Page 134 - Agroforestry system - book inner (final corrected) - 9.-3-21_Neat

National level e-symposium on “Agroforestry system for augmenting livestock
productivity and empowering resource poor rural farmers”

AGROFORESTRY: TREE BASED SOLUTIONS TO ENVIRONMENTAL AND
LIVELIHOOD SECURITIES

A. Arunachalam
ICAR-CentralAgroforestry Research Institute, Jhansi 284003, Uttar Pradesh

(Email: arun70@icar.org.in)

Background
Recent estimates have shown that more than 1 billion ha of agricultural land have more than 10% tree
cover (Arunachalam et al., 2007). Of this, 160 million ha have more than 50% tree cover. In the scenario
of degrading trends in forest cover agroforestry is the most potential way of increasing forest cover (Deb et
al., 2008). Agricultural ecosystems can be further improved through agroforestry to ensure environmental
and biodiversity restoration, greater and sustainable farm productivity and realization of ecological services
including climate change mitigation and adaptation to improved livelihoods. In this paper, an attempt has been
made to elucidate the biodiversity and livelihood perspectives of agroforestry from viewpoint of changing
climate scenario.

Land use adaptation
Agroforestry as a traditional land-use adaptation (Box 1) may potentially support livelihood improvement
through simultaneous production of food, fodder and firewood as well as mitigation of the impact of climate
change (Upadhyaya et al., 2005). Agroforestry practices are strongly dependent on access to land within the
community. Households that do not have ownership to lands may not be able to benefit from the agroforestry
interventions (Arunachalam et al., 2002) for livelihood improvement, unless market regimes permit their
inclusion through value addition services.
Ecosystem services

Trees in a variety of ethnoforestry and agroforestry systems contribute to food security, rural income
generation through diversity of products and services, and can enhance nutrient cycling, improve soil
productivity, soil conservation and soil faunal activities. Nonetheless, trees in agroforestry systems can also
cause competition with the associated food crops. The contribution of agroforestry systems in India are in
the areas of (i) biodiversity conservation; (ii) yield of goods and services to society; (iii) augmentation of
the carbon storage in agroecosystems; (iv) enhancing the fertility of the soils, and (v) providing social and
economic well-being to people (Arunachalam and Arunachalam, 2006; Tangjang and Arunachalam, 2009).
Most importantly, integrated agroforestry systems have potentials to conserve animal biodiversity (Box 2) in
rural environment. Such integrated approach helps the farmer to harness the outputs of agroforestry systems
effectively and are able to recycle the residues within the system for enhanced production over a long-term.

Traditional Agroforests to Mitigate Climate Change – A case study!
Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today. There is a very little doubt today
among the scientific community that anthropogenic or human-induced greenhouse gas pollution has
contributed significantly to the climate change, which has drastically altered life processes and led
to widespread population decline and local extinctions. Nonetheless, it has wide impact on wildlife,

Institute of Animal Nutrition, Centre for Animal Production Studies, TANUVAS
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development 115