Agroforestry to Achieve Global Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Targets: Are South Asian Countries Sufficiently Prepared?

Abstract

Traditional agroforestry systems across South Asia have historically supported millions of smallholding farmers. Since, 2007 agroforestry has received attention in global climate discussions for its carbon sink potential. Agroforestry plays a defining role in offsetting greenhouse gases, providing sustainable livelihoods, localizing Sustainable Development Goals and achieving biodiversity targets. The review explores evidence of agroforestry systems for human well-being along with its climate adaptation and mitigation potential for South Asia. In particular, we explore key enabling and constraining conditions for mainstreaming agroforestry systems to use them to fulfill global climate mitigation targets. Nationally determined contributions submitted by South Asian countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change acknowledge agroforestry systems. In 2016, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s Resolution on Agroforestry brought consensus on developing national agroforestry policies by all regional countries and became a strong enabling condition to ensure effectiveness of using agroforestry for climate targets. Lack of uniform methodologies for creation of databases to monitor tree and soil carbon stocks was found to be a key limitation for the purpose. Water scarcity, lack of interactive governance, rights of farmers and ownership issues along with insufficient financial support to rural farmers for agroforestry were other constraining conditions that should be appropriately addressed by the regional countries to develop their preparedness for achieving national climate ambitions. Our review indicates the need to shift from planning to the implementation phase following strong examples shared from India and Nepal, including carbon neutrality scenarios, incentives and sustainable local livelihood to enhance preparedness.

Climate change and vulnerability of agribusiness: Assessment of climate change impact on agricultural productivity

“…Especially in the case of temperature, the major adverse impact on the yield of rice was noticed due to increases in the minimum temperature compared to increases in the maximum temperature (Bhatt et al, 2019 ). Similarly, the rise in mean temperature led to a decline in the productivity of crops like wheat by one to eight percent (Daloz et al, 2021 ; Dhyani et al, 2021 ) in the Indo-Gangetic plains of India, kharif (rainy season) sorghum (Sandeep et al, 2018 ) in southern and western India, and maize crops in northern states of India (Gbetibouo et al, 2010 ). Similarly, in the case of pulses, fluctuating temperature and disproportionate rainfall affected pulse productivity though the per capita income from agriculture has had a positive impact on the yield of pulses.…”

Understanding vulnerability of agricultural production system to climatic stressors in North Indian Plains: a meso-analysis

“…The development of heat-tolerant cultivar, modifications in agronomic practices, e.g., adjustment in planting date to offset the risk of climatic exposure, promoting area under climate-smart crops like pulses and nutri-cereals, development of more accurate systems for early warning of extreme climatic events such as heavy rainfall, providing weatherbased crop and livestock advisory, developing low-cost precision agricultural and dairy farming techniques are some of the research and policy imperatives for coping with higher exposure levels in the subtropics. Integration of agro-forestry on farms can also go a long way in mitigating the detrimental effects of rising temperature (Dhyani et al, 2021;Inder et al, 2018).…”

Proceedings

“…One of the most difficult task is the choice of the agroforestry species, given its ability to grow in a given location under the climatic and edaphic condition. Dhyani et al (2021) have identified some of the agroforestry implementation problems in this region of the World including carbon neutrality scenarios.…”

“…A review carried out by Dhyani et al (2021) report that agroforestry, as a science, has ample potential of mitigating climate change within south Asia. Paudel and Shrestha (2022) have reviewed Agroforestry Practices Prevailing in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka).…”