Agroforestry—the integrated management of trees, crops, livestock, and even fish on the same land unit—is a highly effective nature-based solution that delivers multiple benefits to people and the planet. Practised in diverse forms for millennia, agroforestry systems provide a wide range of ecosystem services: they sequester carbon above and below ground, regulate water flows, enhance soil fertility, and diversify farm outputs, thereby reducing both climate-related and market-related risks.
Small-scale agroforestry remains widespread in many developing countries, where systems have evolved over centuries. Local knowledge of how to cope with extreme weather often complements scientific advances, helping create resilient, carbon-sequestering production models that support both adaptation and mitigation goals. These varied agroforestry approaches offer outstanding examples of nature-based solutions ripe for further research, improvement, investment, and scaling up.
This special issue will present case studies that position agroforestry as a nature-based solution, examining its contributions to improvement of ecosystem services, the integration of traditional knowledge, and income generation of agroforestry products including non-timber forest products in global markets. The volume features papers from the International Workshop on Agroforestry (28 April 2025, Bali, Indonesia) and is published in collaboration with IUFRO’s Research Group 09.03 “Forest History and Traditional Knowledge,” within Division 9 “Forest Policy and Economics.”