For Journalists

The World Agroforestry Centre invites media interest in our work.

Our research presents opportunities for stories in scientific as well as mass media; from smallholder farmers improving their livelihoods by growing trees to how agroforestry is influencing the global climate debate.

For media enquires, contact:

• Paul Stapleton – Head of Communications - email p.stapleton[at]cgiar.org
• Wambui Kamiru - Media Officer - email w.kamiru[at]cgiar.org

CURRENT STORIES OF INTEREST

• Climate-smart agriculture must be livelihood smart too
  Climate-smart agriculture aims to increase sustainable production while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing carbon sequestration and strengthening farmers’ resilience. The World Agroforestry Centre believes that, to be effective, climate-smart agriculture has to target food security and livelihoods. The only way to get buy-in from smallholder farmers is to provide sufficient incentives for change or evidence of benefits. Agroforestry – the growing of trees on farms - stores carbon (mitigation), provides resilience (adaptation) and gives farmers produce they can eat and products they can sell. Read the policy brief: Making climate-smart agriculture work for the poor

• Major new research program on forests, trees, and agroforestry
  Launched in December 2011, an ambitious 10-year global research program aims to re-invigorate efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and expand the use of trees on farms. With declining conditions in forests looming as a threat to climate health and the wellbeing of a billion impoverished people, the world’s largest consortium of agricultural researchers will undertake this new research devoted to forests and agroforestry. Read more.

• Coastal trees would have reduced Indonesia's tsunami death toll
  Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) of the USA shows that the death toll of the devastating 2004 Boxing Day tsunami would have been 5% smaller in Indonesia’s west coast of Aceh if forest or dense tree cover had shielded coastal settlements. The paper summarizes research undertaken by the ReGrin project that the World Agroforestry Centre started in 2005 together with the University of Hohenheim in Germany, and Indonesian partners. Read more.

• Fruitful approaches to bolstering nutritional security in Africa
  In the sub-Saharan region of Africa, where nearly one-third of the population is undernourished, growing both indigenous and exotic fruit for local markets has great potential to improve the diets of smallholder farmers and increase incomes A study published in The International Forestry Review argues that the cultivation of indigenous fruit tree species in the region could make a much more significant contribution to the nutrition and livelihoods of local people if certain bottlenecks were removed. Read more.

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