Delivered at Cornell University by Dr. Louise Buck, on April 25th, 2018 as part of the International Programs-CALS Seminar Series: Perspectives in International Agriculture, Nutrition and Development.

1. From ecoagriculture to scaling up
Integrated Landscape Management
What are we learning?
April 25, 2018
Dr. Louise Buck
Department of Natural Resources Cornell
University, and EcoAgriculture Partners

2. Overview
• Ecoagriculture, EcoAgriculture Partners and the Cornell
Ecoagriculture Working Group
• Integrated landscape management and Landscapes for
People, Food and Nature
• Lessons we’re learning
• What’s next?

3. Conserving biodiversity and feeding people

4. EcoAgriculture Partners
Who we are
Mission-driven non-profit dedicated
to increasing agriculturalproduction,
while conserving biodiversity and
improvingrural livelihoods, using an
integratedlandscape approach
14+ years researching, teaching,
implementingand advocating
integratedlandscape management
What we do
• Stimulateeffective landscape
partnerships
• Train leaders for agricultural
landscape management
• Analyze options for sustainability
in agriculturallandscapes
• Drive change at scale through
policy dialogue and collaborative
action

5. Ecoagriculture: A Review and Assessment of
its Scientific Foundations
• EcoAgriculture Discussion Paper #1,
August 2004
• Demonstrates scientific basis for concept
of ecoagriculture
• Evidence from literature and expert
consultations point to variety of
integration mechanisms across the
multiple objectives

6. Cornell Ecoagriculture
Working Group
Who we are
Forum where Cornell community
interacts to help advanceknowledge
and understandingabout the
collaborativemanagement of socio-
ecological landscapes.
Rooted in Department of Natural
Resources, collaborates closely with
EcoagriculturePartners.
What we do
• Seminars
• Special topics courses
• Education innovations
• Research
– Desk studies, field studies, frameworks and tools
• Extension-communication-outreach
– Conferences, workshops, forums, dialogues
– Interactive internet tools

7. Visualizing and communicating
ecoagriculture

8. Understanding EcoAgriculture: A Framework
for Measuring Landscape Performance
• EcoAgriculture Discussion Paper #2,
December 2006
• Ecoagriculture practiced in hundreds of
locations worldwide in different ways
• Literature and expert consultations
inform unifying theory around
performance criteria for desired
outcomes (goals)

9. The Landscape Measures Resource Center
• LMRC - online tool to help landscape
managers link measurement with
management
• Practical guidance in selecting
performance criteria, indicators and
means of measure relevant to
particular landscapes
• Contents
– Process of landscape planning
– Practice of measurement
– Case Studies in multiple countries
– Glossary of key terms
– Interaction space

10. Twenty Questions to engage
stakeholders
• Scoring landscape performance
criteria engages stakeholders in
assessing their landscape’s
strengths and weaknesses
• Fosters dialogue, points to
direction for change
• 4 Ecoagriculture goals, 5
performance criteria for each goal
= “20 questions”
May 1, 201810 Landscape Measures

11. Developing landscape leadership

12. Building innovation systems
for managing complex
landscapes
Emergent property of landscape innovation
system is the capacity of actors in the
landscape to learn to adapt to changing
risks and opportunities
Innovative capacity focusses on the practice
of managing complex production systems
at multiple scales in ways that improve
livelihoods of local stakeholders and sustain
ecological performance
Central actor in system is facilitator who
fosters the communication and learning
needed to coordinate interaction among
actors to stimulate innovation

13. Agroecological basis for ecoagriculture

14. Conservation Bridge
Partners
• Department of Natural
Resources, Cornell
• Habitat 7
• EcoAgriculture Partners
• UC-Berkeley
• Ecoagriculture
practitioners in 10
landscapes

15. Synthesizing elements
of ecoagriculture and
its analogues
Recognizing diverse entry points
for ecoagriculture
Recognizing variety of terms to
describe what we were calling
ecoagriculture
Integrated Landscape
Management became overarching
term to describe numerous types
of landscape initiatives with
similar goals and characteristics

17. A Landscape
A socio-ecological mosaic (system) that consists of natural
and/or human-modified ecosystems, and which is
influenced by distinct ecological, historical, economic and
socio-cultural processes and activities.

