Agroforestry World
Rebecca Selvarajah
Rebecca is a science writer, manager of publishing projects, trainer in science writing, and novelist — working partly from Nairobi, Kenya and partly from Morwell, Australia. With over 15 years of experience in writing, advertising/marketing, publishing and social media, she takes on varied assignments, travelling, if needed, to conduct relevant research and interviews. Originally from Sri Lanka, Rebecca holds a BA honours in Psychology, with minors in Gender Studies and Sociology. Email Rebecca on r.selvarajah@cgiar.org
Distance from the homestead and soil fertility classes are clear entry points through which to target soil fertility management technologies. This is according to an article published in the Soil Science Society of America Journal by, including others,...
China’s 30-year drive to grow its economy has paid scant attention to ecological and social costs. A survey of six main environmental stressors in China reveals that domestic policies are inadequate and need to be reformed, say Ed...
International plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation have proven difficult to implement in Indonesia. Nationally appropriate mitigation actions look like being the way to go, say Meine van Noordwijk, Fahmuddin Agus, Sonya Dewi, Herry Purnomo, Betha...
The word ‘Acacia’ returns about 25 million results from an online search. The same genus name, entered in the newly launched Agroforestry Species Switchboard, produces a list of the 629 species names containing ‘Acacia’, easily navigable with links...
More intensive or reduced coffee production on smallholder farms around Mount Kenya may threaten the conservation of valuable indigenous tree species, according to a new study. In Kenya, smallholder coffee production has decreased by more than 50 per...
Viet Nam’s payments-for-ecosystem-services schemes might not be sustainable because it’s hard to tell if they are succeeding or not, says Leony Aurora Five years after payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes started in Viet Nam, success is...
The world has never seen a phenomenon like China’s current consumption of resources. Even though the world’s most populous nation is following an ‘ordinary’ trajectory for an industrialising country, it is the very size of its population that...
Our suffering planet looks set on a path of destruction, according to many. But leading thinkers gathered at the World Agroforestry Centre’s annual Science Week see the possibility of a bright, and sustainable, future Earth with secure land...
Supporters of payments-for-ecosystem-services’ schemes in Africa should reconsider the use of strict financial approaches and look to co-investment, says Leony Aurora Schemes that commodify the services provided by an ecosystem—such as clean air and water, landscape beauty...
Woodfuel meets around a tenth of the world’s energy demand, with its users overwhelmingly found in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, nine out of ten people—around 760 million individuals—rely on firewood and charcoal as their primary source of energy for...
By Patrick Worms Europe’s landscapes show surprisingly little cultural variation in any given climatic region. Where I live, in Belgium’s humid temperate zone, huge monoclonal cropfields stretch to the horizon, undisturbed by hedge or tree. Drive due east,...
“Land has been perceived as a resource that can be freely degraded,” said Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) . “We need to move towards an understanding of land as natural...
“The world needs a paradigm shift in agricultural development … to an ‘ecological intensification’ approach,” states the UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2013 released yesterday (18 September 2013) in Geneva. “The required transformation is much more profound than...
After four decades of social movement and community forestry programs in the Asia-Pacific region, it is about time to ask a simple and yet critical question: will forests in the region ever provide sufficient and tangible benefits to local...