Landscape Vision-to-Action (LV2A) approach to co-design multi-stakeholder transition pathways for multifunctional landscapes

The CGIAR Agroecology Initiative (AE-I) accompanied the establishment of eleven Agroecological Living Landscapes (ALLs) in eight countries. ALLs were understood as multi-stakeholder spaces in which agroecological innovations can be identified, co-designed, tested, and adopted. These landscapes emerged as coherent territories that have fuzzy boundaries defined by the functionality and meaning bestowed onto them by their diverse users, who care about and are willing to take transformative action in pursuit of just food system transitions, rather than by geographical or administrative limits. In the MFL SP, we adapt the ALL concept and propose to collaborate with additional stakeholders in (Multifunctional) Living Landscapes (MFLLs).

ALLs respond to the common challenges that external partners face in accompanying and supporting local stakeholders on sustainable and locally led transition pathways without imposing their own views and agendas. ALLs offer an opportunity to act as transformation vehicles that foster transdisciplinary research, including the co-creation of knowledge and co-design of innovations. In line with HLPE (2019), transdisciplinary research should be problem-focused, solution-oriented, inclusive, and reflexive. This transdisciplinarity challenge pushes researchers to develop and implement structured and principle-based approaches for engaging with other stakeholders that are rooted in truthfulness, dignity, and reciprocity. To support the AE-I team, we developed the Principles of Engagement and positioned them as fundamental for starting and structuring continuous engagement, and for creating principle-based ALLs. This principle-based engagement method aims to help research teams to be reflexive and self-aware in how they interact with ALL partners and emphasize the centrality of relationship and trust building for long-term collaboration in the ALLs. The Principles of Engagement address the question of how to engage.

The Landscape Vision-to-Action (LV2A) approach then comes in as method to structure conversations that allows stakeholders to discuss and agree about who, what, when and where to engage in the sought transformation processes. Ultimately, the outputs of LV2A provide the building blocks for a theory of change of stakeholder’s action towards intended outcomes in the landscape. The LV2A process and results also point to opportunities and entry points for responsive external support – including by research-in-development partners such as the AE-I, in the context of which it was initially developed, and now the CGIAR Science Program on Multifunctional Landscapes (MFL SP).