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  • FTA 2020 Science Conference: Forests, trees and agroforestry science for transformational change

FTA, the largest research programme for development program of forests, trees and agroforestry ran a fully digital scientific conference from 14 to 25 September 2020. The conference was held as an FTA closed event: it gathered all researchers involved in FTA from its partner organizations to present the most exciting research results, exchange experiences and lessons learned, and reflect on the way forward until the end of FTA phase 2 (31/12/2021), with a particular focus on impact. It attracted more than 520 individual participants and around 200 outputs (counting keynote speeches, technical presentations and posters).

The conference was organized along six broad technical work streams, inspired by ongoing dialogue with CGIAR and in international policy discussions:

  1. Inclusive value chains, finance and investments
  2. Towards resilient and diverse landscapes and food systems
  3. Transforming livelihoods through agroecological approaches with trees
  4. Nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis
  5. Inclusive governance for sustainable landscapes
  6. Designing, implementing and evaluating research for development impact

It also included three plenary sessions, two parallel poster sessions and two specific sessions tackling hot/controversial issues in the scientific and development fields, in which FTA has a specific role in helping to disentangle the issues:

  • Competing understandings of the restoration problem and solutions
  • Systemic approaches in a ‘silver bullets’ world.

Finally, emerging issues for research for development in the area of FTA were discussed as a thread of the conference and within a dedicated session in closure.

The present website gathers all the presentations and posters (out of the 179 abstracts submitted) showcased during the conference, most of which are the result of a collaboration between different partners, making them available to the open public. These outputs will also serve as a key milestone in the preparation of the highlights and legacy of the FTA program 2011-2021, and to discuss emerging issues for future research, as a contribution to paving the way for the scientific content of future R4D partnership around forests, trees and agroforestry. Enjoy this breadth of information from the FTA community!

Opening plenary

The opening plenary illustrated purpose, objectives and methodology of the whole conference.

After the welcome speeches from the Chair of the Independent Steering Committee of FTA, the DG of CIFOR and Managing Director of CIFOR-ICRAF and the Chair of the Research, Development and Impact Committee of the Common Board CIFOR-ICRAF, two extremely inspiring high-level keynotes engaged the audience, setting the stage for the 10 conference days ahead.

The Stream Leaders presented and described the substance of their workstreams and upcoming technical sessions. The session concluded with a brief illustration of the interactive digital tools available to scientists to access all the private material and collaborate among themselves in a common virtual space over the course of the 2 weeks.

Anne-Marie Izac
Chair of the Independent Steering Committee of FTA
Robert Nasi
DG of CIFOR and Managing Director of CIFOR-ICRAF
Alexander Müller
Chair of the Research, Development and Impact Committee of the Common Board CIFOR-ICRAF
Holger Meinke
Strategic Research Professor for Global Food Sustainability at the University of Tasmania, Australia
Maryam Rahmanian
Independent expert on issues related to biodiversity and agroecology
Vincent Gitz
Director of FTA and Chair of the Management Team
Bas Louman
FTA Operational Priority 17 Leader, Tropenbos International
Ramni Jamnadass
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 1 Leader, ICRAF
Christopher Kettle
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for Bioversity International
Fergus Sinclair
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 2 Leader, ICRAF
Eduardo Somarriba
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CATIE
Christopher Martius
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 5 Leader, CIFOR
Plinio Sist
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CIRAD
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR
Peter Minang
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 4 Leader
Anne Larson
Team Leader, Equal Opportunities, Gender Justice & Tenure, CIFOR
Marlène Elias
FTA Coordinator of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion
Brian Belcher
Professor at Royal Roads University
Federica Coccia
FTA Coordinator of Monitoring and Impact Evaluation
Michael Allen Brady
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 3 Leader, CIFOR

Opening by the FTA director and Chair of the session, Vincent Gitz

Welcome speeches

  • Anne-Marie Izac, Chair of the Independent Steering Committee of FTA
  • Robert Nasi, DG of CIFOR and Managing Director of CIFOR-ICRAF
  • Alexander Müller, Chair of the Research, Development and Impact Committee of the Common Board CIFOR-ICRAF

