Landscapes Blog

The new book Steps Toward Green presents research across six countries in East and Southeast Asia to provide guidance to national policy makers in how to make seemingly conflicting land use priorities mutually beneficial. Academics and civil society often refer to the ‘enabling environment’ needed to solve some of the seemingly intractable issues around agricultural [&helli ...

The 25th World Cocoa Foundation Partnership Meeting, and the 6th Indonesian International Cocoa Conference wrap up today in Bali, Indonesia. These meetings marked an important moment for the cocoa industry. Unlike other major commodity sectors, market demand for sustainably sourced cocoa isn’t in question. Mars, Ferrero, and Hershey have all committed to sourcing 100% sus ...

This year’s 9th annual Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) conference (May 7th-8th) took place at a critically important time for the industry. With relatively high prices, increasing overall demand from China, and another year of drought in palm oil production areas, the emphasis on increasing production is strong. The question then for participants at the RTRS […] ...

The environmental impacts of commodities have been a hot topic lately, from haze in Indonesia, carbon emissions from Brazil, and environmental degradation and poverty in Cote d’Ivoire. What do these stories have in common? They are all intertwined in global value chains for major agricultural commodities: palm oil, soy, and cocoa. Areas of production of […] ...

On January 27th, 2014, USAID launched a second version of their framework for natural resource management, Nature Wealth and Power 2.0 (NWP 2.0) at the first of 4 ECO (Environmental Communication, Learning and Outreach) events focusing on knowledge management. NWP 2.0 is USAID’s newly updated framework for practitioners involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation [ ...