Agroforestry for climate action commitments and the Sustainable Development Goals

Agriculture directly and indirectly accounts for nearly 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is among the sectors most vulnerable to climate change. With the global population forecast to rise to 9 billion by 2050, we need to produce enough food to feed and nourish this growing population, and do so with fewer resources and in the face of increasingly erratic weather patterns caused by climate change.

Agroforestry – integrating trees into agricultural landscapes – is an important way of making agriculture more sustainable and productive by increasing food security and nutrition, reducing climate risks and storing carbon to mitigate climate change. Agroforestry is being practiced successfully in smallholder farming settings and in intensive, mechanized agricultural systems. Agriculture with trees: 

• Enhances and diversifies income for sustainable agricultural production through products essential for livelihoods and human well-being, including fruits, nuts, leaves, oils, fodder, fuel and timber;
• Provides important environmental services related to soil fertility, erosion prevention, watersheds protection and biodiversity;
• Mitigates climate change by storing carbon;
• Improves resilience to climate risks;
• Restores degraded lands; and
• Reduces deforestation and forest degradation.

Agroforestry is instrumental to achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) in the land sector because of its mitigation potential and possibilities to reduce climate-related risks. More...

See a selection of photographs of the event here.