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Agroforestry Practices: A Sustainable Way to Combat the Climate Crisis and Increase Productivity

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Climate Crisis: Adaptive Approaches and Sustainability

Part of the book series: Sustainable Development Goals Series ((SDGS))

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Abstract

Along with local climate and terrestrial ecosystems, the effects of global warming, climate change, and their impacts, jointly referred to as the “climate crisis,” are severely harming human, livestock, and environmental health. If mitigation measures, which could partly mitigate the effects of climate change, are not implemented quickly, sensibly, and responsibly, it is assumed and predicted that the impacts of climate change and global warming will soon become a global emergency. Several strategies are believed to be successful in halting climate change and global warming while also promoting sustainable agricultural production. Agroforestry is one of them and is thought to have promising potential to address climate change and global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from the soil and storing carbon in woody biomass. Agroforestry is a distinctive and extensive agriculture system in which woody perennials are appropriately integrated with crop and livestock components to increase output while sustainably and effectively using the available natural resources. Agroforestry systems have the capacity to mitigate climate extremes like high temperatures, intra-annual climatic changes, rainfall events, floods, and droughts, among others. Agroforestry practices also avert the climate crisis by mediating microclimate, conserving resources, sequestering carbon, increasing and preserving soil fertility, and biodiversity. As a result, agroforestry has a great potential to not only avert the climate crisis but also increase productivity to ensure food, fodder, and nutritional security. The potential of agroforestry to combat the climate crisis and sustainably increase productivity is discussed in this book chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICAR-Central Agroforestry Research Institute, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Sushil Kumar, Badre Alam, Sukumar Taria, Priyanka Singh, Ashok Yadav, R. P. Dwivedi & A. Arunachalam

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  1. Sushil Kumar
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  2. Badre Alam
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  3. Sukumar Taria
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  4. Priyanka Singh
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  5. Ashok Yadav
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  6. R. P. Dwivedi
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  7. A. Arunachalam
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Bhatter College, Dantan (Affiliated to Vidyasagar University), Paschim Medinipore, West Bengal, India

    Uday Chatterjee

  2. Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

    Rajib Shaw

  3. Agriculture, Forestry and Ecology Group, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Department of Space, Government of India, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

    Suresh Kumar

  4. Agriculture and Soils Department, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Department of Space, Government of India, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

    Anu David Raj

  5. Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, Maharashtra, India

    Sandipan Das

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Kumar, S. et al. (2023). Agroforestry Practices: A Sustainable Way to Combat the Climate Crisis and Increase Productivity. In: Chatterjee, U., Shaw, R., Kumar, S., Raj, A.D., Das, S. (eds) Climate Crisis: Adaptive Approaches and Sustainability. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44397-8_12

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