The Landscape Approach

I mentioned last month that I started working at EcoAgriculture Partners. To start the new year, I wanted to explain a bit more about the approach taken by the organization - the "Landscape" Approach. Ecoagriculture itself refers to rural communities managing their resources to jointly achieve three broad goals at a landscape scale: enhancing livelihoods; enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services; and developing more sustainable and productive agricultural systems. The "landscape scale" portion is the key to this integrated approach - it refers to a multifunctional perspective, where people and their institutions are an integral part of the system rather than external agents operating within a landscape. It views the environment not as untouched wilderness but as inhabited land where people and their production systems interact with the natural world for mutual benefit.

Here is a cool visual example via EcoAgriculture Partners:

There are other examples to clarify the approach, such as at the GPFLR website or this interesting video from CIFOR: