Dehradun (The Hawk): Agroforestry has the potential to achieve sustainability in agriculture while optimizing its productivity and mitigating climate change impact. It is well known that agroforestry plays a vital role in utilizing the degraded habitats for agricultural production in terms of providing timber, fodder, fuel wood, food, medicinal and aromatic plants, and carbon sequestration. In India, due to the increasing population pressure on natural resources there is an immediate need to address the issues of food security, nutrition adequacy, rural income generation, employment, environment and poverty. It is here that that there is a lot of potential of agroforestry which can help the small and marginal farmers in nutritional security, provide ecosystem benefits besides helping mitigate the problem of climate change through sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
Keeping this in view, Extension Division, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun organized an online webinar on "Agroforestry for Climate Change Mitigation" on 26th August, 2022 at FRI, Dehradun. Smt. Richa Misra, IFS, Head Extension Division, FRI welcomed all the participants and guest speakers and briefed the house about the objectives of the webinar.
The webinar was inaugurated by Dr. Renu Singh, IFS, Director, FRI, Dehradun. In her inaugural address she emphasized that there is a lot of scope of agroforestry especially in enhancing forest cover as per the target of the National Forest Policy along with its potential for biomass production and carbon sequestration. She spoke how the National Determined Contribution (NDC) for climate change mitigation would require massive plantations to increase the tree and forest cover. Agroforestry will play a key role in achieving this and a number of fast growing species like Gmelina, Melia, Eucalyptus and Poplar would feature prominently in this.
This was followed by the session on Advance Agroforestry for Climate Change Mitigation by Dr. S. K. Dhyani, Country Coordinator, CIFOR-ICRAF Asia Program. He spoke at length on agroforestry and its impact in mitigating climate change. He mentioned how urbanization is happening at a fast rate and in the process green spaces have been shrinking at an alarming rate. Agroforestry can play a key role in ameliorating the environment, providing critical ecosystem services, providing nutritional security, increasing site productivity besides providing additional income for farmers. The second session was delivered by Shri Amit Anand,CEO,Carbon Check India Pvt. Ltd. He spoke on Agroforestry and Carbon Trading. He spoke at length on the IPCC and Voluntary Carbon Standards. Case studies on Carbon credit verification were also shared through his presentation. The programme was attended by Heads of Divisions of FRI, officers and scientists of FRI and students of FRI deemed university. Shri Rambir Singh, Scientist-E, Extension Division compered the programme and proposed vote of the thanks to all participants and dignitaries. Dr. Devendra Kumar, Scientist-E and Mr. Vijay Kumar, ACF, Shri Anil Kumar and other officials of Extension Division, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun were present on the occasion and helped in successful organization of the webinar.
