ICRAF, the World Agroforestry Centre - who we are in Southeast Asia, what we do, where and why?

ICRAF, the World Agroforestry Centre, as part of the CGIAR or ‘Future Harvest’ family of international institutes, aims to contribute to some of the most pressing problems of this time. While nearly all farmers or rural people of the world are agroforesters, in the sense that they make use of trees as part of their livelihood strategies, their capacity to do so effectively can be supported by a Knowledge-based institution such as ICRAF that remains committed to public domain knowledge that is treated as international public good, and thus protected from individual intellectual property rights that are used extractively. As the constraints may derive from different aspects under different circumstances, we support research and education (capacity building) systems, as well as institutional change and policy reform. Of specific interest are the possible incentives and rewards that may derive from the maintenance and increase of environmental service functions. Providing new institutional pathways for the beneficiaries of such services to provide rewards (of various types) is the target of the RUPES (Rewarding Upland Poor for the Environmental Services they provide) program.

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