The challenge for sound AFS management is to improve the trade-offs and even, if possible, promote synergies between production and other ecosystem services.

The project will therefore attempt to study the trade-offs and synergies between provisioning services and other ecosystem services (support, regulation) and cultural services provided by AFS in contrasting situations, in order to document a generic basis for optimizing those tradeoffs. The project is particularly ambitious, as its objective involves:

• switching from partial analyses of ecosystem services to an integrated analysis of thetrade-offs between production and the other ecosystem services provided by AFS,
• for that purpose developing interdisciplinary scientific dynamics combining, within the same systemic approach, visions, concepts and methods (ecosystem services, trade-offs, ecological intensification, modelling etc.) that seem unifying, but which in fact are highly specific to each discipline (ecology, economics, agronomy, etc.) and to the unit and individual research position (cognitive analysis versus agro-ecological engineering),
• unifying on this integrated approach organizations and teams working on AFS highlydiverse in their ecological and socio-economic contexts, especially between humid tropical zones (HTZ) and dry tropical zones (DTZ),
• delivering both (a) scientific results that may be easily adopted by the stakeholders in each territory, supporting trade-off finding in each specific system, and (b) a methodological framework useful for researches in other territories and for training.

Expected results

The project will endeavour to produce knowledge and know-how on AFS functioning, along with tools and methods for designing and assessing such systems. It will contribute to capitalizing on, making optimum use of, and structuring the know-how, achievements and practices of the CIRAD and IRD teams and of their partners, whilst producing new knowledge. It will set in place a forum for exchanging thoughts and discussions on developing common concepts, approaches and tools giving credibility to the added value derived from the association between CIRAD and IRD for development in the countries of the South through training, research and innovation, in compliance with the missions of AIRD. The project beneficiaries will therefore be the researchers themselves (from CIRAD, IRD and the partner institutions), trained and qualified students, development organizations and farmers in developing countries.

Without returning to the specific results expected in the different WPs, a reminder is given below of the unifying aspects that the project will endeavour to construct:

• Interdisciplinary and inter-team dynamics for CIRAD, IRD and their partners from the South for the characterization of structures-services and for an analysis, through scenarios, of the trade-off space between production and other AFS services.
• A network of experimental sites and agroforest territories that can be used as a support for longer-term studies and comparative analyses.
• A novel approach for studying trade-offs between AFS services, tested at a few sites and usable in other projects.
• Production of validated tools and methods (experimental designs and analysis methods, indicators, modelling, databases, specific tools), also promoted through publications.
• Training, mostly at Master’s level but also thesis level for students from developing and developed countries.
• Quality replies to future calls for proposals.