Conference keynotes speeches

  • Holger Meinke, Strategic Research Professor for Global Food Sustainability at the University of Tasmania, Australia – Keynote presentation – Quality of research for development – foundations for a high-achieving, impact-focused culture
  • Question and answer session with audience
  • Maryam Rahmanian, Independent expert on biodiversity and agroecology – Keynote presentation
  • Question and answer session with audience

Closure remarks by Vincent Gitz, Chair of the session

Overview of Sessions

  • Michael Brady, Bas Louman (Stream 1 Chairs)
  • Ramni Jamnadass, Chris Kettle (Stream 2 Chairs)
  • Fergus Sinclair, Yanxia Li, Eduardo Somarriba (Stream 3 Chairs)
  • Christopher Martius, Yanxia Li, Plinio Sist (Stream 4 Chairs)
  • Peter Minang, Anne Larson, Marlène Elias (Stream 5 Chairs)
  • Brian Belcher, Federica Coccia (Stream 6 Chairs)

Closing remarks by Vincent Gitz, chair of the session

Stream sessions

Stream 1: Inclusive value chains, finance and investments

The aim of this Stream was to support practitioners and policy makers in their efforts for more sustainable value chains and enhanced smallholder access to finance, and to identify areas for further action in research and capacity development.

The Stream explored innovations in public policy, business models and private investments and finance that stimulate the sustainable supply of timber from natural and planted forests and enhance the sustainable production of high-value tree crops, and reduce the impacts of agricultural expansion in forests through increased uptake of more sustainable and inclusive agricultural production and forest management systems.

Further to that, it looked at ways to facilitate innovations in public policy, finance and investments that help reduce the barriers encountered to scaling up finance for sustainable landscapes. Special attention has been placed on the importance of recognizing the role of gender in achieving sustainability, as well as on the rules and regulations that reign funds transfers and determine the funds applications.
Bas Louman
FTA Operational Priority 17 Leader, Tropenbos International
Michael Allen Brady
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 3 Leader, CIFOR

Inclusive business models and value chains
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Bas Louman
Reducing barriers to inclusive landscape finance
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Michael Brady
Additional resources

Stream 2: Towards resilient and diverse landscapes and food system

The global food system drives unsustainable agriculture and land use change leading to a planetary biodiversity
crisis. Paradoxically, biodiversity is the foundation of resilient landscapes and sustainable food systems that nourish people and planet. This Stream highlighted the latest science innovations using tree biodiversity from genes to ecosystems at landscape scales to support food systems for a sustainable future.

A first focus was placed on exploring the challenges and opportunities to scale delivery of biodiversity to deliver
sustainable development goals, especially related to cost-effective tree-based restoration to promote resilient and diverse landscapes and food systems. The outcomes are all wildly relevant for many other tree-based biodiversity related initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge, the Forest Ecosystem Restoration Initiative and the United Nation’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programmes.

Secondly, the most important FTA innovations to enhance delivery of biodiversity based solutions were showcased and discussed: maps, databases, advanced genomic methods, smartphone apps, participatory domestication methods, etc. These tools help promote tree species’ biodiversity effectively, plan agricultural diversification with trees across multiple settings in a context-specific manner, accounting for agroecological differences and cultural preferences. They provide the correct information on what trees to plant where and for what purpose, with information on the nutritional contribution of different species as well as their role in restoration.
Ramni Jamnadass
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 1 Leader, ICRAF
Christopher Kettle
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for Bioversity International

Scaling efficient biodiversity based solutions to restoration
  • Introduction by Ramni Jamnadass
  • Concluding remarks by Chris Kettle
Innovations to enhance delivery of biodiversity based solutions
  • Introduction by Chris Kettle
  • Concluding remarks by Ramni Jamnadass
Additional resources

Stream 3: Transforming livelihoods through agroecological approaches with trees

This Stream focused on the role of trees and forests in agroecological approaches to transforming livelihoods.
It comprised contributions addressing how agroecological principles are being operationalized to improve the
productivity and resilience of livelihoods in contexts that involve trees or forests. The scope covered field; farm or
forest; landscape or community; whole food system; and scales.

Agroecological transitions have been classified as incremental or transformational, depending on the extent to which they represent a systemic change to the agricultural and food systems involved (Gliessman, S.R. 2016) and agroecological principles have been associated with each of these types of transition (HLPE, 2019).

