EcoAgriculture Partners is the lead convener of the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People initiative (1000L), a collaboration of passionate leaders in the fields of land use, technology, conservation, and business working together to propel large-scale change for our planet. 1000L empowers local leaders to implement integrated landscape solutions through capacity strengthening, novel finance mechanisms, improved technology, and the development of local and national coalitions. By working directly with landscape partnerships, 1000L helps identify ways to strengthen community capacity, fortify government policy, and better finance sustainable development projects equitably and at a landscape scale. The initiative’s multi-faceted and multi-stakeholder approach brings financial investors, policymakers, non-profit organizations, and local leaders together to accelerate large-scale impact.
1000L aims to deliver landscape solutions to 1000 landscapes and benefit 1 billion people by 2030 through the development and strengthening of landscape partnerships. EcoAg and 1000L foster the work of landscape partnerships in conserving natural habitats, achieving regenerative production and land use, and supporting sustainable rural growth to benefit people and the planet.
To overcome interlinked ecological and social challenges facing the world, societies must rapidly shift away from unsustainable investments toward more inclusive, sustainable and resilient economic activity. This change not only requires transformations at the farm, enterprise and supply chain levels, but also holistically at landscap-scale. The 1000L finance solutions team works to reimagine and redirect financial flows to deliver funding directly to high-impact and long-term projects across landscapes. Together with partners from across the finance spectrum, the team supports landscape partnerships in developing investable project portfolios, accelerating funding to landscape projects, and developing new finance mechanisms for more sustainable, equitable funding flows.
Through open-source and easy-to-use software and data tools in concert with accessible learning platforms 1000L supports the development and growth of landscape partnerships by making their work more effective– better, faster, and more inclusive. The digital platform Terraso provides locally adaptable tools that reduce the time and cost needed to plan, develop and fund investable landscape projects. The capacity strengthening Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offers a clear learning roadmap to designing and implementing integrated landscape management solutions.
Implementing effective integrated landscape management (ILM) requires a broad knowledge of a landscape processes and often demands collaborative action and execution of ILM solutions among landscape users. 1000L works together with landscape practitioners and partnerships to help build capacity for co-creating and implementing ILM across their regions. The capacity strengthening team is currently building a suite of user-centered tools and curriculum to enhance the capabilities of landscape partnerships worldwide, such as the forthcoming learning platform and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) which will offer a clear learning roadmap to designing and implementing integrated landscape management solutions.
For integrated landscape management to thrive as a development solution, it requires an enabling environment of capable actors working both within and outside landscapes to collectively improve, advance and advocate for policies that support landscape partnerships. Through online and in-person dialogues, alliance building and joint learning, these coalitions play a critical role in promoting landscape approaches by influencing decision-makers locally, nationally and globally. The coalition building collaborative provides these actors spaces to learn, collaborate, organize and build action alliances with other landscape partners, practitioners, technical experts, government officials and policymakers. In turn, these coalitions will be better equipped to influence local, national and global decision-makers to support policies advancing ILM.
EcoAgriculture Partners has a storied history of collaboration with Kijabe Environment Volunteers (KENVO), a community-based conservation organization in the central highlands of Kenya. In 2019, KENVO joined 1000L as a co-design landscape in testing new tools and resources to help accelerate integrated landscape management solutions in the region. 1000L currently works with local government and civil society leaders to test and implement new financial tools to support landscape initiatives, strengthen government policies to support local agriculture and livelihoods, and protect the rich biodiversity and natural ecosystems of the region. Learn more about the Lari landscape partnership in our Landscapes in Action multimedia story.
To solve the world’s toughest issues, we must embrace the interconnectedness of our planet and work with it, not against it. Integrated landscape management (ILM) is a way of managing the landscape to achieve sustainability and resiliency that involves collaboration among multiple stakeholders. We work to champion ILM as the solution to these challenges by providing leaders with the knowledge and capacity to carry out ILM in their landscapes.
As the lead convener of 1000 Landscapes, EcoAgriculture Partners is building a diverse community of innovators and fostering an unprecedented level of collaboration that empowers local groups to drive transformation as defined by them. Only by aligning activities at the local, national, and international level can we catalyze meaningful and needed change for people and the planet.
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