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Carbon sequestration potential in agroforestry system in India: an analysis for carbon project

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Abstract

India is a large developing country with more than seventy per cent population earning their livelihood from diverse land use activities. Changing climate is a worry for the nation but the country cannot afford to slow down the developing/developmental activities. Landuse activities in irrigated agro-ecosystems have started shifting from traditional agriculture to smart agriculture to meet the country’s food requirements and secure livelihood security. But this shift has been achieved at the cost of natural resources and degradation of environment. Realizing the benefits of climate smart agriculture in the changing scenario, farmers are adapting slowly to it but appropriate details of climate vulnerability and package of climate smart agriculture including tree-crop interaction are very limited for adoption. It is important to assess the strengths and weaknesses of carbon sequestration (CS) projects with respect to their practical potential rather than biophysical potential for registration under clean development mechanism for additional income. There is a need to address the technical, economic, legal and social issues of the adopters because they have to lock their land for long time for CS projects, therefore confidence building measures are essentially required to make them aware/motivate for adoption of trees on their farms for mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and adaptation against changing climate. However, the potential of agroforestry (AF) systems has not been reflected in registration of CS projects due to lack of best practices in AF, procedures and methodologies for carbon accounting, etc., which requires thorough review to develop appropriate models for payments of environmental benefits. Poplar based AF has been considered here as an example to understand the process of accounting CS and its practical applicability for environmental payments.

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Acknowledgments

Authors express their gratitude to the scientists associated in quantifying the CS potentials of AF interventions and supporting the policy institutions to address the landuse change in climate change discussions. We are also thankful to Mr.VRS Rawat (Scientist-E, Forest and Climate Change Division, ICFRE Dehradun, India) for his valuable interactions on the subject. Suggestions of anonymous reviewers in improving the text are also acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forestry & Natural Resources, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 141 004, India

    Rajni Sharma & Sanjeev K. Chauhan

  2. Global Change Research Center AS CR, v.v.i., Bělidla 986/4a, 603 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Abhishek M. Tripathi

  3. Institute of Agriculture Systems and Bioclimatology, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Abhishek M. Tripathi

  4. Institute of Forest Ecology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Abhishek M. Tripathi

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  1. Rajni Sharma
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Correspondence to Sanjeev K. Chauhan.

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Sharma, R., Chauhan, S.K. & Tripathi, A.M. Carbon sequestration potential in agroforestry system in India: an analysis for carbon project. Agroforest Syst 90, 631–644 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-015-9840-8

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