An initial focus was put on incremental transitions, mainly involving agroecological principles of input reduction,
recycling, animal and soil health, biodiversity, economic diversification and synergy but also considering the nature of principles and their utility in shaping research on how trees and forests can contribute to transforming livelihoods.

Secondly, transformation was analyzed, mainly involving agroecological principles of social values and diets,
fairness, connectivity, governance, and, participation with a view to exploring the role of trees and forests in helping humanity stay within a safe operating space reconciling human wellbeing and planetary health (Raworth, K. 2017).
Fergus Sinclair
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 2 Leader, ICRAF
Eduardo Somarriba
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CATIE
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR

Transforming livelihoods: Incremental transitions
  • Introduction by Fergus Sinclair
  • Concluding remarks by Michael Quin Patton
Transforming livelihoods: Towards transformation
  • Introduction by Fergus Sinclair
  • Concluding remarks by Rachel Bezner Kerr
Additional resources

Stream 4: Nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis

The Earth faces a human-made triple crisis of climate, biodiversity, and ecosystems exploited beyond their
sustainable boundaries. The planet is likely to not stay below 1.5 or 2.0 degrees Celsius warming unless we undertake unprecedented steps for transformational change. The UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit in September 2019 highlighted how so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ (NBS) could help contribute to such needed transformational action.

NBS are approaches that rely on protecting, restoring and managing ecosystems to solve the climate crisis while creating landscapes that are productive, equitable, and resilient. These include the protection and restoration of forests, mangroves and peatlands, improvements in agricultural land and resource use, the leveraging of the potential of biomass and renewable materials, etc.

This Stream highlighted FTA’s NBS solutions, analyzed current trends and barriers, and discussed enabling policies. An NBS framework for policy and action was discussed, as a coherent set of nature-based interventions. The aim of this Stream was to provide practitioners and policy makers with tools to facilitate their efforts for a cooler planet, and to identify areas for further action in research and capacity development.

A framing of NBS for most effective and efficient outcomes was developed, exploring various NBS such as forestry, agroforestry, options for wood production from degraded forests, bamboo, options for water management, and of frameworks such as REDD+, and the policy and practice for better NBS. It also ventured into wood- and bamboo-based products for plastic substitution as well as addressing drivers of deforestation as a pathway to the design of better restoration projects in policy and practice.
Christopher Martius
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 5 Leader, CIFOR
Plinio Sist
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CIRAD
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR

Nature-based solutions – opportunities and constraints
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Christopher Martius
Restoration – what is needed to scale it up?
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Plinio Sist
Resilience – how can it be measured and strengthened?
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Houria Djoudi
Bioenergy – trees and bamboo as sustainable energy providers
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Yanxia Li
Additional resources

Stream 5: Inclusive governance for sustainable landscapes

This Stream focused on decision-making at the intersection of policy and practice, together with the institutions that support or obstruct inclusion, transparency and accountability in decision-making processes. It addressed the concepts, approaches, tools and practices that enable evidence-based effective, efficient and equitable prioritization, decision-making and implementation at the landscape level.

At the heart of these processes are a set of governance challenges. These include maneuvering the different mandates and boundaries of multiple organizations and institutions working in a landscape; the power relations and gender imbalances embedded in the political economy of decision-making; and the challenges of reconciling conflicting social, economic and environmental objectives.

Concepts, practice and tools associated with “participation” in landscape governance have been analyzed with the objective of defining its various expressions and meaning, and thus identifying ways to contextualize and better understand its myriad manifestations.

Further to this, a variety of specific topics in tenure and landscapes were discussed. Land tenure is widely recognized as highly relevant to sustainable landscape management, restoration and livelihoods. Yet with a mix of widely varying local and customary practices, formalization procedures and threats to tenure security, this extreme diversity and complexity can be a difficult topic to study and even more challenging to resolve in practice, especially at scale.
Peter Minang
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 4 Leader
Anne Larson
Team Leader, Equal Opportunities, Gender Justice & Tenure, CIFOR
Marlène Elias
FTA Coordinator of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion

Participatory processes in landscape governance and management
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Anne Larson
Land and forest tenure: implications for sustainable management and inclusion
  • Introduction and concluding remarks by Marlène Elias
  • Reactions by Johnathan Fox
Landscape and jurisdictional approaches for governance and sustainability
  • Introduction by Peter Minang
Additional resources

Stream 6: Designing, implementing and evaluating research for development impact

Researchers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that the research they do contributes to positive change and helps to solve pressing societal challenges. As a result, research is being conducted in a more transdisciplinary way, with deliberate efforts to engage stakeholders in the co-generation and co-production of research, and to incorporate processes and partnerships that facilitate knowledge translation.

