The challenge of fundamentally changing how the world sees, manages, and impacts land isn’t for the easily discouraged – but it’s exponentially more difficult when not everyone is at the table.
The typical environmental or sustainable development project has a narrow focus and seeks limited, if any, input from stakeholders whom it will impact. EcoAgriculture Partners (EcoAg) refers to projects implemented in this way as siloed.
But more organizations are starting to understand there’s a better approach to setting up a sustainability project – one that vastly increases its chance for success. Traditionally, organizations have poured money into siloed projects, but land-use practices that consider a significantly broader approach – one inclusive of the entire region – offer a more promising solution.
Regreening Africa is at the forefront of this movement. Patricia Bon, a Program Manager for EcoAg, attended the Regreening Africa Summit, where speakers shed light on the limitations of an isolated approach and shared insights from having worked for five years in various African countries and with numerous partners to achieve multiple development goals simultaneously.
The Global Environment Facility, 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People, LandScale, and many more global and grassroots groups are already championing a more holistic approach to problem-solving. They’re tackling global issues like biodiversity loss, climate change, and rural poverty by looking at the big picture and considering all aspects and actors within a landscape. By taking this broader view, the concept of sustainability is undergoing a profound change.
At EcoAg, we call this approach Integrated Landscape Management (ILM), and we believe that it is the best way forward for people and the planet. ILM creates a collaborative environment where resource competition is reduced, and industries work together to promote conservation, sustainable rural development, and regenerative agriculture.
It’s About More Than Planting Trees
During the Regreening Africa Summit, speakers stressed the importance of partnerships, engaging communities in projects from start to finish, and the need for holistic policy solutions that allow programs to be scaled to regional levels. “We need to think beyond trees and about people,” said Ravi Prabhu, general director ad interim of CIFOR-ICRAF, a nonprofit scientific research organization researching forest management focusing on tropical forests in developing countries. That means bringing together all people and sectors in a region and saving space at the table for indigenous leaders, governmental officials, funders, scientists, conservationists, farmers, and active community members of all ages. These partnerships are essential for achieving scale or increasing a group’s influence within a region, throughout a country, and worldwide.
“The key to strong partnerships is the marriage of convenience between partners,” Prabhu said. Bringing everyone together allows different groups to realize how they can help each other. For example, a farmer using cover crops to better their soil may also improve the water quality of a nearby stream that conservationists want to enhance.
Managing director of the global mechanism for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Louise Baker, said, “We need a well-planned mosaic of interventions.” She also stressed the importance of creating coalitions of people from diverse backgrounds who could work at different national levels. This would improve the work’s impact and ensure a partnership’s sustainability through changing government officials and an aging population.
A Call for Integrated Landscape Management
ILM is a collaborative way to manage a landscape where diverse individuals, from farmers and young people to government leaders and business owners, come together to manage a region sustainably. Driven by a shared purpose, these people and groups join forces to tackle challenges. In the process, they uncover new opportunities to improve the landscape. Through collaboration, they forge pathways that diminish conflicts, such as competition for land between agriculture and conservation, and amplify the good work being done. A landscape can include the following activities, resources, and values:
- Agricultural production
- Provisions of ecosystem services, such as water flow regulation and quality, pollination, climate change mitigation and adaptation
- Cultural values
- Biodiversity protection
- Social value
- Local livelihoods
- Human health and well-being
“After the [Regreening Africa] event, I felt very optimistic,” said Bon. “It made me believe that a holistic approach is the natural pathway forward.”
She pointed to statements during the summit by Hamed Constantin Tchibozo, manager of the nonprofit World Vision in Niger, who discussed the importance of community-based strategies. “Local leaders must drive initiatives because they are the key to scaling,” Tchibozo said. He also mentioned Niger’s difficulty in applying good national policies at the local level, which Bon said she had heard repeatedly in her work.
“Siloed projects often miss achieving their potential impact because they do not address the inextricable links between agriculture, forests, water, biodiversity, society, and the climate,” Bon said. “But if the conservation and development worlds can shift their mindsets to understand that ILM is a better approach to sustainable development, then the long-term impact on growth, conservation, regeneration, and food security would be enormous.”
Asking people and organizations to step back and consider how their actions impact the land and other people around them – and then encouraging them to change those established norms – is a massive undertaking. But when everyone involved has a voice, building a better world for nature and people is possible. By championing collaboration in the form of ILM, leaders worldwide can create connections, break down barriers, and begin to move toward a sustainable future.