title: Toward a whole-landscape approach for sustainable land use in the tropics.
abstract: Increasing food production and mitigating climate change are two primary but seemingly contradictory objectives for tropical landscapes. This special feature examines synergies and trade-offs among these objectives. Four themes emerge from the papers: the important roles of both forest and agriculture sectors for climate mitigation in tropical countries; the minor contribution from deforestation-related agricultural expansion to overall food production at global and continental scales; the opportunities for synergies between improved food production and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through diversion of agricultural expansion to already-cleared lands, improved soil, crop, and livestock management, and agroforestry; and the need for targeted policy and management interventions to make these synergistic opportunities a reality. We conclude that agricultural intensification is a key factor to meet dual objectives of food production and climate mitigation, but there is no single panacea for balancing these objectives in all tropical landscapes. Place-specific strategies for sustainable land use emerge from assessments of current land use, demographics, and other biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics, using a whole-landscape, multisector perspective.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. rd2402@columbia.edu
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: DeFries
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rosenzweig
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D058735:Environmental Policy; D005502:Food; D016468:Forestry; D017752:Greenhouse Effect / Q000517:prevention & control; D014197:Trees / Q000254:growth & development; D014329:Tropical Climate