Blog for People, Food and Nature

By Dr. Tony Simons, Director General World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya The answer to the question “what is a landscape?” differs tremendously depending on the respondent. To a landscape ecologist it is a cluster of interacting ecosystems; wildlife experts may consider it as a set of habitats; to a farmer it is about how adjacent […] ...

By: Mr. Kazuhiko Takemoto, Senior Fellow and Program Director United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative, Yokohama, Japan The recent birth of the world’s seven billionth person in October 2011 was just the latest in a series of wake-up calls to the global community. The strain being placed on […] ...

By Dr. Sara J. Scherr, President EcoAgriculture Partners, Washington, DC, USA I worked for 25 years as an agricultural economist in tropical rainforests and hillsides, studying sustainable agricultural development in what were then called “marginal lands” for farming. I was answering questions like: “can farming be sustainable here?” and “given their importance for bi ...