Getting to the heart of the matter: Action and Advocacy for an integrated landscape approach

The second day of the International Forum in Nairobi and time to put the participants to work. The mission?  To get an African elephant on roller skates to change direction.

Landscapes for People, Food and Nature is a three-year initiative with three components: conducting a global review to build and communicate the evidence base for ecoagriculture, which started last year; creating a multi-stakeholder dialogue to develop a common agenda among the Initiative partners, such as is happening this week at the Nairobi International Forum; and implementing an Action and Advocacy program to mainstream effective ecoagriculture approaches.

The work of defining the third component began in earnest yesterday morning here at the Forum. Sara Scherr, president of EcoAgriculture Partners, set the agenda for the work ahead:

“The Initiative’s mission is to catalyze a shift towards integrated agricultural and rural land use strategies from happening just at the farmer level to the national policy level.” This was a task she compared to “getting an African elephant on roller skates to change direction”.

“We won’t complete that shift in three years but we will make the start” she continued. “The people here are leaders – and this collaboration is how we will bring change at the landscape, national, and international levels.”

Sara is upbeat that like the skating elephant, once change comes, it will gather momentum quickly. But along with a push, it needs direction. This is the role of the Initiative’s Action and Advocacy component. It will set the road map to advance policy, programmatic, investment, and research agendas.

Sara explained:  “We are taking a phased approach to action, building from the existing analysis we are undertaking through the Global Review of what is working out there, and finding ways to strengthen that analysis. We have to learn from innovators, as these approaches are not yet in the mainstream. And from this, create the compelling case for which priority integrated landscape approaches are needed – not just what we think might be nice to do.”

But setting the agenda to ensure the mission is achieved is not something that can be done by a single entity. It needs collaboration from a range of stakeholders.  And this is why the participants were called to action today. Working group task forces armed with flipcharts, markers, and tape set out to put meat on the bones of the Initiative’s seven anticipated strategic outcomes – outcomes that can be achieved by 2014.

Throughout the rest of the day, animated discussions took place around the conference area as the task forces agreed on tactics to effect a change in areas such as policy, business, investment, and scientific research. They defined messages and messengers, identified collaborators, looked for knowledge gaps in the evidence base and set base lines from which measures could be drawn. While on Tuesday words on paper were literally thrown into the air, yesterday was about taking words and committing them to paper.

While the participants had the rest of the day to set outcomes for the next three years, Sara is philosophical about the time needed to really get the message out there: “By 2014, landscape initiatives will be stronger and better designed so they can be more successful. But what is a great landscape approach? – well it will take about 20 years to get the answer to that.”

As Lewis Carroll so eloquently put it: “If you don’t know where you are going; any road will take you there.” After yesterday, at least the road map is under construction to help identify which way to push the elephant.