CIAP Talk Tok

Agroforestry for enhancing livelihood of rural people and conserving natural resources in forestry area!

HYOJUNG LEE
Director of Economic Development Department
KOICA

Since more than 60% of the world's poor live in rural areas, and the economic development of rural people contributes for national economic development, thereby most of ODA (Official Development Assistance) project aims to increase income of household in developing countries.

Agricultural production activities utilizing natural resources such as land, water, and forests are essential to increase income in rural areas. On the other hand, conservation of natural resources in rural areas is an important factor in coping with climate change. As SDGs emphasizes integrated approach for economically, socially, and environmentally- balanced development, agroforestry could be an answer for the issue.

According to FAO’s definition, agroforestry is “a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos, etc.) are deliberately used on the same land-management units as agricultural crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence.”

To secure SDGs 2(Food security and sustainable agriculture), SDGs 13(Climate change) and SDGS 15(Land ecosystem), agroforestry can provide the benefits through the systems as follow:

Agrisilvicultural systems are a combination of crops and trees, such as alley cropping or homegardens.
Silvopastoral systems combine forestry and grazing of domesticated animals on pastures, rangelands or on-farm.
The three elements, namely trees, animals and crops, can be integrated in what are called agrosylvopastoral systems and are illustrated by homegardens involving animals as well as scattered trees on croplands used for grazing after harvests.

Why Agroforestry?

A Project Case of Guatemala

Let me allow introduce an “On-Going” project of KOICA as an example for agroforestry. The project title is “Promoting and Developing Capacity for Integrated Agro-Forestry Systems Addressing Climate Change in Guatemala.”

To improve small farmer’s livelihoods through optimized agroforestry system coping with climate change and value chain access, KOICA and the Government of Guatemala made an agreement to launch the project. Basically this project is designed under the KOICA’s mid-term strategy in rural development as follows.

[KOICA’s Mid-term Strategy (2016-2020) in Rural Development]

Strategic Objective	Major Programs
1. Sustainable production and Expanding Market Access	1.Improvement of agricultural production infrastructure - Improvement of agricultural production infrastructure - Increase of agricultural crop productivity 2. Rural capacity building - Increase in farmers organization and rural household income - Enhance farm labor capacity - Improve project on agricultural extension 3. Enhancing agricultural marketability - Postharvest management - Expanding agricultural value chain
2. Inclusive and Sustainable rural Development	1. Inclusive and Sustainable rural development
3. Conservation of rural production system and natural resource by responding to climate change	1. Sustainable forestry development - Conservation of ecological reforestation and biodiversity 2. Conserving and restoring agricultural and fisheries ecosystem - Conserving agricultural and fisheries resources and biodiversity - Practicing sustainable farming

This project is implemented by FAO and National Institute of Forestry (INAB) as governmental counterpart of Guatemala from2018 to 2021 with the budget amount of USD 7million. For the three regions (Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz and Peten, as