The potential for agroforestry to contribute to the conservation and enhancement of landscape biodiversity

Agroforestry is increasingly being acknowledged as an integrated land use that can directly enhance agrobiodiversity and contribute to the conservation of landscape biodiversity, while at the same time increase, diversify and sustain rural incomes. There are valid concerns, however, that the biodiversity benefits of agroforestry may be misunderstood and the risks to biodiversity understated. This chapter therefore reviews some of the growing literature on agroforestry and biodiversity in order to clarify key relationships, including factors and processes that amplify or limit the contributions of agroforestry to biodiversity conservation. Four propositions are presented, with reference to evidence for the propo - sitions and caveats to them. We conclude that agroforestry generally produces higher biodiversity benefits than both annual and perennial monoculture crop production, and that agroforestry is of the greatest benefit to biodiversity when it is a component of an integrated approach to land use. Important knowledge gaps remain, however, regarding the ways in which tree domestication and agroforestry promotion can be designed to stimulate new agroforestry systems that have greater positive impacts on wild biodiversity

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