A coalition of 140 landscape leaders convened at the African Landscapes Dialogue, in Arusha, Tanzania in November 2019, recommended the following actions to advance sustainable landscapes in Africa, building on the Action Plans developed in 2014 and 2017:
African Landscapes Action Plan (ALAP) Phase 3, 2019-2021: Summary of Recommendations
1. Strengthen landscape partnerships and governance
- Promote participatory and transparent decisionmaking in landscape partnerships;
- Recognize that landscapes are dynamic and keep evolving;
- Strengthen inclusion of women and youth as active members of landscape partnerships;
- Mobilize national networks of landscape partnerships for dialogue and knowledge-sharing.
2. Adapt land use planning and property rights to strengthen landscape action
- Establish more efficient, transparent and justly implemented protocols for the participation of communities in local and subnational level land use planning;
- Establish community agricultural areas and conservation areas where boundaries and bylaws for use are respected by the community;
- Address land-use conflicts between user groups within communities by establishing mechanisms for clarifying access rights, reporting conflicts and seeking restitution for damages;
- Work towards secure land and resource tenure for individuals in the communities including farmers and livestock keepers, and with rights for women, youth and marginalized populations;
- Advance research and develop tools for addressing challenges of property rights and land use planning in complex land use mosaics with overlapping, legitimate rights for land and ecosystem services.
3. Mainstream biodiversity conservation and climate-smart agriculture through integrated landscape management
- Provide policy support and frameworks for scalable, locally-led landscape initiatives to meet national and international commitments on biodiversity and climate change;
- Build inclusive, ´green´ landscape economies, that integrate biodiversity consideration into agricultural systems, urban landscape planning, and integrated landscape investments;
- Invest in Landscape-CSA train-the-trainer programs to build the capacity of local government officials and civil society and private sector landscape leaders;
- Strengthen landscape partnerships to support landscape-CSA with a focus on system processes and assessment, inclusive engagement, capacity-building, clear agreements and finance;
- Mainstream L-CSA into national policies and programs by having champions from grassroots and policy levels generating awareness in line ministries;
- Build systems to measure landscape-level performance.
4. Mobilize business and finance in support of sustainable landscapes
- Help businesses to evaluate their impact on landscape transformation, and how landscape factors affect their business;
- Build business learning networks in landscapes where collaborative action plans encourage and support business development and growth;
- Strengthen financial analysis and planning by landscape initiatives, evaluating and mobilizing local, national and international sources of finance, and intermediary organisations;
- Build the financial management ‘ecosystem’, infrastructure and capacities for financial management for ILM;
- Educate and mobilize policymakers and national and local sources of capital about opportunities for ILM business and finance.
5. Advance national policy for sustainable landscapes
- Communicate information about landscape management with simple issue-based language, in terms meaningful for policymakers;
- Facilitate Cabinet-level dialogue towards a paradigm shift in land policy from ‘degrade, abandon and migrate’ to ‘protect and restore´;
- Organize practical policy implementation through inter-agency committees and monitoring and evaluation frameworks;
- Build national programs that support locally-led landscape partnerships;
- Include landscape partnerships in developing and implementing national policies.
Find the program agenda, PowerPoint presentations, digital posters, blogs, and photos from the Dialogue at here.
