Our role: Fostering an 'agroforestry transformation'

Trees play a crucial role in almost all terrestrial ecosystems and provide a range of products and services to rural and urban people. As natural vegetation is cleared for agriculture and other types of development, the benefits that trees provide are best sustained by integrating trees into agriculturally productive landscapes — a practice known as agroforestry.

During the past 30 years, agroforestry has progressed from a traditional practice with great potential to the point where development experts agree that it provides a science-based means of achieving key objectives in natural resource management and poverty alleviation.

Although smallholder families practise agroforestry widely, awareness about its potential and ability to benefit people trapped in poverty is inadequate. To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a global transformation is needed that mobilizes resources and removes socio-economic, ecological, and policy constraints leading to the widespread application of agroforestry.

The World Agroforestry Centre and its partners, building on three decades of work with smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and strategic alliances with advanced laboratories, national research institutions, universities and non governmental organizations, are poised to foster such an ‘agroforestry transformation’  in the developing world.

This ‘agroforestry transformation’ involves a future in which millions of poor farming households have access to portfolios of adapted and productive tree enterprises that improve their livelihoods in a holistic way. Underpinning this transformation is the imperative of accelerated scientific research to ensure a stream of necessary technical, policy and institutional innovations.

ICRAF has identified the following seven key global challenges, related to the Millenium Development Goals, to which we will contribute:

• Help eradicate hunger through basic systems of pro-poor food production in disadvantaged areas based on agroforestry methods of soil fertility replenishment and land regeneration;
• Reduce rural poverty through market-driven, locally led tree cultivation systems that generate income and build assets;
• Advance the health and nutrition of the rural poor through agroforestry systems;
• Conserve biodiversity through integrated conservation and development solutions based on agroforestry technologies, innovative institutions and better policies;
• Protect watershed services through agroforestry-based solutions that reward the poor for their provision;
• Enable the rural poor to adapt to climate change and to benefit from emerging carbon markets, through tree cultivation; and
• Build human and institutional capacity in agroforestry research and development.

Learn more in ‘Trees of change: A vision for an agroforestry transformation in the developing world’ 

For hard copies of 'Trees of change', please contact Claudette Disii at c.disii@cgiar.org.