Landscape restoration for food security and environmental stability
Background
Deforestation and forest degradation are causing ecological and socioeconomic problems across the world. Degradation of land and soil also poses substantial challenges to meeting global food needs and generates additional significant risks to people, particularly in predominantly rural and poor countries heavily dependent on natural resources. Landscape restoration, including forests, rangelands and entire watersheds aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded landscapes. In today’s resource-constrained world, under the threat of climate change, restoring degraded ecosystems is key to safeguarding natural capital and ensuring food and nutrition security.
Objective
To model and apply integrated land-use approaches to guarantee sustainable food production and ecological integrity to landholders at small and medium-size level. We aim to promote well-informed use of agroforestry and woodlots to provide an additional source of vitamins and micronutrients, among other positive effects on the nutritional qualities of farm output, and goods and services provided by restored forests.
Expected Benefits
• Target country: Approaches that fully integrate agriculture and forests into a wider landscape restoration effort can not only avoid trade-offs between restoration and food production, but also can provide a framework to build on the synergies of multifunctional landscapes with significant benefits to food security.
• In Switzerland: Experiences from agroforestry production that integrate food production and environmental benefit are of interest in future land-use in Swiss landscapes, as climate change asks for more adaptive ways of food production and ecological integrity.
Contact Information
Jürgen Blaser,, phone: +41 31 910 21 56
School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, HAFL, Bern University of Applied Sciences
