The rising stochasticity of weather caused by the climate crisis, including floods, drought, and other weather extremes, are damaging agriculture and forestry worldwide, and are beginning to impact global bio-based commodity markets. Concurrently, the traditional knowledge of managing farming systems for resilience to external shocks provided through mixed farming practices such as agroforestry is being rapidly lost around the world. This is driving the development of efforts that seek to record and protect traditional knowledge and integrate it with agroforestry innovation systems to achieve greater economic and ecosystemic efficiency and higher resilience to climate and market shocks. These efforts include technologies drawn, amongst others, from life sciences and artificial intelligence, management tools and techniques, and policy and regulatory innovations. They inform current and future projections of land use management to improve productivity, resilience, and profitability, and tracking and estimating impacts and greenhouse gas emissions. Research topics to be covered under this theme will include traditional knowledge assimilation and dissemination, and any innovations designed to make the farming and forestry systems more resilient to the climate crisis, including land management innovations, tree improvement technologies, farm mechanisation and automation, big data, spatial and temporal data acquisition and management.

This session will examine trends in the policies, governance models and financial frameworks that impact all agroforestry systems, from Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) to intensive polycropping systems, with a focus on the interactions between regulatory and financial environments and farm-level decisions (the right policies can see trees multiply rapidly in the landscape, while misaligned policies can see trees rapidly disappearing). The session will focus on regulatory and financial environments that impact land restoration and discourage private-sector investment in nature-based solutions at all scales, from communities to transnational corporations. It will discuss the role of certification, carbon markets and the newly developing biodiversity markets, as well as the interaction between international agreements, national and subnational policies and their implementation. It will also look at the incentive pathways of public and private actors that affect land restoration. Research topics to be covered under this theme will include policy and regulatory reviews, regulatory and/or financial modelling, climate and biodiversity finance modelling, innovative ES market mechanisms, and studies of incentive pathways.

The integration of animals and plants is important to close biogeochemical cycles. Trees can improve animal welfare through shade, microclimates and the provision of fodder. The world’s drylands occupy a vast proportion of the land surface of our planet and are typically managed through various forms of grazing systems, including ranching, nomadic pastoralism, and combinations of livestock and wildlife management. The integration of trees in these grazing systems, including through natural regeneration (assisted natural regeneration - ANR or Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration - FMNR) has been suggested as a major contributor to greenhouse gas mitigation, while innovative ways of managing grazing systems can be deployed to increase grass and tree biomass in those environments. The impact of livestock in silvoarable systems can also be significant, notably through the suppression of weed growth and the addition of manure-derived fertility. Research topics to be covered under this theme will include studies of the carbon and ecosystem benefits of silvopastoral systems, the integration of livestock in silvoarable systems, the management of nomadic pastoralism for ecosystem benefit, and studies of different grazing management styles on wildlife, trees and livestock in silvopastoral systems.

Multistrata agroforestry systems involve cultivating tree crops like coffee, cocoa, and oil palm alongside herbaceous crops or under tree canopies, also encompassing fruit-based forest gardens and homegardens. These systems offer significant ecosystem services, benefiting both family livelihoods and the environment. The design and management of these systems are crucial for maximizing their potential while minimizing competition between crops and trees. Topics for discussion at the congress include climate change adaptation, deforestation avoidance, biodiversity conservation, product diversification, value chain development, and the legal and institutional support needed for sustainable agroforestry. The event aims to share knowledge and strategies to optimize the design and management of these agroforestry systems.