Appropriate evaluation is needed, not only to evidence research impact, but also to generate learning to improve
research design and increase impact. Given that an increasing amount of research for development is being done
in a more engaged transdisciplinary way, intervening on multiple variables, and with multiple pathways to impact,
reductionist experimental and quasi-experimental impact assessment methods are not sufficient because they do not accommodate complexity well.

This Stream focused on the challenges related to evaluating and measuring research impact, and discussed the need for a complex-aware approach to research evaluation that challenges researchers to broaden their scope and ensure societal relevance in their research.
Brian Belcher
Professor at Royal Roads University
Federica Coccia
FTA Coordinator of Monitoring and Impact Evaluation

Hot and controversial

Competing understandings of the restoration problem and solutions

Restoration has emerged in the last decade as a key global political objective worldwide. Yet the debate is vivid, both inside the scientific community, as well as outside it. There is often also considerable mis-understanding, or even manipulation of facts and positions in the media, especially when plantations are introduced as a mean to “restore”. There are numerous perspectives, often conflicting, on the topic, from a disciplinary perspective but also from an objectives’ perspective. Research sometimes fall short of clearly explaining the issues and options forward, in a context where positions of stakeholders, private sector, civil society, are often diametrically opposed.

This is also a domain where generalizations are very dangerous, and where context and local conditions are of utmost importance. There is a risk that knowledge and good/bad examples are used counterproductive, instrumentalized, and/or that lack of clarity leads to a broad skepticism by the public or governments. There is therefore a real interpellation of science and research on how it can best inform both public perception, policies, but also implementation. It is also an example of the difficulties to have a “global” discussion on issues that are complex and context dependent and of the difficulties for science to inform such debates. FTA and its partners have accumulated a lot of work on the issue and it is a top operational research priority for FTA.

The session thus aimed at examining what can FTA research and researchers do to clarify various aspects of restoration in order to support action and not delay it. It made use of innovative methods in live digital interaction to underline the strengths and weaknesses/shortcomings of differing arguments, on a range of controversial facets of the restoration problem. It featured 5 Acts:

  1. What does the media say about restoration?
  2. Presentation and voting of different “before/after” restoration outcomes, illustrating activities performed by FTA projects
  3. True or False statements on restoration: live polling interaction with the audience to assess the “common understanding” and elicit a debate across all FTA
  4. Scientists role-playing key stakeholder figures (Minister of Agriculture, NGO representative, Timber industry representative, Smallholder farmer representative and a Local women community representative), pitching their case for restoration and how it affects them
  5. What should we do? Polling and panel discussion with panelists and audience

Ramni Jamnadass
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 1 Leader, ICRAF
Christopher Kettle
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for Bioversity International
Michael Dougherty
Team Leader Digital, Multimedia and Publishing, CIFOR-ICRAF
Eduardo Somarriba
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CATIE
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR
Peter Minang
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 4 Leader
Marlène Elias
FTA Coordinator of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion
Manuel Guariguata
Scientist, CIFOR
Meine van Noordwijk
Scientist, World Agroforestry
Beria Leimona
Scientist, World Agroforestry
Robin Sears
Scientist, CIFOR Associate
Leigh Winowiecki
Scientist, World Agroforestry
Daniel Murdiyarso
Scientist, CIFOR
Jianchu Xu
Scientist, World Agroforestry
Michael Allen Brady
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 3 Leader, CIFOR
Stepha McMullin
Scientist, World Agroforestry
Riina Jalonen
Scientist, Bioversity International
Habtemariam Kassa
Scientist, CIFOR

Introduction  by the chair of the session P. Minang

  • Act 1 – From the Media! Michael Dougherty
  • Act 2 – Before/After cases
    • L. Winowiecki (AFLI project in Viet Nam)
    • Y. Li (Bamboo restoration in Tanzania)
    • C. Kettle (Fencing in Burkina Faso)
    • R. Sears (2 approaches to restoring fallows in Bolania)
    • D. Murdiyarso (Mangrove restoration in North Sulawesi)
    • J. Xu (Restoration of mountain slopes adjacient to mines)
  • Act 3 – True or False
  • Act 4 – The Actors
    • H. Kassa (Minister of Agriculture)
    • R. Jalonen (Biodiversity NGO Representative)
    • M. Brady (Timber Industry Representative)
    • S. McMullin (Local Women Community Representative)
    • E. Somarriba (Smallholder Farmer Representative)
  • Act 5 – What should we do?

