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Understanding Ecoagriculture
The real potential for achieving ecoagriculture landscapes that conserve biodiversity while sustaining agricultural production and enhancing rural livelihoods is poorly understood. The following two initiatives seek to support ecoagriculture practitioners to document their ecoagriculture innovations and measure impacts at a landscape scale, and to mobilize and synthesize research needed to strengthen understanding of ecoagriculture.

Landscape Measures Initiative (LMI)
Bamboo PhotoThis initiative seeks to help ecoagriculture practitioners measure the social, economic, and ecological outcomes of landscape-scale management practices. A common framework is being developed to support local stakeholders to work together with public, private, and civic institutions to develop locally-appropriate evaluation methods and indicators that jointly assess outcomes on biodiversity conservation, sustainable production, and rural livelihoods. International Steering Committee (ISC) members for the initiative include:
  • Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme of the CGIAR
  • The Business and Biodiversity Offset Program (BBOP)
  • Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñaza (CATIE)
  • The Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization.(CSIRO)
  • Conservation International
  • Cornell University
  • Oasis Initiative convened by ICRISAT and ICARDA
  • Ecoagriculture Partners
  • The Forest Landscape Restoration Program of the World Wildlife Federation (WWF)
  • International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
  • Landcare International.
  • Model Forest Network
  • M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation
  • The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
  • Rainforest Alliance
  • Winrock International
  • The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
  • The World Bank
  • World Conservation Union (IUCN)
A team from Cornell University’s Ecoagriculture Working Group, IUCN’s Forest Conservation Program, WWF’s Forest Conservation Program, and Ecoagriculture Partners is drafting a Sourcebook of indicators and measures for assessing change in the performance of ecoagricultural landscapes. Advice and input is being provided by the LMI’s International Steering Committee. During late 2007, the framework and Sourcebook tools will be adapted and pilot-tested in an ecoagriculture landscape in Mt. Elgon, Uganda. Subsequently, the members of the ISC each will adapt and evaluate the framework in at least one landscape.

For more information, please contact:

Ecoagriculture Research and Synthesis

This initiative addresses the need to organize, increase, and synthesize research on ecoagriculture systems. It also aims to support the dissemination of ecoagriculture research and field documentation to a broad range of target audiences.

Ongoing activities include:

  • Profiling ecoagriculture case studies, from diverse agro-ecosystems and socio-economic contexts
  • Compiling and disseminating key ‘ecoagriculture-related’ science papers to support ecoagriculture researchers internationally
  • Participation in the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) to ensure the integration of research on ecoagriculture
  • Editing a book with commissioned papers synthesizing available evidence on agricultural production systems, landscape conservation systems and institutions to support ecoagriculture landscapes, to be published in July 2007 by Island Press (jointly with Ecoagriculture Partners and IUCN), called Farming with Nature: The Science and Practice of Ecoagriculture.
  • Working with international and national research centers to strengthen the profile of ecoagriculture issues within research agendas, in collaboration with DIVERSITAS; CGIAR Centers - ICRAF, Bioversity and ILRI; the Agrobiodiversity Research Platform; IUCN; CATIE; the World Resources Institute; and National Academies of Sciences.
  • Exploring opportunities and models for knowledge-sharing between community-based ecoagriculture innovators and researchers

For more information, please contact:

Ecoagriculture Partners project coordinator, Seth Shames: sshames@ecoagriculturepartners.org.

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