Engaging with stakeholders for initiating agroecological transition in Living Landscapes: Six guiding principles

In the Agroecology initiative, work package 1 (WP1) is responsible for ALL establishment. From the very beginning, during the initiative kick-off workshop in March 2022, the country leads of the seven countries in which the initiative operates agreed with WP1 coordination that the ALLs could not be established by applying a standard approach or methodology. Indeed, differences in the current state, trajectory, and human resources in terms of advancing agroecology and implementing multistakeholder approaches in each country need to be considered. Also, by its very design, the Agroecology Initiative intends to have strong national and local partners in each country, which are to contribute to developing the Initiative’s objectives and local implementation strategy. It was hence decided collectively that the ALL establishment could best be guided through the identification of common engagement principles that each country team could use flexibly to shape and guide its approach and related actions. In other words, considerations and principles presented in this guide may apply differently in each country and it is up to each country team to decide
how to make use of them for achieving their objectives. Following this rationale, this document presents the six guiding principles that were eventually identified. After introducing each principle, the document presents generic steps and specific considerations or suggestions for their operationalization/implementation.