Annual Report 2016-2017: Harnessing the multiple benefits of trees on farms.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of trees, both for the survival of the human race and the livelihoods of billions of people. Trees contribute over 10% of the US$3.1 trillion worth of GDP created by the agricultural sector. This does not include timber sales or activities which add value to raw commodities such as chocolate, cocoa and rubber. Nor does it include the nonmonetized environmental and social benefits provided by agroforestry. Indeed, there is nothing better than a tree when it comes to sequestering carbon, bringing up water and nutrients from depth, building soil organic matter, enhancing fertility and creating more resilient agricultural landscapes. During 2016, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) drew up a new strategy to meet the challenges of the next decade. This provided the opportunity for our scientists in some 30 countries to reflect on past achievements and fine-tune plans for the future. Our primary aim is to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by harnessing the multiple benefits which trees provide. Agroforestry – agriculture with trees – can play a key role in achieving at least five of the 17 SDG focus areas. These include reducing poverty, developing sustainable systems of agriculture and improving food security, improving the efficiency of water use, helping to mitigate the impact of climate change, and halting the loss of biodiversity and restoring degraded ecosystems. Our new Corporate Strategy identifies four priority research and development themes which will enable us to tackle what we consider the main global and regional challenges. These are: improving farmland productivity and resilience; restoring degraded landscapes; supporting sustainable tree product value chains; and tackling climate change and delivering key environmental services. This year’s annual report groups our main achievements under these four challenges. Here, briefly, are some of the highlights. The Trees for Food Security project, whose first phase came to an end in 2016, was designed to enhance food security by planting trees on farms in four East African countries (see page 19). The project provides farmers with a range of agroforestry options appropriate to the ecological and social context in which they find themselves. It has also established long-term trials to shed light on the influence of trees on different cropping systems, and promoted agroforestry through rural resource centres. According to an independent review, the project has been “extremely successful, with some substantial scientific, capacity, economic and social impacts already evident in the partner countries.” Phase II of the project began in 2017.Tackling land degradation and enhancing food security lies at the heart of the Drylands Development Programme (DRYDEV), which involves some 22 partners in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Ethiopia and Kenya (see page 11). The project is working closely with farmers and farmers’ organizations to identify the most appropriate ways to enhance food production, restore degraded land and improve access to markets and financial services. It is anticipated that over 250,000 farmers will benefit by 2018. During 2016, scientists in the World Agroforestry Centre also played a key role in restoration activities as far afield as India and Brazil, and the Centre hosted a major seminar on soil restoration in Nairobi which attracted over 150 government officials, NGO workers and scientists. For many years, our commodity-focused research has sought to make tree crop value chains more sustainable. Since 2015, the World Agroforestry Centre’s Green Rubber Project has established comprehensive databases about the impact of rubber plantations, both positive and negative, in China, Laos and Thailand, and set up multisite experiments to evaluate the benefits of rubber agroforestry (see page 27). In 2016, the Centre collaborated with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to draw up new guidelines for the sustainable development of the industry. These were launched at the Sustainable Rubber Conference in Yunnan Province, and will have a major influence on the development of the natural rubber industry.

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