Sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the DLR Project Management Agency
Welcome to ASAP
Agroforestry in Southern Africa - new Pathways of innovative landuse systems under a changing climate (Project acronym: ASAP)
Southern Africa is facing several challenges within the upcoming decades in the light of climate change that will negatively influence people and agriculture and new solutions to reduce these effects are needed.
ASAP targets the employment of agroforestry systems as a potential response. The project aims at investigating the ecosystem services and environmental benefits of agroforestry systems (AFS) as an innovative, multi-purpose land-use management practice in southern Africa.
A special focus will be the exploration of human-environment interactions within AFS systems and its benefits for rural livelihoods. A primary goal for the envisaged project is the education of students and exchange of early stage researchers. Project output will be disseminated to researchers and practitioners through local facilitators to establish a paradigm shift.
About Agroforestry Systems
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.
“Because agroforestry integrates multiple natural components and is at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, it necessarily brings together people from diverse fields of knowledge: agronomists, animal care specialists, landscape planners, foresters, economists, soil analysts and many more. This diversity of disciplines is certainly a strength, but its complexity also represents a challenge, notably in terms of coordination and communication.”
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
