The Lari-Kijabe landscape in central Kenya was the site and subject of a three-day dialogue between local stakeholders and Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative organizers. Lari-Kijabe is one of the learning landscapes of the Initiative, places where Initiative Co-organizers and strategic partners will collaborate with local groups to provide an opportunity for diverse stakeholders to share the ongoing activities and innovations in the site from a landscape perspective and to identify ways to scale-up and share the successes.
The learning landscapes have shown a willingness to engage in a sustained global effort to advance agricultural performance across multiple sectors. The Lari-Kijabe landscape has demonstrated that a commitment to achieving multiple benefits from agricultural and livestock production, biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods from agricultural landscapes is not only possible, but an attainable reality for people worldwide.
EcoAgriculture Partners and the World Agroforestry Centre led the series of workshops along with the Kijabe Environmental Volunteers (KENVO), a local community trust with a strong relationship with the most stakeholder groups in the landscape. Key officials from government ministries with roles in landscape management and representatives from farmer organizations were among the participants in the capacity-building and knowledge-sharing workshops.
Participants first went on an excursion to various agricultural operations currently in place and spoke with the key actors. They eventually supplemented this understanding with a collective evaluation of the region’s progress in terms of institutions, livelihoods, conservation, and production through the use of a specially designed scorecard. From these two exercises members were given a picture of the management situation to reflect on and discuss. The next step was identifying potential courses for improvement and obstacles to the integrated approach.
The forum’s primary objectives were to share information, document what is happening, conduct a multi-stakeholder dialogue, identify local networks and partners, prioritize proposed activities, and draft a landscape strengthening action plan for 2013-2014. Workshop leaders were both impressed with the landscape’s commitment and excited to explore future collaborations. The action plans presented suggest significant opportunities for collaboration and improvement in the landscape in the coming year. Key takeaways for the participants included: culture’s role in acquiring knowledge, the importance of dialogue in decision-making, the need to link markets to conservation, and that the ecosystem has value not only locally but globally.
