Forests, trees and agroforestry already play a key role in ensuring the resilience of landscapes and households to physical and economic risks. With climate change, this function will be more important than ever. At the same time, land-based economic activities in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Adaptation is urgently needed. FTA addresses how forests, trees and agroforestry can adapt to climate change, and how forests and trees can help people and livelihoods adapt to climate change.

Some tree-crop commodities (such as cocoa and coffee) are particularly sensitive to climate change. FTA works with partners to integrate climate change predictions on tree suitability areas, as well as on appropriate ‘climate proof’ tree germplasm and intervention options, including appropriate incorporation and management of companion trees. FTA works on agroforestry in the context of climate change and on the potential for using shade trees to improve microclimates and improve productivity.

Increasing resilience to climate change has re-established the importance of diversity breeding and decentralized participatory domestication approaches, which consider production traits enhanced by genetic variation and which use local landscape-level deployment to maintain planting material diversity. FTA research indicates how tree planting patterns will need to change and the modifications that will be required to deliver planting material for climate-smart agricultural and restoration-based responses. FTA works on finding important tree traits for adaption, including new trait combinations for novel environments, and uses climate models to indicate planting domain shifts under future climates.

As climate change advances, with deepening and lengthening dry spells in the seasonally dry tropics, trees and shrubs are increasingly seen as a supplementary fodder source. Heat stress is an increasing cause of animal production loss and a major animal welfare challenge. FTA works with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) on how to best develop multistrata silvopastoral systems, live fences, windbreaks and fodder banks as key development options to sustain smallholder livelihoods based on pasture use in the context of climate change.

Furthermore, to combine climate risk reduction with increased resilience, FTA uses empirical research supporting policy integration, practice and assessment at local, national and international levels. FTA seeks to advance knowledge on synergies between, and incentives for, mitigation and adaptation approaches as recognized under Joint Mitigation and Adaptation (JMA) in the Paris Agreement.

Bioenergy is part of a coherent approach across FTA that considers energy poverty, climate change, and food and nutritional security through diverse production systems involving forest landscapes. Bioenergy is key to improving the sustainability of the energy sector and achieving the Paris goals.

Many governments have renewable energy targets and the Paris goal of balancing sources and sinks requires a thorough understanding of the role bioenergy can play. Also, in many regions, biofuels are unsustainable, contribute to climate change and human health problems (e.g. open cooking fires, charcoal production), and face the problem of being considered ‘backwater technologies’ by national actors.

FTA analyzes climate benefits and disadvantages of bioenergy policies under current and plausible future scenarios. Developing countries can include renewable energy efficiency targets in nationally determined contributions (NDCs), making for an interesting investment arena.

Policies and practices need to be assessed, while stakeholders need to be able to quantify progress and learn from successful and unsuccessful approaches. Climate finance and funding mechanisms are often conditional on the results of evaluation and assessments. Performance assessment goes beyond the traditional monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) approach to include policy performance assessment as the basis for evidence-based policy and practice.

This is broader than the traditional MRV and is called monitoring, measuring, reporting and verification (MMRV). MMRV is needed to achieve intended emission and risk reduction effectively, in line with the Paris Agreement and Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS).

REDD+ needs effective and reliable information systems; the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) implementation, both in adaptation and mitigation, calls for appropriate metrics, transparent assumptions, time frames and realistic implementation pathways. Private-sector pledges also require performance assessments. Evidence-based approaches will improve confidence and enable effective and transparent policy implementation.

Finally, in relation to forest and tree resources, men and women face varying challenges and opportunities to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts, vis-à-vis climate change policies and interventions, and related risk and benefit sharing, due to gender-differentiated roles and responsibilities. FTA examines the structural causes of this situation and the factors that can strengthen the voice, influence and entitlements of marginalized groups in adaptation and mitigation policies and interventions.