Agroforestry for Rehabilitation of Degraded Landscapes: Achieving Livelihood and Environmental Security

Abstract

Land degradation is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agroecologies, in both low-and high-income countries. However, its impact is especially severe on the livelihoods of the poor, who are heavily dependent on natural resources. About two billion ha of land in the world is affected by various forms of natural and human-induced land degradation, water erosion being the main contributor (1.1 billion ha). Several scientific reports highlighted in this review show the extent to which soil degradation is threatening food security as well as ecosystem goods and services and depleting ecosystems in different regions of the world. Ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems is a global priority. The various restoration projects range in size from plot to regional level using site-specific abiotic and biotic interventions. Agroforestry encompasses a wide range of approaches and technologies for restoring degraded lands. Agroforestry options are being used to rehabilitate/restore degraded lands from intensive agriculture, soil erosion, deforestation, rangeland degradation, mining and overextraction at various scales, from plot, to ecosystem, to landscape level. By applying appropri¬ate agroforestry technologies, involving various species of forest and fruit trees, forages, arable crops, high-value medicinal crops, dairy and meat livestock, fish and poultry, the production systems can be successfully more remunerative. Agroforestry systems (AFS), which are increasingly being considered as climate-smart agriculture, have been designed for optimization of desired outputs, such as timber or fuelwood (agrisilviculture), or for specific land rehabilitation objectives, such as protection of soil from erosion (alley cropping and sand dune stabiliza¬tion), reclamation of salt lands (silvopastoral systems involving salt-adapted trees, grasses and halophytes), checking waterlogging/seepage (strip plantation along canals or boundary plantations), utilization of waste/sewage water (urban or peri-urban forestry) and assuring livelihood and nutritional security of small and marginal farmers (homegardens and social forestry). AFS play an effective role in improving soil fertility, conserving biodiversity, enhancing carbon sequestration and providing climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, there is a need to involve different stakeholders to design effective AFS for supporting sustain¬able productivity of land and enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services at plot and landscape scales, to identify best practices to diversify AFS and better understand soil properties and land use in degraded landscapes.