poor farmers, while contributing to climate change mitigation
The failure of extension services in poor African countries limits the possibility to scale up innovations in agroforestry for improved land use systems
At farm level, combining mitigation and adaptation in agroforestry to enhance the resilience of social and land use systems should be scrutinized in a context where the primary goal is to increase social and economic benefits through agriculture
Summary
Feasibility and limits of some AF practices. Objectives of AFS Increased soil fertility Low input fertilizer Increase availability of water. Scattered trees in agroforestry farms can enhance the understory growth by reducing incident solar radiation, air and soil temperature, while improving water status, gas exchange and water use efficiency [31]. These scientific claims are based on few examples and need to be substantiated more in future research. Use of forest fires for pastoral and Negative reserves, limited rights to land management, tree exclusion in agroforestry trees, Forest farming lands, Plantation excluding harvest drainage (33–40%) This complementarity between trees and annual crops extends possibilities of soil moisture uptake, making soil resource utilization more efficient than in pure monoculture [30,58]. In order to optimize agroforestry for adaptation and mitigation to climate change, there is a need for more integrated management to increase benefits and reduce negative impacts on climate (Table 3)
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