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Agroforestry should play a bigger role in tackling climate change

Planting trees amid crops and pastureland is doubly effective in fighting global warming and helping farming communities

Cathy Watson | Chief of programme development, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Never has it been so pressing to address climate change. So let’s hurry to embrace a proven part of the solution. The radical (but not new) concept of agroforestry – be it integrating trees to create shade over coffee bushes, adding trees to Colombian cattle ranches, or managing and encouraging shea trees to flourish amid millet crops in the Sahel – must move to centre stage.

The Global Carbon Project estimates that 2017 will see a two percent rise in worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, reversing the downward trend of the previous few years.

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