Recently agroforestry has been praised as a key tool for curbing climate change and biodiversity crises, however, documentation is scarce both for biodiversity and climate benefits. We hypothesize that a quantification of the impact of agroforestry will reveal services (and possible disservices) for Ugandan highland coffee production, and by mainstreaming for East African highlands in general. We aim to estimate carbon sequestration and biodiversity potentials as well as other ecosystem services and thereby document and quantify the potentials and limitations of different agroforestry systems. We hypothesize that several native tree species have been overseen as comprehensive guidance for selecting native trees in agroforestry is difficult to find. It is an aim to prepare a guide, based on research and local knowledge, for selecting trees for planting in highland coffee agroforestry systems.

Agroforestry has promising outcomes, but also disadvantages. Despite many advantages, agroforestry projects in Africa often fail. Basically, tree planting is simple, whereas it is complicated to manage and maintain the trees in the long term. Hence, we aim to advance research on the socioeconomic aspect of maintaining trees in the landscape. We hypothesize that a main reason for failure is a lack of tangible comprehensible benefits to farmers. These must be in focus to establish successful agroforestry. We aim to investigate value chains for coffee and additional products to enhance local benefits and promote local stewardship, motivation and long-term interest. We also aim to examine potentials for empowering women and youth through agroforestry. Besides, we aim to explore the wider societal and policy needs for promoting shifts towards agroforestry.

In the light of the seriousness of the biodiversity and climate crises in Africa, there is a need for making scientific results operative. An innovative aspect of AfPEC is the high involvement of NGOs and the exchange between universities, NGOs and farmer communities. We hypothesize that it is realistic to improve agroforestry arabica coffee systems if well-planned and based on farmers’ interests, economy and development priorities. Empowerment of women and youth is aimed for, considering the marginalized position of some women and unemployed youth. We aim to make user-friendly dissemination to farmers and channel research results into tangible livelihood improvements and ecosystem benefits at community level. It is an aim to improve local income from sale of sustainable coffee and secondary products, from carbon funding and, potentially, from the upcoming market for sponsorships of ecosystem services.

By including four PhD students from Uganda, with joint supervision from three universities, and at least 12 master students from Denmark, we aim to build multidisciplinary research capacity (biological, geographical, anthropological and socio-economic) to generate scientific knowledge that can contribute to lessen climate change and biodiversity challenges.

Dissemination at various levels, with innovative aspects regarding community level e-guides and a living lab. See details under Section 11.