Current Research in Environmental Sustainability 3 (2021) 100058 Available online 13 June 2021 2666-0490/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Reducing intensifcation by shifting cultivation through sustainable climate-smart practices in tropical forests: A review in the context of UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Pedro Manuel Villa a, b, c, * , Alice Cristina Rodrigues a , Sebasti˜ ao Venˆ ancio Martins b, d , Silvio Nolasco de Oliveira Neto d , Alejandro Guerrero Laverde c , Alfredo Riera-Seijas c a Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Programa de P´ os-Graduaç˜ ao em Botˆ anica, CEP 36570-000 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil b Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, Laborat´ orio de Restauraç˜ ao Florestal, CEP 36570000 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil c Fundaci´ on para la Conservaci´ on de la Biodiversidad, M´ erida, Estado M´ erida, Venezuela d Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Departamento de Engenharia Florestal, CEP: 36570000 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Agroforestry Climate change mitigation Degraded forest Ecosystem services Multifunctionality Second-growth forest ABSTRACT The tropical forests provide important ecosystem services at local and global scales (i.e. climate regulation, carbon cycling, and food resources). Shifting cultivation (SC) is the most common traditional farm system in tropical forest landscapes, which along with hunting and gathering from forests, have been the main food sources and livelihoods. This traditional SC was probably sustainable for nomadic indigenous populations for centuries. However, the non-traditional shifting cultivation is a consequence of cultural changes of indigenous communities infuenced by western culture that induce land-use changes using new technologies, promoting the high local- scale expansion and intensifcation, and overhunting. The intensifcation occurs due to the short-term farm system, low crop diversity or monocultures, and larger slash and burn forest patches inducing agricultural expansion due to higher commercial crop demand. This expansion and intensifcation determine the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, forest degradation and fragmentation, higher greenhouse gas emissions, defaunation and local extinction. Thus, degraded forest rehabilitation with different sustainable food systems (i. e. Agroforestry) can reduce the expansion and intensifcation of SC. Restored forest, agroforestry, and second- growth forests can be restored as reservoirs for valuable biodiversity and a host of different ecosystem ser- vices. Tropical forests are central to climate change mitigation efforts and should prioritize the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. In this context, we provide a review on the effects of shifting cultivation intensifcation on tropical forest landscapes as a base to apply sustainable climate-smart practices in the context of UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. 1. Introduction The tropical forests are of Earth’s most biodiverse and carbon-dense regions (Sullivan et al., 2017), which provide important ecosystem services at local and global scale (Fig. 1), i.e. climate regulation, carbon cycling, and food resources (Chazdon, 2014; Lewis et al., 2015; Hubau et al., 2020). Moreover, tropical forests have historically been vital to the livelihood of indigenous and non-indigenous communities; for example, through homegardens, shifting cultivation, non-timber forestry resources and hunting (Bush et al., 2015; Heinimann et al., 2017; Roberts et al., 2018). However, the land-use changes (i.e. logging, overhunting, agriculture) are the main drivers that threaten the tropical forests (Fig. 2), and can trigger biodiversity loss and forest degradation, and consequently release of greenhouse gas emissions and increase the effects of global climate change (Sullivan et al., 2017; Chazdon, 2014; Lewis et al., 2015; Hubau et al., 2020; Ferreira et al., 2018). Thus, many tropical countries aspire to protect forests from fulflling biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets based on strategies for restoration (Sullivan et al., 2017; Ferreira et al., 2018; Dubey et al., 2020). Shifting cultivation (SC) is a traditional land-use system to ensure livelihood in the Amazon (Villa et al., 2020). The traditional SC have small areas (0.1–0.8 ha) and short cycles of agriculture (1–3 years) with * Corresponding author at: Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Programa de P´ os-Graduaç˜ ao em Botˆ anica, CEP 36570-000 Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. E-mail address: pedro.villa@ufv.br (P.M. Villa). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Current Research in Environmental Sustainability journal homepage: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/current-research-in-environmental-sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsust.2021.100058 Received 31 December 2020; Received in revised form 24 May 2021; Accepted 8 June 2021