vol. 1 (2013): revista scientia agroalimentaria vol 1. abril de 2013

Climate change holds as the current main threat of the humankind. This problem has being increasing by human actions such as the use of fossil fuels, deforestation and degradation. The organized world community has established schemes to mitigate this environmental problem, such as the Clean Development Mechanism. Agroforestry systems with cacao are considered as mitigating activities of climate change due to their capture of carbon in biomass and necromass. The carbon storage and fixation in aboveground biomass and necromass in cacao plantations of 18 and 35 years in the Centro Universitario Regional del Norte (CURDN), in Armero-Guayabal (Tolima, Colombia) were estimated. The studied cacao plantations stored 28.8 and 33.6 t C ha-1 in aboveground biomass with an age of 18 and 35 years respectively, showing an average fixation rate of  1.1 t C ha-1 year-1. The stored carbon in necromass was 4.4 t ha-1, with slight differences between the ages of plantations. Agroforestry systems with cacao in Armero-Guayabal, Tolima, Colombia have the potential to mitigate climate change due its capture of atmospheric carbon in aboveground biomass and necromass.