A multifunctional approach of integrating agriculture and forestry will be far more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emission and increasing food production than the practice of instensifying agriculture and sparing forests, reports Malawi’s The Nation this week.
The article quotes World Agroforestry Centre’s Peter Minang at a side-event for the UNFCCC conference in Bonn, Germany earlier this month. It points out that evidence from benchmark sites across the tropics is proving that an integrated, multifunctional approach that allows for land-use sharing in agriculture, forests and other functions can achieve good results in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and raising food production levels.
This approach provides more realistic solutions than the popular view on sparing land for forests through agricultural intensification. Agroforestry enriches the soil, provides the right conditions for high-qulairty food production, and trees act as carbon stocks helping top mitigate climate change.
“Relying on the sparing theory without active forest protection may even cause further deforestation,” said Dr Minang, Coordinator of the Centre’s Alternatives to Slash Burn programme. “In an open economy, demand is not constant and farmers will clear more land to meet increased demand for food products and to make greater profit.”
Read the full The Nation article here.
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