Systemic approaches in a silver bullet world

Countries and stakeholders are increasingly confronted with an increasing number of large-scale, wicked problems. At the same time, they increasingly want to focus and prioritize efforts, especially R4D efforts, on a limited set of issues. Solving a big, complex issue with a simple idea and “innovation” that can be easily adopted and quickly scaled up is very attractive to donors, to governments, north and south. It makes easy stories to explain, get understood and sell to the public. Progress in upscaling and impact can be more easily monitored, and their proponents and implementers more easily held accountable for than complex, multi scale and multi-dimensional sets of interventions in a systemic perspective. Therefore “silver bullet” kind of proposals / projects often get a head start amongst donors, or in research prioritization.

This is a major issue for the work we do as our research (together with others) in the food-land-water systems is showing increasing interdependencies across these systems, but also between scales and components within the systems. Impacts of the COVID-19 crisis and of mitigation responses (e.g. lockdowns) have also shown these interdependencies. Successful approaches to food, land and water systems transformation therefore are more likely to be holistic ones, mobilizing various levers at the same time, cognizant of numerous interactions and relations within drivers and components of systems, accounting for compensations and decompensations within these systems in response of the interventions, and endogenizing the behavior and response of various actors.

These systemic approaches enable agricultural research to address a more complex set of objectives than before (when these were reduced to productivity and yield), but are however very difficult to sell to donors, because they are more complex to explain, to implement, and because funding departments / lines are generally compartmentalized each one with its own perimeter and own objective, even within large multisectoral funding agencies or ministries there is no reconciliation that would allow larger systemic approaches to become the norm, rather than the exception. Also, these are more complex and subtle to engineer, requiring strong involvement of stakeholders. They can’t be just the sum of independent, uncoordinated sectoral measures/innovations.

Finally, and unfortunately, R4D approaches to system level transformation, due to their increased level of complexity, were not always successful in the past, with the example of the system-level CRPs in phase 1, that were discontinued. Amongst the reason is a generic feeling that systemic approaches mask a lack of priority setting and incapacity to present the single most impactful solutions within a system. There is therefore a risk for our research to become marginalized in the future. However, in the current context of compounded problems, it has an unprecedented relevance and as such a big potential.

So, how can we make systemic approaches the next silver bullet? How to make them attractive and implementable? How to show them as scalable? In selling our research and innovations, what are we doing right and what are we doing wrong? What can we do to make our complex activities, “transformative” projects, and outcomes clearer and not more obscure?

This session aimed at eliciting controversies, strengths and shortcomings of differing arguments, through an interactive exchange with the audience through a “Green Dragons’ den”. Five scientists had to present their case through a 2-minute “elevator pitch” (no slides! The audience was given a token and asked to allocate their virtual money in a crowdfunding exercise on the most promising innovation. The Dragons independently placed their funds after and sums were drawn. Guess who won? Needless to say… a very lively debate followed!

Anne-Marie Izac
Chair of the Independent Steering Committee of FTA
Ravi Prabhu
Director Innovation, Investment and Impact, ICRAF
Bas Louman
FTA Operational Priority 17 Leader, Tropenbos International
Fergus Sinclair
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 2 Leader, ICRAF
Eduardo Somarriba
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CATIE
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR
Sammy Carsan
Scientist, World Agroforestry
La Nguyen
Scientist, World Agroforestry
Susan Braatz
Scientist, FAO
Linda Collette
Ecologist, FAO
Richard Stanislaus Muyungi
Chair of the SBSTA, UNFCCC
Leona Liu
Deputy Director, Resilient Landscapes
Kumar Tumuluru
Director of Corporate Services, CIFOR-ICRAF

