Silvopasture adds trees to pasture land to raise both productivity and carbon sequestration. Within the agriculture and land use sector in Gelderland it represents a sequestration potential of 0.053 to 0.211 Mton CO₂-eq in 2030, the largest single contribution to sequestration of all nine solutions calculated. Pastures interspersed with trees hold five to ten times more carbon than treeless pastures; the correlation between tree cover and soil carbon sits at the centre of the estimate.
Beyond sequestration, the solution yields a reduction potential of 0.246 to 0.985 Mton CO₂-eq, partly because ruminants in silvopasture appear to digest their feed better and emit less methane. Regional applicability is wide: Gelderland counts 195,000 hectares of non-degraded grassland with minimal or moderate slope on which silvopasture is possible. Source: Climate Action Recap Gelderland (agriculture and land use sector analysis), New Economy.