Environmental Services, Equity and Productivity: Interview with Dr. Meine van Noordwijk, Chief Science Advisor at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

ICRAF looks at the ecological relationships within agroforestry systems. The important point is that most debates still centre around a dichotomy: there is nature and agriculture, nature provides environmental services and agriculture does not. We look at the agroforestry system as in between those two poles and find that, although not as much as nature forest, there is still substantial provision of environmental services. Of course agroforestry is also less productive than very intensive agriculture, which means that if all economic incentives purely correspond with productivity, then we will lose these intermediate intensity systems. For many years policymakers have made statistics about forest and agriculture as separate divisions. We see that actually it can be both; agroforestry systems in wellmanaged landscapes can be productive as well as protect the environment. You have to look at a landscape as a whole, the forest, the trees outside of the forest and the agroforestry, and try to make sure that policies will be realistic, will be based on services that are actually provided. Then you can start designing adequate incentives.