Agroforestry systems (AFS) are becoming increasingly relevant worldwide as society has come to
recognize their multiple roles and services: biodiversity conservation carbon sequestration
adaptation and mitigation of climate change restoration of degraded ecosystems and tools for
rural development. This book summarizes advances in agroforestry research and practice and
raises questions as to the effectiveness of AFS to solve the development and environmental
challenges the world presents us today. Currently AFS are considered to be a land use that can
achieve a compromise among productive and environmental functions. Apparently AFS can play a
significant role in rural development even in the most challenging socioeconomic and ecological
conditions but still there is a lot of work to do to reach these goals. Considerable funding
is spent in projects directed to enhancing productivity and sustainability of smallholders
forestry and agroforestry practices. These projects and programs face many questions and
challenges related to the integration of traditional knowledge to promote the most suitable
systems for each situation access to markets for AFS products and scaling up of successful
AFS. These complex questions need innovative approaches from varying perspectives and knowledge
bases. This book gathers fresh and novel contributions from a set of Yale University
researchers and associates who intend to provide alternative and sometimes departing insights
into these pressing questions. The book focuses on the functions that AFS can provide when well
designed and implemented: their role in rural development as they can improve food security and
sovereignty and contribute to provision of energy needs to the smallholders and their
environmental functions: contribution to biodiversity conservation to increased connectivity
of fragmented landscapes and adaptation and mitigation of climate change. The chapters present
conceptual aspects and case studies ranging from traditional to more modern approaches from
tropical as well as from temperate regions of the world with examples of the AFS functions
mentioned above.
