Forests, tree commodities and agroforestry systems -as well as their value chains- are and will be strongly affected by climate change. Moreover, forests and trees are key to buffer impacts of climate change on agriculture and other sectors, including water, infrastructures, cities and on the most vulnerable populations.

Actions mobilising the potential of forests and trees for adaptation have multiple benefits, mitigating climate change, contributing to the achievement of the SDGs as well as contributing to biodiversity and land restoration agendas. Adaptation of and with forests and trees is increasingly mentioned in NDCs and NAPs. There is also an increasing demand for cross cutting, systemic adaptation. This requires both the capacity to synthetize and organize issues and options inside a sector and to relate to other sectors and to broad challenges at national level. This is particularly important for transformative adaptation that changes the fundamental attributes of a system to respond to climate change and its effects.

There is a demand for evidence and knowledge to ground design and selection of options, for methods, tools, technical support capacity building for implementation of adaptation measures of/with forests and trees. There is also a key need to design and develop an appropriate enabling environment and appropriate learning loops and communication.

It is to answer these demands and needs that CIFOR-ICRAF, building upon a strong and diversified body of knowledge and track record, has organized a coordinated answer in partnership, to leverage the roles of forests, trees and agroforestry for cross-sectoral adaptation: TreesAdapt.

Adopting a concrete entry point, forests and trees, TreesAdapt is a transformative partnership platform that targets implementation on the ground of climate change adaptation solutions with forests, trees and agroforestry. It aims to constitute forests and trees as a binding object that can trigger intersectoral dialogues, facilitate the elaboration of a shared understanding of issues and the co-construction of locally-adapted solutions. TreesAdapt, because of its cross-cutting nature, is also a great vehicule for introducing system thinking in broad adaptation planning.

The TreesAdapt platform and its advances will be presented, and ways to engage and to partner will be discussed.