Tropentag, September 19 - 21, 2012 in Göttingen "Resilience of agricultural systems against crises"

Influence of Agroforestry Systems in Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation in the Peruvian Andes

Technische Universität Dresden, Inst. of International Forestry and Forest Products, Germany

Abstract

Climate change as a long-term hazard is already affecting the small-scale farmers in Andean regions of Peru through extreme weather events. Weather hazards like frosts, hailstorms and droughts are affecting crops and livestock, increasing food insecurity and poverty levels.
Risk reduction and adaptation measures are one of the most urgent aspects for local small-scale farmers depending on agriculture. Although they have reduced the impacts of these hazards by adapting farming techniques, varying their crops and altering their planting season, so far not much is known about the related local knowledge, behaviour and action.
The Achamayo river basin is a typical inter-Andean valley of Peru's central highlands ranging from 4500 m asl down to 3262 m asl, where agriculture remain one of the main economic activities and traditional agricultural practices are still in use. Here, droughts, more precisely, agricultural droughts during the midsummer (“veranillos”) are one of the events which affect crops most directly and thus the livelihoods of the small-scale farmers in the region. Even if the mean annual rainfall has not changed significantly, there is a loss in the yield production due to agricultural droughts, and their incidence is increasing in the last years.
By increasing the trees and forest share in the area i.e. through agroforestry systems, small-scale farmers can adapt their systems to prevent natural hazards (locally mitigating their negative effects) and simultaneously contribute to climate change mitigation (increasing the storage of carbon in the system), linking both adaptation and mitigation strategies.
The main objective of the research is to analyse the use of trees as a measure of adaptation to agricultural droughts in the rural areas of the tropical Andes. The main focus is put on the relation between the presence of trees in the crops (agroforestry systems) and their influence on agricultural droughts (analysing their effects in the yield) and consequently in the farmer's livelihood (with emphasis on food security).

Keywords: Adaptation, agricultural droughts, agroforestry, Andes, climate change, food security, Peru, rural livelihood

Contact Address: Francois Jost, Technische Universität Dresden, Inst. of International Forestry and Forest Products, Rudolf-Leonhard-Str 24, 01097 Dresden, Germany, e-mail: francoisjostgmail.com