PP15 - Agroforestry, Livelihoods and Resilience: How to translate research into policy and practice at scale

1. Sessions
Ingrid Öborn1, 2 , Elisabeth Simelton3, Sigrun Dahlin4, Pierre Chopin1
1 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Crop Production Ecology, P.O Box 7043, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
2 World Agroforestry (ICRAF), UN Avenue, Box 30677-00100 Nairobi, Kenya
3 World Agroforestry (ICRAF), Viet Nam Country Office, 13th floor HCMCC Tower, 249 A Thuy Khue Street, Thuy Khue Ward, Tay Ho District, Ha Noi, Viet Nam
4 SLU, Soil and Environment, P.O Box 7014, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
Agroforestry, Livelihoods and Resilience: How to translate research into policy and practice at scale

Organizers and moderators: Elisabeth Simelton, World Agroforestry (ICRAF), Sigrun Dahlin, Soil and Environment, SLU, Pierre Chopin, Environmental Geography, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and Ingrid Öborn Crop Production Ecology, SLU

Target audience: Researchers, practitioners, consumers, NGOs, policy makers, private sector actors, students, investors, research and development funding agencies

Ambition: Showcase the role of agroforestry and agroforestry research and how it can advance sustainable transformation of rural livelihoods and landscapes

Agroforestry as concept and research topic is about 50 years old but it has been practiced by farmers for thousands of years. In simple terms, agroforestry can be defined as ‘the interaction of agriculture and trees, including the agricultural use of trees’. Agroforestry is increasingly a proposed solution for improved livelihoods and resilient landscapes. Adoption is scattered for various reasons, including inefficient policies (e.g. short-term, commodity-oriented support instead of systems), markets and investment. What to grow in agroforestry system also depend on local environmental conditions, so difficult to scale.

Farmer factor in numerous aspects when planning whether to plant a tree or not: the risk of natural disasters destroying crops and securing a stable income are two. Across Asia and Africa, particularly in middle-income countries, farmers are increasingly choosing between other incomes or to transform into high-value farming strategies to cut back the growing gaps between rural and urban living standards. With less than 2 hectares of land for a farm household, tree diversification could spread risks and generate more stable incomes? How do we avoid that agroforestry becomes a poverty or gender trap? How can sustainable and innovative value-chains be developed? What are promising examples of policy support for this process?  

In this session we show some key agroforestry interventions, their implications for livelihoods and resilient landscapes. We discuss the role of committed policy support and factors enabling the expansion of agroforestry.

Session contributors and organization

The panel session will start with four short presentations followed by some questions and answers in plenary (in total 45 min). Chair Sigrun Dahlin, SLU

  1. Taking grassroot agroforestry research from small scale into local and national policy - the AFLI project in northwest Vietnam, La Nguyen & Nguyen Mai Phoung, ICRAF Vietnam;
  2. Practitioners scaling agroforestry in the Lake Victoria region, Wangu Mutua, Vi Agroforestry
  3. Developing a national agroforestry policy – experiences from India and Nepal, Javed Rizvi, ICRAF South Asia
  4. Creating enabling environments via developing regional policy and starting national roadmaps – insights from the preparation of the ASEAN Guidelines for Agroforestry Development, Delia Catacutan, ICRAF Southeast Asia
Interactive part where group meetings will discuss selected questions around the topic for some written outputs to be presented in plenary (45 min). Facilitator: Elisabeth Simelton. ICRAF Vietnam

How to translate agroforestry research into policy and practice at scale?

Participants will be divided into groups of 4-6 people with some questions to discuss/solve. The task will be to formulate the 3-4 key questions agroforestry research should focus on to provide evidence for (i) policy makers (local, national, international), (ii) practitioners (farmers, extension, development NGOs, teachers), (iii) consumers and (iv) investors/funders (private, public, donors for implementation).

We aim at making a summary and synthesis of the session in form of a publication