About

Several important trends, such as increasing populations, changing diets and a need for environmental preservation, have led to increased competition for land and land uses, given limited land resources. Amid this competition, economic dimensions have often dominated over environmental and social aspects, short-term outlooks over long-term ones, and global perspectives over local.

This research theme aims to understand the drivers of land-use changes, their dynamics, their consequences, as well as how decisions can be made regarding the role of forests and trees in the landscape, their distribution and types (species, modes of management). It also examines how these can help achieve multiple objectives (production, nutrition, ecosystem services) within a landscape, and what tools and institutions are needed to facilitate such decisions and enable their implementation, given the various perspectives and interests of numerous and diverse actors.

FTA provides guidelines and tools (such as producer support programs, environmental and social responsibility guidelines, tools to guide investments, multistakeholder dialogues, vertical and horizontal integrations) that can be used to facilitate a multifunctional landscape approach. Such an approach deals with natural processes and human controls, such as natural resources management (NRM) and land tenure, in an integrated and multidisciplinary manner, combining a wide range of environmental factors (e.g. watershed health, biodiversity conservation and habitat connectivity), economic factors (value chain dynamics), and social conditions and objectives with institutional and policy considerations.

Thus, this research theme coordinates internally with FTA’s work on sustainable value chains at the meso level, jointly addressing tradeoffs and synergies relating to commodities, trade and enterprise. The theme also partners with the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) as well as the Future Earth and the Ecosystem Services Partnership.

Regarding climate change, mitigation and adaptation objectives have largely been pursued separately. A landscape approach can enable integration and synergy between the two and thus enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of NRM.

FTA provides a menu of practices associated with various systems and successful case studies, where the multifunctionality of landscapes provides mitigation, adaptation, development and conservation benefits. In this respect, the research theme links with FTA’s work on climate change, exploring aspects of climate smart landscapes as well as the linkages between agriculture and forests in the context of reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), and nationally determined contributions as they link to green economies. Collaboration also occurs between this research theme, FTA’s climate change work, and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).