Part E Conclusions, recommendations

General Findings

1. In Greece and in other Mediterranean and Balkan countries, there is a wide variety of agroforestry systems associated with traditional land use practices that contribute both to rural resilience to climate change and mitigation of the biodiversity crisis.

2. The long-term resilience of agroforestry systems is due to their bio-social character, a result of the continuous interaction between nature and culture in different spaces and different times. As such, agroforestry offers alternative practices of conservation and a sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystems, while also ensuring the sustainability of local communities.

3. In Greece, the majority of agroforestry systems are traditional and often have a long history. They represent the ways in which humans exploited the available natural resources and interacted with the local environment in previous eras. This has gradually accumulated to become what is known as ‘indigenous human wisdom’ or ‘local ecological knowledge’, a valuable piece of cultural heritage often inscribed in age-old trees, the only living organisms linking us to the past of a particular place.

4. The adaptation of agricultural, livestock and forestry land uses to climate change is strongly linked with the need to increase their resilience. Thus, it is critical that agroforestry systems are maintained as successful examples of human societies’ adaptation to ongoing socio-ecological and climate change. Not through a ‘museological’ approach, but as active ecological and social laboratories of applied practice and research, which will add new dimensions to local knowledge with the aim of preserving existing agroforestry systems and testing new ones.

5. Preserving local ecological knowledge must be a priority for rural policies, especially in the light of the continuing population outflow to cities, the aging of remaining rural residents and the abandonment of productive land that could provide food and raw materials but is often economically unsustainable in the modern international competitive context. In fact, agroforestry systems are the most valuable allies for achieving most of the UN Sustainable Development Goals