Green Dragons: A. M. Izac, S. Braatz, L. Collette, R. Muyungi  (Independent members of the FTA ISC)

  • Introduction by V. Gitz
  • Polling session with audience
  • Case presentation and Dragon’s assessment
    • E. Sommariba (CATIE): ShadeMotion
    • S. Carsan & L. Nguyen (ICRAF): Improved son tra cultivar
    • Y. Li (INBAR): Bamboo for community energy provision
    • B. Louman (Tropenbos): Inclusive method for landscape analysis of financial flows
    • F. Sinclair (ICRAF): Options by context approach to agronomic innovation
  • Public crowdfunding exercise
  • Dragons’ funding allocations
  • Presentation of results from overall crowdfunding and feedback by V. Gitz
  • Panel discussion on lessons learned and way forward. Panel chaired by A. M. Izac
    R. Prabhu (ICRAF), K. Tumuluru (CIFOR), L. Liu (CIFOR/Resilient Landscapes).

Week 1 wrap up plenary

Week 1 works were wrapped up with a plenary that saw 2 extremely inspiring and provocative keynote speeches from Dolors Almentaras and Jennifer Pryce, who also gave their perspective on the debates so far and recommendations for Week 2. The Stream Leaders had an occasion to illustrate main results and lessons learned in the first five days of the conference and the plans for the second and last 5 days.

Dolors Armenteras
Professor, National University of Colombia
Jennifer Pryce
President and CEO Calvert Impact Capital
Bas Louman
FTA Operational Priority 17 Leader, Tropenbos International
Christopher Kettle
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for Bioversity International
Fergus Sinclair
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 2 Leader, ICRAF
Eduardo Somarriba
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CATIE
Christopher Martius
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 5 Leader, CIFOR
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR
Peter Minang
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 4 Leader
Anne Larson
Team Leader, Equal Opportunities, Gender Justice & Tenure, CIFOR
Marlène Elias
FTA Coordinator of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion
Michael Allen Brady
FTA Management Team Member, Flagship 3 Leader, CIFOR
Plinio Sist
Director Research Unit Forest and Societies, CIRAD

Keynote speeches

  • Dolors Armenteras – Professor, National University of Colombia – Keynote presentation 
  • Question and answer session with audience
  • Jennifer Pryce – President and CEO, Calvert Impact Capital – Keynote presentation 
  • Question and answer session with audience

Week 1 wrap-up and presentation for week 2, for each conference stream

  • Michael Brady, Bas Louman (Stream 1 Chairs)
  • Ramni Jamnadass, Chris Kettle (Stream 2 Chairs)
  • Fergus Sinclair, Yanxia Li, Eduardo Somarriba (Stream 3 Chairs)
  • Christopher Martius, Yanxia Li, Plinio Sist (Stream 4 Chairs, no PPT)
  • Peter Minang, Anne Larson, Marlène Elias (Stream 5 Chairs)
  • Brian Belcher, Federica Coccia (Stream 6 Chairs, no PPT)

Closing plenary

The final closing plenary session was an occasion to wrap-up the work across the 10 days of the conference, highlighting main results of FTA, promising areas of research and priorities as well as a potential way forward for this research partnership.

Stream Leaders opened the session by reviewing the outcomes and discussions from their technical sessions, identifying main results, lessons learned and promising areas of research. This paved the way to a lively panel discussion on the impact of research through innovations. Donors and resource partners shared perspectives on future research for development priorities, discussing their vision for the years ahead and the implications for large scale partnerships. A final panel, chaired by the Independent Steering Committee of FTA Chair and by ICRAF’s DG & CIFOR- ICRAF Executive Director, discussed the way forward: what are the emerging and most needed R4D questions that require large partnerships like FTA, and how to design the future of FTA.

Final remarks by the 2 directors of FTA (Robert Nasi for Phase I and Vincent Gitz for Phase II) closed a lively and informative 10 days of conference.

