The World Agroforestry Centre has announced that it will partners with French cosmetic company, Clarins to support agroforestry in China.

The partnership will provide training for small-scale farmers to produce sustainable supplies of plants for beauty products. It is expected to help preserve biodiversity and improve livelihoods through the identification of new products and the diversification of incomes.

Activities under the partnership will include identifying plants for use in beauty products, benefit sharing from the use of such plants, support for the cultivation of wild plants on-farm, and training in sustainable agroforestry practices including soil management and organic farming.

This is the third public-private partnership that the Centre has entered into in 2014. The other two are with Pioneer on seed stocks for nitrogen fixing plants and with Lafarge on the use of crop residue as energy for cement furnaces

Find out more: ICRAF joins Clarins’ Seeds of Beauty project in China