The challenge of HIV/AIDS: Where does agroforestry fit in? - World ...

Keywords:Trees outside forests (TOF), agroforestry, livelihoods,sustainable rural development, improving the globalenvironment, landscape restorationChapter 21Trees outside forests:Facing smallholder challengesSyaka Sadio, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Patricia Negreros-Castillo,Iowa State University, USAAbstractDuring the past three decades, rapid population growth has been accompanied by increased demandfor agricultural land and forest products. As a result, widespread degradation of natural resources, desertificationand loss of biodiversity has occurred, together with food insecurity and extreme povertyin the most vulnerable areas. Trees offer great potential to restore degraded ecosystems, to enhancelivelihoods based on production of food and medicines and to provide environmental and economicbenefits. It is now agreed that a bold approach is needed to promote tree planting and improve themanagement of trees outside forests (TOF). The sustainable management of TOF resources will play anincreasing role in efforts to reduce land degradation and poverty and improve food security, if appropriatepolicy measures are taken and farmers are placed at the centre of development efforts.IntroductionDuring the past three decades, rapid populationgrowth and expansion of agriculture has led towidespread degradation of natural resources. Thecumulative effects of this expansion have producedserious global environmental, social and economicproblems, including loss of biodiversity and extremepoverty among people living in the more vulnerableareas.Trees have the potential to rehabilitate degraded landsand ecosystems, restructure the landscape, provide arange of benefits and products (wood and non-woodproducts for food and medicines), and render environmentaland socioeconomic services. The importanceof trees in addressing these issues has been wellunderstood by farmers through the centuries and hasbeen clearly demonstrated in traditional tree-basedagricultural farming and land-use systems, such asshifting cultivation in the humid tropics and grazing inthe semi-arid savanna areas.The concept of trees outside forestsAlthough they play an important role in environmentalprotection, landscape restructuring andlivelihoods, trees on non-forest land received littleattention from scientists, practitioners, planners, decisionmakers and policy makers until the early 1990s.At the Kotka meeting in 1993 (FAO 2000), expertsrecognized the uniqueness and importance of differentresource types and defined a new concept of‘trees outside forests’ (TOF), which considers trees atall levels and in all aspects, emphasizing their social