Agro-biodiversity and CGIAR tree and forest science: approaches and examples from Sumatra

The Future Harvest centres supported by the Cons ultative Group on International Agricultural Research are committed to ending gl obal poverty, contributing to the 2015 targets of the Millenium Development Goals. They also anticipate that furt her progress will be needed beyond that date, which requires that fundamental questions are addressed now. The Millenium Development Goals can only be reached by reducing both rural and urban poverty. Key dimensions of poverty are lack of food (quantity, quality), lack of income to buy food, lack of access to clean water, lack of access to energy, lack of voice in the public and po litical arena, lack of access to rele vant education and lack of respect as a human being. Integrated natural resource manage ment is essential to addr ess all these dimensions of poverty, both for rural and urban poor. Forest use and protection, and forms of agroforestry (using trees on farm and in the landscape ) will be an important component of integrated natural resource management reducing various forms of poverty. Economic growth as provider of employment in urban and non-agricultural sectors has to be the main way out for the next generation of rural pe ople across the tropics. This requires both the provision of affordable high qua lity food and the provision of clean water and other environmental services. The real and perceived contrasts and tr adeoffs between these two aspects of agroecosystems thus need to be resolved. Agricultural intensificat ion has traditionally suppor ted the ‘affor dable food’ part of this relationship, but also caused concern on the environmental service side 1 . ‘Domesticated forests’ and agroforestry as pathway for a more grad ual intensification has the potential to balance the food and water aspects of urban Millenium Development Goals, while also improving rural livelihoods. The CGIAR centres are jointly approach ing these targets by partnering with national and international partners across the research-developme nt continuum, with separate centres responsible for annual food crops, livestock, fish, trees and fore st, as well as attention for integration at the ago- ecological zone level. We will focus here on the ‘tree and forest’ part of this agenda

---

Download :

English

---

This works is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

---

---