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  • Publication | 2019
Agroforestry Paradigms
Global Food and Nutrition Security

In the four decades of its existence, agroforestry as a concept has been understood and defined in multiple ways, often referring to a specific system scale of interest. Its potential contribution to ‘restoration’ and ’conservation’ alongside ‘productivity’ of land has been expressed in many ways, emphasizing soil conservation, land degradation, food security, land use for integrated natural resource management, or biodiversity conservation. The range of studies include trees and their domestication, tree–soil–crop interactions at plot level, the interactions between land, labour, knowledge and risk at farm level, human livelihoods at landscape scale, dynamics of tree-cover change in space and time, social-ecological systems at landscape scale, the multiple value chains that start with tree, crop and livestock production in landscapes, and the policy domains of forestry and agriculture in the context of sustainable development goals, global change and multi-species agroecosystems, the role of trees in agro-ecology, responsible trade in globalizing markets and global climate change. The inclusion of all these aspects under a single term may indicate a need for greater clarity on the different system scales involved and their connections. Figure 1.1 provides a four-level typology of what can be seen as nested paradigms: mutually compatible but distinct in concepts, methods and implications for practice and policy. The various definitions that have over time been given for agroforestry reflect these concepts.