Every year the world loses about 14,000 square miles of tropical primary forest, an area nearly as big as Switzerland and larger than the U.S. state of Maryland. That’s according to researchers at Global Forest Watch. Most of this forest is burned to make space to grow crops, which releases huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Other types of forest are cut down for firewood and building materials.
There’s an especially effective way to reduce the “slash and burn” agriculture and deforestation of public lands for firewood and building materials that drives destruction of forests in Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya and other countries—
Agroforestry.
Agroforestry gives communities an interest in proper forest management and mitigates the environmental impacts of agricultural expansion.
This is exactly what is happening in Nepal and countries in East and West Africa.
Communities in these countries plant and harvest various trees and grasses that produce food for consumption by both humans and livestock. Families expand food output and increase consumption of varied fruits and nuts—key to healthy diets and countering the encroachment of ultraprocessed foods on traditional diets. Surplus fruits, nuts and animal fodder is sold in local markets, which augments and diversifies income and helps lift families out of poverty.
Crucially, managing their own forests ensures families aren’t compelled to cut down trees for more agricultural land; or to do so in public forests for firewood and building materials.
Agroforestry not only adds CO2-absorbing fruit and nut trees. It helps prevent the destruction of existing trees.
With the help of facilitators with international development organization World Neighbors, many farmers engaged in agroforestry have formed cooperatives. These groups have established savings and credit programs to increase plantings and output and developed marketing strategies to increase sales of the nuts and produce grown in forests. Incomes have gone up while tree cutting has been greatly reduced or even eliminated.
