Multifunctional agroforestry for Ethiopia

Multifunctional agroforestry for Ethiopia

Multifunctional agroforestry for Ethiopia

Delivery partner: International Centre for Research in Agroforestry

Project summary: The project will generate evidence on how highland systems in Ethiopia could be improved for a more biodiverse future that supports improved livelihoods and poverty reduction. By comparing traditional and modern agroforestry systems in four regions of Ethiopia, the project will implement a suite of knowledge-based multifunctional agroforestry systems on homesteads, farmland areas, and model rural resource centres to promote uptake of multifunctional agroforestry. The project will generate scalable tools, approaches, knowledge products and capacity building for thousands of highland farmers. It will also develop a strategy, partnerships and infrastructure to lay the foundation for further land restoration, biodiversity protection, poverty alleviation, and improved ecosystem resilience.

Resource management of Madagascar’s grasslands

Country: Madagascar

Delivery Partner:  Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Summary: Employing data-driven strategies, we will transform perceptions of Madagascar’s grasslands from barren wastelands to valuable biodiversity rich ecological assets that can support human livelihoods and carbon sequestration. We will enable sustainable reforestation by identifying optimal locations that enrich ecosystems and safeguard local livelihoods. Our vision is to redefine the intersection of reforestation and grassland preservation, fostering an understanding of these ecosystems’ critical role, promoting local prosperity, and strengthening Madagascar’s resilience to climate change.

The Flourishing Landscapes Programme

Countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Vietnam

Delivery Partner: University of Oxford

Summary: The Flourishing Landscapes Programme (FLP) addresses the triple challenge of livelihoods, climate change, and biodiversity loss at tropical forest frontiers. It will develop novel landscape-scale transdisciplinary research, via a new network of scientists and practitioners, to investigate strategies to both biodiversity and the climate resilience of smallholder farmers. By investigating agroforestry and community-led reforestation as nature-based solutions (NbS), the FLP addresses key knowledge gaps regarding the role of biodiversity in maximising nature’s contributions to people (NCPs) in agricultural landscapes. Building on this, via a human-centred design approach applied in Ghana, Ecuador and Viet Nam in coffee and cocoa production landscapes, the FLP will co-design, with rural communities, a citizen-led biodiversity monitoring toolkit to empower communities to utilise adaptive management to harness NCPs in their production. To showcase the value of the research data sets and citizen-science approaches, we will lead a co-design process with farmers, value chain actors and the insurance industry to explore risk sharing mechanisms that incentivise value chain investments in nature.