Environmental sciences and concepts have evolved a great deal in the last three decades. This study aims to account for the way environmental concepts have changed and to describe the conse- quences for the concept of agroforestry. The study is based on a bibliometric ana- lysis carried out on the Web of Science, and summarizes the literature collected on the subject. Examples are given to support the analysis: agroforestry-based coffee-growing in the Western Ghats in India, cocoa in Ivory Coast and jungle rubber in Indonesia. Agroforestry evol- ved considerably with the emergence of the biodiversity and ecosystem concepts, and conservation science now also covers ecosystems that have been modi- fied by humans. The development of agroforestry can be compared with that of agroecology: a study on the Web of Science shows a similar pattern in the last two decades. Although the recognition of agroecology as a science has introduced new ways of managing agroforestry sys- tems, the way agroforestry has deve- loped and its broad scope of application may have disconnected it somewhat from reality on the ground and from the far- mers who actually practice it. Precautions are therefore needed in designing and managing these systems: farmers’ expec- tations, in contexts that are determined at once by social, economic and political factors, must not be ignored, and agrofo- restry systems should not be exclusively geared to productivity. Agroforestry can- not evolve as an environmental concept if it is voided of its most fundamental goal, which is to bring sustainable improve- ments to farming livelihoods.
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