News details

For more trees in Flanders – AFaktive Partner Meeting

Recent years clearly showed that extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall and droughts, become ever more frequent – strongly affecting agricultural production. Hence, there is an urgent need for improved water management and adaptation strategies.

That’s where the EU-LIFE project AFaktive comes in. The focus of the project centres on the influence of agroforestry on the water balance not only in the field, but also on a larger scale such as a farm, and, in particular, on an entire region. From June 24 to 27, our partners Inagro hosted the partners meeting at their facilities in Rumbeke, Belgium.

Unsurprisingly for a project dealing with water aspects, the main focus was on the selection of pioneer and pilot farms in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands as well as the intended hydrological measurements and modelling. Moreover, discussions addressed the monitoring approaches for biodiversity, carbon and socioeconomics.

During the project, the IfLS strives to work with local and regional stakeholders such as farmers, municipalities and authorities, etc. to establish agroforestry as an important tool in regional water strategies and planning processes. In the coming months, we and our partners will primarily be concerned with understanding the administrative structures, which vary across the project regions. Which authorities handle agriculture? Which ones are responsible for water? Do the different departments and levels work together, and if so, in what form? For us, these are important questions to be able to develop feasible approaches and recommendations in the coming years. In the future, of course, we will also draw conclusions for the national and EU level. To this end, we work closely with the EURAF, among others.

With the aim of communicating the rather complex topic and relationships of climate change, agroforestry and water balance in a generally understandable way and in short features, a drone and media team accompanied us during the week. So, stay tuned to gain further insights into this exciting topic. Visit the homepage, subscribe to the project-newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn (and soon also on Instagram). 

The project is funded by the European Commission under the Programme for Environment and Climate Action (LIFE) under project acronym LIFE22-CCA-DE-LIFE-AFaktive/101113703.

Contact persons at IfLS: Holger Pabst (pabst[at]ifls.de)