Cacao Agroforestry Systems and Resilience: Potential Factors in the Face of the Climate Change in Mexico

Abstract

<p><strong>Background:</strong> The cacao agroforestry system (Cacao-AFS) is a small-scale design system with a great diversity and multiple functions; at the same time that is very vulnerable to the climatic variability. Through resilience is possible to see, how does a system respond and/or reorganize in the face of a perturbation like climate change. This work makes a review of Cacao-AFS and analyzes its potential resilience to climate change. <strong>Methodology</strong>: A review of the state of the art about the cacao system and its resilience had been organized from an analysis of 249 works consulted from bibliographic bases. The information was codified in six factors (scientific and contemporaneous knowledge, agrobiodiversity, socioecological autoregulation, capital, and social self-organization) and climate change implications, and finally evaluated through a matrix. <strong>Results:</strong> Through the review of the literature, it was found that there is a great adaptive capacity because scientific innovation and contemporaneous knowledge it generates different actions to solve some problems of the system. Also, it was found that there is a great agrobiodiversity in the system that allows the socioecological reproduction of the system (autoregulation). On the other hand, the system is low rentable and the young people don`t want to incorporate to the activity (low capital) and the social actors don´t use to cooperate (low self-organization). <strong>Implications:</strong> It was found that there are some aspects that favor the resilience of cacao system and others that need to be improved. To improve the resilience of the Cacao-AFS to climate change it is necessary to create spaces for the self-organization of the different actors and the knowledge dialogue, and to make a transition to more just and agroecological schemes. There are still some parts of the systems and their resilience that had not been totally investigated, like the local responses of the communities to climate change, the immaterial life of the cacao peasants, their inter-familiar and inter-community links, the environmental history of the cacao system, the functional and respond biodiversity and holistic economic diagnostics. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> The cacao system had some elements that indicate some degree of resilience to the climate change. The cacao system is resilient to climate change in some factors and not resilient in others. Their investigation is a fertile field to make multi and interdisciplinary studies.</p>