Read the full post on the World Agroforestry Centre site, and leave your comments below. Are ILIs in sub-Saharan Africa living up to their potential? Photo: Neil Palmer, CIATA study of 87 integrated landscape initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa suggests investing in several forms of capacity development and involving women will increase the likelihood of achieving positive outcomes.
Interest in managing landscapes in Africa as a whole has increased considerably in the past 5 years, and a new analysis of such approaches indicates they may be able realize several different objectives at the same time. Some of these objectives, such as agriculture and conservation or livelihoods and conservation, were previously considered mutually incompatible.
Published in World Development, the study provides the first region-wide portrait of integrated landscape initiatives; what context they operate in, the challenges they seek to address, the activities they invest in, the stakeholders who participate and the extent to which they are achieving outcomes for food production, conservation, livelihoods and institutional capacity building.
Phil Dobie, Senior Fellow with the World Agroforestry Centre and co-author of the study, says there is a growing trend internationally to move away from a sectoral approach in conservation and development efforts towards a landscape approach.
“This trend has been driven by climate change, increased land and water scarcity, concerns about food security and energy production, interest in agricultural investment and increasingly sophisticated understandings of the role of ecosystems in human wellbeing,” explains Dobie.
Rural landscapes are viewed by many as the nexus where these interlinked challenges converge. This explains the recent increase in investments in integrated landscape initiatives which have multiple objectives, such as increasing agricultural productivity, sustaining natural resources and improving livelihoods.
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