Review on Role of Home Garden Agroforestry Practices to Improve Livelihood of Small Scale Farmers and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation

Abstract

Agroforestry is one of the most conspicuous land use systems across landscapes and agro ecological zones in Africa. Some of the components of Agroforestry systems are; home garden agroforestry, alley cropping, forest farming, wind break, river banks, park land, crop land trees and buffer zones agroforestry practices. Climate change impacts by complex weather-related phenomena have threatened agricultural and forest ecosystems and the livelihood of agricultural and local communities. Agroforestry has an important role in climate change adaptation through diversified land-use practices, sustainable livelihoods, sources of income, enhanced forest and agricultural productivity and reduced weather-related production losses, which enhance resilience against climate impacts. Like few other land use options, agroforestry has real potential to contribute to food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, while preserving and strengthening the environmental resource base of Africa’s rural landscapes. It has a key role to play in landscape-scale mitigation schemes under the REDD+or AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and other land uses) concepts. Home garden agroforestry system indicates that adaptation and mitigation to climate change will largely depend on the increased resilience of both agroforestry systems and of local management capacity. Despite less attention has been given to tree based land use option, agroforestry has played a major role in reducing household vulnerability to shocking. Smallholder farmers have already started mainstreaming tree based land use system as resilience to social needs because the poor are more exposed to change; Agroforestry is one of best risk aversion option to make them move out of food insecurity. Generally, 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. Agroforestry should attract more attention in global agendas on climate adaptation and mitigation because of its positive social and environmental impacts.