INTRODUCTION

AGROFORESTRY LANDSCAPES IN THE ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE: FOR PEOPLE, BIODIVERSITY AND LOCAL ECONOMIES

Agroforestry landscapes, defined as the deliberate combination of trees and crops and/or pasture on the same piece of land and at the same time, are recognized as among the most resilient multifunctional landscapes throughout the world, with the potential to successfully mitigate the problems posed by climate change on rural communities. Agroforestry landscapes are among the best carbon dioxide sinks, also playing a key role in tackling global poverty, preserving rural income and maintaining key elements of local cultural identities. Preserving, enriching and restoring traditional agroforestry systems means simultaneously tackling desertification, reducing surface runoff, improving soil productivity and preserving arks of global biodiversity.

In Greece, traditional agroforestry landscapes cover approximately 23% of its overall territory, especially preserved in mountains and islands where the intensification of land use has been limited. These landscapes also retain ancient cultural characteristics, created throughout humanity’s long-term coexistence with nature in the Mediterranean and presenting a model of a living, sustainable land use on a local scale. Neglected by mainstream rural and forestry policies, agroforestry landscapes are still in peril: abandonment of land caused by rural depopulation is altering their structure, large scale forest fires are destroying their most valuable elements, such as ancient trees, and the land mosaic is degraded due to agriculture intensification and land reclamation.

Agroforestry should therefore be defined as a climate-smart land use in rural policies related to the CAP Strategic Plans, the Cohesion Fund, the Public Investment Program, as well as the European Platform for Ecological Orientation. Agroforestry is fully in accordance with other European strategies, such as the EU Climate Change Strategy, the European Strategy for Biodiversity, the “Farm to Fork” Strategy, new EU Forest Strategy 2013-2030 and the EU’s commitment to zero land degradation by 2030 (Land Degradation Neutrality). It is also supported by the LIFE, INTRERREG and Horizon Europe Programs, and new funding tools such as the Green Deal, the Recovery and Resilient Plan & Mechanism, the Just Transition Fund.

As such. the aim of the current publication is to act as both an academic-scientific manual on the urgent need for reviving Agroforestry and as a guide for setting new, EU-wide priorities for climate change mitigation, improving information exchange on this issue among political parties of ENoP members. To achieve, thirty-eight leading scientists were invited to participate and contribute as co-authors, providing us with the latest available data and characteristic examples of these living biocultural landscapes, the threats they face and how to revive and create new ones in the frame of the UN decade of ecosystem restoration. In this way and by providing solutions based on the idea of retro-innovation, these ancient and hardy landscapes coming to us from humanity’s earliest days could prove to be more resilient and productive in the era of climate change.

Rigas Τsiakiris

Forester, PhD, MSc Ecology Scientific coordinator of the current edition Green Institute Greece