Building a global carbon database to characterize agroforestry as a natural climate solution

Abstract

There is growing interest in agroforestry as a climate solution, given its potential to store additional carbon in agricultural landscapes, while also enhancing livelihoods and biodiversity. However, substantial uncertainty remains around how much carbon can be captured, and how that varies by location and by practice. One of the central challenges is the sheer diversity of agroforestry practices employed across the globe. Species identity, planting density, and management practices, as well as many other factors, will influence the overall climate mitigation potential of an individual agroforestry system. Although recent reviews have begun to compile carbon sequestration rates and stocks within agroforestry systems, the current evidence base is not fully comprehensive. Individual reviews have examined only a subset of the existing literature and typically partition agroforestry systems into coarse categories that do not reflect the diversity of actual on-the-ground practices. As individuals, corporations, and governments decide whether and how to deploy agroforestry as a climate solution during this climate critical decade, there is a strong need for a readily available and comprehensive dataset to better predict climate outcomes across diverse agroforestry systems. We have therefore conducted a systematic review of published studies to find empirical estimates of carbon sequestration rates and stocks in agroforestry systems. After reviewing over 18,000 papers, we have identified 800 or more papers that appear to have the necessary information. We are compiling this information into a consistent data structure to create a publicly available dataset that can help to accelerate our scientific understanding of the climate mitigation potential of agroforestry and facilitate the incorporation of agroforestry into climate goals. Although agroforestry offers high potential as a climate solution, delivering on that promise requires a more precise understanding of how much carbon can actually be captured, based on the best available data.

Full text

Building a global carbon database to characterize agroforestry as a natural climate
solution
Cook-Patton, Susan1; Biswas, Tanushree1; Cardinael, Rémi2; Culbertson, Katherine3; DeStefano, Andrea4;
Garcia, Edenise5; Jacobson, Michael6; Neupane, Kripa6; Rosenstock, Todd7; Sprenkle-Hyppolite, Starry8;
Suber, Marta9; Surdoval, Alison1; Terasaki Hart, Drew1; Thapa, Bhuwan10; Valverde, Yesenia3; Wood,
Stephen1; Yeo, Sam1; Zarate, Alina3
1 The Nature Conservancy, United States
2 CIRAD, UPR AIDA, Harare, Zimbabwe
3 University of California Berkley, United States
4 BREC, United States
5 The Nature Conservancy, Brazil
6 Penn State, United States
7 Alliance of Bioversity-CIAT, France
8 Conservation International, United States
9 World Agroforestry, Peru
10 University of Missouri, United States
susan.cook-patton@tnc.org
There is growing interest in agroforestry as a climate solution, given its potential to store additional carbon
in agricultural landscapes, while also enhancing livelihoods and biodiversity. However, substantial
uncertainty remains around how much carbon can be captured, and how that varies by location and by
practice. One of the central challenges is the sheer diversity of agroforestry practices employed across the
globe. Species identity, planting density, and management practices, as well as many other factors, will
influence the overall climate mitigation potential of an individual agroforestry system. Although recent
reviews have begun to compile carbon sequestration rates and stocks within agroforestry systems, the current
evidence base is not fully comprehensive. Individual reviews have examined only a subset of the existing
literature and typically partition agroforestry systems into coarse categories that do not reflect the diversity
of actual on-the-ground practices.
As individuals, corporations, and governments decide whether and how to deploy agroforestry as a climate
solution during this climate critical decade, there is a strong need for a readily available and comprehensive
dataset to better predict climate outcomes across diverse agroforestry systems. We have therefore conducted
a systematic review of published studies to find empirical estimates of carbon sequestration rates and stocks
in agroforestry systems. After reviewing over 18,000 papers, we have identified 800 or more papers that
appear to have the necessary information. We are compiling this information into a consistent data structure
to create a publicly available dataset that can help to accelerate our scientific understanding of the climate
mitigation potential of agroforestry and facilitate the incorporation of agroforestry into climate goals.
Although agroforestry offers high potential as a climate solution, delivering on that promise requires a more
precise understanding of how much carbon can actually be captured, based on the best available data.