2024-01-05 07:30:28
A group of international experts highlights that planting more trees in agricultural landscapes around the world might help significantly increase the storage of atmospheric CO2. This strategy would be comparable to other natural climate solutions, such as reforestation.
Agroforestry involves incorporating or maintaining trees into agricultural landscapes. This term encompasses a wide diversity of configurations, which can range from scattered trees in pastures or agricultural landscapes, to linear trees in or around fields, to canopies growing above crops. As countries around the world work to reduce their carbon emissions, a new scientific study published in Nature Climate Change highlights the untapped potential of agroforestry in the fight once morest climate change and suggests ways to remedy it.
Estimates of the quantities of carbon stored by agroforestry currently in place give very disparate results since the figures vary from a little less than 7 billion tonnes of carbon (for the aerial part) to more than 35 billion tonnes of carbon. (also considering underground storage). But this carbon would be concentrated on a small fraction of the world’s agricultural land, estimated at less than 10%, which offers a very significant margin for planting new trees.
As for the potential for future sequestration linked to the development of agroforestry, it is estimated between 120 and 310 million tonnes of carbon per year, which makes it one of the most interesting strategies among those classified in the category of natural solutions for climate, also called NCS for Natural Climate Solutions. Agroforestry can therefore be compared to other NCS, such as reforestation, whose carbon storage potential is estimated at 270 million tonnes per year or to the reduction of deforestation, whose potential is estimated at 490 million tonnes per year. tonnes per year.
Strong disparities in the deployment of agroforestry across the planet
But the authors of this publication point to the lack of knowledge regarding how much carbon an individual agroforestry system can store and how this amount varies from farm to farm. They explain that “many studies have synthesized estimates at the farm scale, reaching broad consensus that the adoption of agroforestry can increase carbon storage, without providing details on the magnitude of this increase. These uncertain estimates of mitigation potential, coupled with poor ability to predict changes in crop yield, income, ecosystem services rendered as well as other benefits associated with agroforestry, limit the capacity of farmers and ranchers to make informed management decisions. »
The study reveals that the adoption of agroforestry and the ambitions to deploy it are not evenly distributed around the world. Some countries, particularly in Africa, are at the forefront of global efforts, while others lag behind. This is particularly the case in northern countries, where trees have been massively eliminated from agricultural operations. Researchers recommend “continue to develop and expand viable mechanized agroforestry systems in regions where monoculture is prevalent, in order to increase carbon storage and support biodiversity and ecosystem services. »
Incentive measures aimed at farmers should be put in place to accelerate investments in agroforestry, via national and regional government programs. Scientists recommend relying more on the international REDD+ program, a system which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to deforestation and forest degradation and which also includes a role for sustainable forest management. They note that only 17.5% of the projects listed in this program concern agroforestry. The researchers also highlight the need to develop new tree remote sensing methods that are harmonized on a global scale as well as the development of an algorithm capable of detecting the full diversity of agroforestry systems.
1704453172
#potential #agroforestry #reduce #climate #change
