Blog for People, Food and Nature

By Tim Benton, Professor of Population Ecology, University of Leeds Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a focus on the climate services (mitigation and adaptation) that agricultural landscapes provide. But one of the selling points for integrated landscape management is multifunctionality – not privileging one environmental, social, or economic benefit over another. ...

By Nicholas Berry, Researcher in the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh This week marks the second week of the 38th session of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where one of the many topics on tap was land-based climate change mitigation […] ...

By Saul Cunningham, Team Leader for Biodiversity in Managed Landscapes, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia Following on the heels of International Day of Biological Diversity and the Chicago Council’s Global Food Security Symposium, today’s post marries the issues tackled by these two events. Dr. Cunningham, from Australia’s CS ...

By Seth Shames, Senior Project Manager, EcoAgriculture Partners As the documented and projected impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, and pressure mounts for dramatic global mitigation efforts, carbon credit markets have developed as a popular policy mechanism.  Though still largely focused on the energy sector, opportunities have emerged for smallholder farm ...

By Delia C. Catacutan, Senior Social Scientist, World Agroforestry Centre, Hanoi, Vietnam Dr. Catacutan currently leads research related to governance and natural resources management processes, including policy and institutional analyses in relation to payments for ecosystem services, in the Southeast Asia office of the World Agroforestry Centre. Her insights on avoiding confl ...

By Saswati Bora, Operations Officer, Agriculture & Environmental Services, the World Bank Ms. Bora, the lead author of the background paper “Food Security and Conflict” to the 2011 World Development Report: Conflict, Security and Development, kicks off our first Landscapes Roundtable on the role of integrated landscape management in mitigating or avoiding conflict. With ...

By Wei Zhang, Research Fellow, and Mark Rosegrant, Director, Environment and Production Technology Division, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC On the Landscapes Blog we’ve seen how diversity on the farm level to diversity at the scale of a whole landscape can provide the natural benefits from healthy ecosystems. Two researchers from the [&hel ...

From beer brewing in Bogota to mochas in Mexico, for the past few weeks the Landscapes Blog has covered the role of landscape approaches in business operations and supply chains, in light of the Landscapes Initiative’s release of Reducing Risk: Landscape Approaches to Sustainable Sourcing. Across the cases reviewed in this project, this theme of […] ...

“Landscapes do not exist in a vacuum, but are influenced by a wide range of external factors including policies and economic conditions generated far outside it…” Businesses operate in the realm of markets, and this week the Sustainable Food Lab brings together many of these market actors to discuss sustainability within their supply chains. However, [… ...

By Christian Kull, Associate Professor at Monash University, Australia For the past week the Landscapes Blog has taken a closer look at trees and forests in the context of agricultural landscapes. While there is often an emphasis on native vegetation in conserving or restoring landscapes, introduced species of plants play a significant role in shaping […] ...