Incorporating trees into farms can enhance biodiversity and strengthen the sustainability of agriculture: a message increasingly shared among government ministries in Peru. The country is a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and must report on progress in meeting targets for both.
Peru’s Biodiversity Strategic Plan, a requirement under the Convention on Biological Diversity, includes efforts to achieve Aichi Target 7: ‘By 2020, areas under agriculture, aquaculture and forestry will be sustainably managed, ensuring the conservation of biological diversity’.
However, the Plan pays no attention to trees in the agricultural matrix nor their contribution to biodiversity. Moreover, non-forest trees in these productive areas are ‘invisible’, that is, they are not counted in important national assessments, such as the National Forest Inventory and the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.