Carbon Sequestration Potential and Co-benefits of Agroforestry Systems: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Agroforestry, characterized by the integration of trees and crops on the same land, has emerged as a viable strategy to address environmental and socio-economic challenges in India. This comprehensive review evaluates the carbon sequestration potential of diverse agroforestry systems and their associated co-benefits. These systems efficiently sequester atmospheric CO2 in both above-ground biomass and soil, thus playing a role in climate change. Carbon sequestration potential varies with agroforestry practices because of differences in tree species, management practices, and site conditions. Some of these systems include alley cropping, silvopasture, home gardens, windbreaks, and riparian buffers, can sequester carbon. Besides carbon sequestration, agroforestry systems provide numerous ecosystem services, including soil protection, species conservation, water control, food production, income diversification and vulnerability reduction to climatic fluctuations. Economic analyses suggest that it can produce income through carbon offset markets, wood, and other non-wood products. Examples include the Subabul Agroforestry System in Haryana, Agri-Horti-Silviculture Systems in the North Eastern Hill areas, and the Wadi Model in Gujarat to capture carbon and store, which helps to earn additional income and empower the society. However, constraints like low technical know-how, poor policies and legislations on land tenure systems are barriers to adopting agroforestry. Future research efforts should focus on the following; estimation of sequestration capacity per region, examination of co-benefits, duplication of successful strategies by other regions, and incorporation of agroforestry into existing agriculture frameworks. This means that interdisciplinary cooperation and knowledge sharing must be encouraged and strengthened

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.701205

Pages

118 - 132

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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