The future for agroforestry has never been brighter. Growing trees in agricultural landscapes can help to improve food security, tackle environmental degradation, provide a source of cheap soil fertility and sequester carbon. In short, agroforestry has an important role to play in tackling some of the great challenges we face, from rising oil prices to the latest food crises and climate change. This makes the work of the World Agroforestry Centre more relevant than ever before. In terms of the Centre’s institutional health, 2010 was an exceptionally good year. The Centre’s liquidity was further strengthened, and our ability to weather future financial uncertainty was substantially improved. In terms of all of the key financial indicators that are tracked by the CGIAR, our situation is among the strongest in the Consortium. This is not to deny that there is still considerable uncertainty about the future financing of our operations. On one hand, sluggish economic growth during the past year has caused donors to be hesitant in their commitments. On the other, it remains unclear how the CGIAR Research Programmes (CRPs) – these are at the heart of a new business model adopted by CGIAR – will be funded. The Centre is participating in seven out of fifteen of them.
Publication year
2010
Authors
Language
English
Keywords
trees, research, farming systems, agroforestry, degradation, climate change
