Ecoagriculture and the Collaborative Management of Rural Landscapes

Overview

Landscape approaches to territorial development provide a helpful framework for addressing the challenges of multi- functional, multi-objective rural landscapes.

Global trends to decentralize government functions and allow more local autonomy offer promising opportunities for management at the landscape scale, however, gaps in knowledge and expertise remain challenges for rural stakeholders. “Ecoagriculture,” through the use of the Landscape Measures Initiative, provides a range of resources and tools for enabling multi-stakeholder collaboration to enhance landscape performance in the three key components of ecoagriculture: biodiversity conservation, agricultural production, and livelihood security.

This paper describes the steps of the collaborative process of rural landscape management as well as five core competencies needed for stakeholders to successfully understand, negotiate, design, and implement ecoagriculture strategies, and evaluate changes in their landscapes.

Comprehensive platform for capacity-building

A case study from the Kijabe landscape in Kenya shows how some tools were used and the core competencies were developed through engaging in the multi- stakeholder management process. Based on experiences in Kijabe and in other multi-functional landscapes, EcoAgriculture Partners proposes a comprehensive platform for building capacities for successful collaborative management of rural landscapes.

This comprehensive platform is presented as a set of three capacity-building engagements that together strengthen stakeholder skills, knowledge and exchange within and among landscapes, as well as leadership development to mobilize support for local management of ecoagriculture landscapes.