Blog for People, Food and Nature

One size doesn’t usually fit all. And the case of reducing deforestation and forest degradation is no different. While agriculture is often viewed as a driver of deforestation, context is key for developing policies to maintain ecosystem benefits within a landscape. A recent paper examines different stages of forest-agriculture interaction, what is deemed the “fores ...

Editor’s note: In the last two posts the Landscapes Blog looked at what is needed for transitions to more integrated and sustainable systems of agricultural production, in both an industrialized and developing nation context. These types of large-scale changes are often orchestrated with high level policy shifts, but individual farmers also play an essential role [&hellip ...

One of the primary objectives in landscape approaches to management is the protection of multiple ecosystem services. Last week researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre provided lessons on how adopting a landscape scale can improve incentives to manage land for a spectrum of ecosystem services. But a better understanding of how agricultural systems themselves provide [&he ...

Landscapes can provide a range of natural benefits, from clean water to carbon sequestration, but often people don’t have the right incentives to manage their lands to maintain these services. Gabrielle Kissinger (Lexeme Consulting) and Henry Neufeldt (World Agroforestry Centre) recount some of the lessons learned on incentives for these environmental benefits in a new [&hell ...

From past discussions of climate-smart agricultural landscapes, it is clear that mitigating and adapting to climate change is not simply a matter of having the most comprehensive scientific understanding, but also of connecting that technical base to policy and decision-making. Comparable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United States Global Change R ...

While last week the Landscapes Blog paid particular attention to the part a productive landscape plays in maintaining ecosystem services, this week actually marks the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in Bonn, Germany. Established in April of last year, the IPBES serves a purpose similar to the Intergovernmental [&h ...

A recent article in the journal Ecosystem Services examines the range of ecosystem services in Africa, the threats to them, and policies to preserve them. It touches on an issue related to Monday’s Landscapes Blog post on sparing land for nature. While the authors recognize the importance of protected areas for biodiversity conservation, they also […] ...

We’ve heard of the imminent peak oil, peak water, and in some circles even peak soil. Now researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York say that we may have reached peak farmland. This is not to say that the planet no longer has arable land to spare, but rather that agricultural production has reached […] ...

Understanding and Managing Change in Human-Shaped Environments This year’s first Exploring the Evidence blog post helps bring us back to the emerging literature on landscape approaches, and grounds the concept in cases in practice. Dr. Tobias Plieninger (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and Dr. Claudia Bieling (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) ...

Every year, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) produces a report on the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA). This year the theme, Investing in Agriculture for a Better Future, follows closely with the elevated level of discussion recently surrounding funding levels and finance mechanisms for agricultural development. With a growing global [&hell ...