18. Integrated landscape management
Long-term collaboration
among different groups of
land managers and
stakeholders to realize
multiple objectives in a
sustainable landscape

19. Planning process for
integrated landscape
initiatives (ILIs)
• Multi-stakeholder platform
drives the process
• Process is long-term (~20
years+) requiring multiple
sources of investment and
finance

20. Launching a global
partnership to
advance ILM

21. Landscape learning networks

22. Reviewing the
state of ILM
around the world
Four continental
surveys interviewed
more than 428 total
landscape initiatives
• Estrada-Carmona, N., Hart, A.K., DeClerck, F.A.J., Harvey, C.A. and J.C. Milder (2014). Landscape and Urban Planning
• Martín-Rubí, M.G., C. Bieling, A.K. Hart and T. Plieninger (2016). Land Use Policy
• Milder, J.C., Hart, A.K., Dobie, P., Minai, J., and Zaleski, C. (2014). World Development
• Zanzanaini, C., Tran, B.T., Singh, C., Hart, A.K., Milder, J.C., and DeClerck, F.A.J., (2017). Landscape and Urban Planning

23. Sector Self-Reported
Impacts of
Landscape Initiatives
Sub-Saharan
Africa (%)
n=87
South and SE
Asia (%)
n=174
Latin America
/ Caribbean
(%)
n=104
Impacts
on
SDG’s #
Agriculture
Increased yields 40 46 38 2
Increased profitability 29 53 37 1
Reduced environmental impacts 39 57 56 6, 12, 15
Ecosystems
Improved biodiversity protection 51 87 66 15
Improved water quality and regularity 29 52 42 6
Institutional
Greater empowerment of women 45 83 55 5, 10, 16
Preserved/used indigenous and local
knowledge
37 88 67 10, 16
ihoods
Improved food security 46 69 42 2
Higher income for low-income 46 96 52 8

24. Global review on the state of knowledge
• 23 Global Review Studies
– Governance
– Finance
– Business engagement
– Market mechanisms
– Climate change adaptation & mitigation
– Mobilizationby producer organizations
– Agrobiodiversity
– City-regions
– Landscape science
– Resilience
– Others

25. The Little Sustainable Landscapes Book
• Aims to clarify and disseminate
sustainable landscape management
methods, and to catalyze their
implementation across private, civic
and public sectors worldwide
• Published December, 2015.

26. Advancing the Development of Tools

27. Tools for tracking landscape change

28. Tools for implementing ILM

30. Landscape MSP Design
and Assessment Tool
(Tropenbos)
• Guides users through 3 related tools
for designing and assessing MSP
processes and outcomes in
workshop settings, based on
specified performance criteria
• Landscape MSP performance criteria
published in Environmental
Management prior to release of
guidelines

31. SDG Scenario Modeling Tool

32. Landscape Investment and Finance Tool
Liftkit.info

33. Landscape leadership workshops
Smithsonian
Conservation
Biology Institute
and
Virginia Working
Lands

34. Laikipia landscape research
Food Systems mapping
and landscape data
decision-making
dashboard
Implemented with
ICRAF and County Govt
Funded by Carasso
Foundation

35. Barind Tract landscape initiative support
• Focusing application of
frameworks, tools and
capacity-building
resources to realize
multiple SDGs in water-
stressed landscapes in
accelerated timeframe

36. Special topics courses

37. What are we learning?
• Landscape approaches are not a “fad”
– They manifest the integrated nature of the biosphere, aligning
human decision-making with processes and patterns of the
ecosystem we inhabit
– Comparing ILM to single-sector interventions is not meaningful
– “Lack of evidence of effectiveness” stems from difficulties of
measuring impacts in complex contexts, and inadequate
investment in establishing and monitoring metrics over long term

38. What are we learning?
• “Synthesis of current consensus” studies combined with
surveys of practitioners help advance the theory needed to
support the practice of integrated landscape management
– Sayer et al, 2013. Ten principles for a landscape approach to
reconciling agriculture, conservation and other competing land
uses, PNAS.
– Sayer, et al, 2017. Measuring the effectiveness of landscape
approaches to conservation and development. Sustainability
Science.

39. What are we learning?
• Primary value of better research on landscape approaches
– Help the initiatives themselves - and the larger global community
of practice - design and implement them more effectively to meet
full range of desired outcomes at least cost
– Convince policy makers, donors, business leaders and financiers
to invest over the long term

40. What are we learning?
• A fully considered landscape approach should be
underpinned by rigorous “Theory of Change”
– Metrics that measure change along impact pathways of the TOC provide
evidence that effective processunderpins the landscapeinterventions
– Citizen science has unmet potential in driving the local learning, knowledge and
engagement fundamentalto success in implementing and monitoring
– Global Forest Watch is indicative of advances in open-sourcetechnologies and
information systems to support landscapemonitoring and verification

41. What are we learning?
• Partnership requires passion, persistence and business
– Key ingredients in public-private-civic partnership for landscape
management are evident and documented
– Business actors have enormous contributions to make and
unfulfilled roles to play
– IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative’s ISLA (Initiative for Sustainable
Landscapes) valuable source of innovationand inspiration around
“putting business in the drivers seat”

42. Next: Thousands of Landscapes ?

43. Knowledge resources
EcoAgriculture Partners – https://ecoagriculture.org/
Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative (LPFN) -
http://peoplefoodandnature.org/
LIFT-KIT – https://liftkit.info/