Land use and land cover change (LULCC) affects the climate through both biogeochemical (BGC) and biophysical (BPH) mechanisms. While BGC effects are assessed at global scale and are at the heart of climate treaties such as the Paris Agreement, BPH effects are totally absent despite their increasingly recognized impact, especially at local scale. This stems from the complexity in characterizing their climate impacts both at local and global scale, which makes it impractical to offer clear advices for the development of climate policies.

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of social learning in governing and managing land use, the understanding and practice of learning has received limited attention from researchers. In global environmental programs and projects aimed at supporting sustainable land use in developing countries, learning is often promoted but without explicit learning goals. The focus may be on capacity building and community participation, and on testing policy tools, rather than on collaborative social learning.

The use of tree-based fallowing as a sustainable land management system may serve as an important developmental pathway out of poverty across drought-prone watersheds in the Upper Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia. This study employs a financial analysis technique, the computation of net present values, to explore the financial viability of farmers’ investments in an intercropping farming system known as taungya. The analysis employs scenarios that include different farming systems, such as A. decurrens (J.C. Wendl.) Willd. cum teff (Eragrostis tef) intercropping, A.