An integrated green sector approach may well give REDD+, forests and agriculture a bigger seat at the table for the next international treaty on climate change– and produce more substantial results - according to an article on the CGIAR website.

There was widespread disappointment that the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar late last year failed to agree on how to verify emission reductions required to advance REDD+. Now there is hope that the Durban Platform (which aims to commit participating countries to new greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2015, and to meet those targets by 2020) will provide a new opportunity to discuss a cross-sector approach that will align development and poverty reduction goals while sustaining landscapes and reducing emissions.

In the coming months, workgroups will discuss a framework for such an approach. The CGIAR is pushing for it to go further than just including forests and trees to consider the whole landscape of agriculture, land uses and the people who depend on them. Researchers believe it will make it easier to identify and implement climate change mitigation efforts, making agriculture, forest management and other land uses part of the solution not just part of the problem.

Ravi Pabhu, Deputy Director General of Research at the World Agroforestry Centre stresses that scientists must consider the full mosaic of farms, livestock, trees, shrubbery, forests, rivers, and roads in which people function.

Read the full story: Going from Red to Green; the landscape approach