trees on farms: unexplored big wins for climate change through landscape restoration

Trees on farms

Global Landscape Forum, Marrakech, 16 Nov 2016

Henry NeufeldtWorld Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Unexplored big wins for climate change through landscape restoration

Zomer et al, 2016. Global tree cover and biomass carbon on agricultural land: the contribution of agroforestry to global and national carbon budgets. Nature Scientific Reports, 6:29987. DOI: 10.1038/srep29987

• Trees on agricultural land make an important contribution to climate change mitigation: over the past decade they have sequestered 0.7 Gt CO2 per year across the globe

• This carbon pool is currently not but should be accounted for in IPCC and national inventories• There are regional hotspots both of biomass increase and loss: identifying the drivers may

help replicate positive trends and revert negative ones• This global dataset needs to be supplemented by regional assessments of carbon stock

changes to verify trends and provide better data for decision making

Zomer et al, 2016. Global tree cover and biomass carbon on agricultural land: the contribution of agroforestry to global and national carbon budgets. Nature Scientific Reports, 6:29987. DOI: 10.1038/srep29987

• Brazil increasing by 14%

• Argentina’s stocks showed the largest total decline decreasing 20%, (0.18 PgC)

• On a per hectare basis, Agentina’s decrease from 17.8 to 14.2 tC/ha represents a 3.6% decrease biomass carbon over nearly a half million km2 of agricultural land.

• ”Hot spots” of biomass loss are evident along the coast of Ecuador, northeast Brazil

Above and Below Ground Biomass Carbon on Agricultural

Land

The Contribution of Agroforestry to

National Carbon Accounting

• Hot spots of of biomass carbon loss in West Africa

• Sierra Leone - 25% decrease• Guinea – 14% decrease• Cameroon – 7% decrease• Nigeria – 6% decrease• Tanzania – 16% decrease• Equatorial Guinea – 18%

• Cote de Ivoire – 7% increase• Ghana – 23% increase• Madagascar – 24% increase

Above and Below Ground Biomass Carbon on Agricultural

Land

The Contribution of Agroforestry to

National Carbon Accounting

Above and Below Ground Biomass Carbon on Agricultural Land

The Contribution of Agroforestry to National Carbon Accounting

Increase in biomass carbon stock: Bangaldesh 20% - Indonesia 9 %– Malaysia 10 % - China 8% India 7%– Thailand 6% - Papua New Guinea 4%

Agroforestry has multiple benefits:• Provision of ecosystem

services• Farmer livelihoods through

diversification• Higher resilience to climate

shocks• Mitigation

• Requires a big investment in scaling up success stories by verifying results on the ground, developing the appropriate policies, market forces, extension and farmer capacity and science needed to reach ca. 100,000 farmers across the globe in regional hotspots

• Identify the drivers of change (positive and negative) and put in place structures to replicate success and invert negative trends

• Measure the benefits in social, economic, political and environmental dimensions

The Pitch

• We need to ensure that past gains are maintained and potentially expanded• We need to make sure that losses are reverted across the globe