Anne-Marie Izac
Chair of the Independent Steering Committee of FTA
Tony Simons
Executive Director, CIFOR-ICRAF
Ravi Prabhu
Director Innovation, Investment and Impact, ICRAF
Robert Nasi
DG of CIFOR and Managing Director of CIFOR-ICRAF
Vincent Gitz
Director of FTA and Chair of the Management Team
Eduardo Somarriba
FTA Management Team Member, Representative for CATIE
Yanxia Li
Senior Programme Officer, Representative for INBAR
Catherine Muthuri
Regional Coordinator, Eastern & Southern Africa, ICRAF
Santiago Alba-Corral
Interim Director, Agriculture and Environment IDRC
Pablo Pacheco
Global Forests Lead Scientist
T. Vijay Kumar
Executive Vice Chairman, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha
Karyanto Wibowo
Director Sustainable Development, Danone Indonesia
S. Anwar
Vice President, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives
N. Devoe
Research Program Manager for Forestry ACIAR, Australia
W. Van Ijssel
Senior Advisor Food Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands
Michel Evequoz
Senior Advisor, Switzerland Development Cooperation, Global Programme Food Security, Switzerland
Li Xuejiao
Program Officer, CAS, China
Stephan Weise
Deputy Director General Research, The Alliance CIAT-Bioversity
Plinio Sist
Director Research Unit Forest and Societies, CIRAD
René Boot
Director, Tropenbos International

Conference wrap-up by Stream Leaders

  • Michael Brady, Bas Louman (Stream 1 Chairs)
  • Ramni Jamnadass, Chris Kettle (Stream 2 Chairs)
  • Fergus Sinclair, Yanxia Li, Eduardo Somarriba (Stream 3 Chairs)
  • Christopher Martius, Yanxia Li, Plinio Sist (Stream 4 Chairs)
  • Peter Minang, Anne Larson, Marlène Elias (Stream 5 Chairs)

Research impact through transformative innovations panel

Introduction by R. Prabhu, Chair of the panel

  • Wrap up of Stream 6 – Brian Belcher, Federica Coccia
  • Panel discussion
    C. Muthuri, ICRAF, Regional Coordinator, Eastern & Southern Africa
    S. Alba-Corral, IDRC, Interim Director, Agriculture and Environment
    P. Pacheco, WWF, Global Forests Lead Scientist
    T. Vijay Kumar, Executive Vice Chairman, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (in the rank of Special Chief Secretary), and Member State Agriculture Mission, Govt of Andhra Pradesh, India

Chair’s conclusions

Question and answer exchange with participants on the Streams achievements and previous panel

Donors and resource partners perspectives on future research for development priorities.

Introduction by R. Nasi, Chair of the session

Panel interventions:

  • S. Anwar Vice President, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives
  • K. Wibowo AQUA Indonesia Sustainability Director
  • N. Devoe Research Program Manager for Forestry ACIAR, Australia
  • W. Van Ijssel Senior Advisor on Food Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands
  • M. Evequoz Senior Advisor, Switzerland Development Cooperation Global Programme Food Security
The way forward: Emerging and most needed R4D questions that require large partnerships like FTA and how to move ahead? Perspectives from FTA partners
  • Introduction and perspectives by the two co-Chairs T. Simons (ICRAF DG and CIFOR-ICRAF executive director) and A. M. Izac
  • Panel discussion moderated by the co-Chairs:
    • CAF (Li Xuejiao)
    • Bioversity (S. Weise for the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT)
    • CATIE (E. Sommariba)
    • CIRAD (P. Sist)
    • INBAR (Li Yanxia)
    • Trobenbos (R. Boot)
  • Wrap-up by co-Chairs T. Simons and A. M. Izac

Conference closure

  • Measuring success and coming back to initial expectations – Polls organized by conference organizers
  • Closing remarks by R. Nasi and V. Gitz, the 2 Directors of FTA in Phase 1 and Phase 2

Posters

The 40 posters accepted to the conference were presented through 2 parallel sessions, each subdivided in 3 sub-sessions. Each poster had to be pitched in only 2’. A Q/A session and wrap up from the moderator of the sub-session followed the presentations. Having the posters been available on the virtual conference space a week in advance of the start of the conference, the moderators also addressed many comments and reactions posted in the exhibition room to address during the session.

Session A.1 – Inclusive value chains, finance and investments (Theme 1) – Moderator: George Schoneveld

Session A.2 – Towards resilient and diverse landscapes and food systems (Theme 2) – Moderator: Fabio Pedercini

Session A.3 – Towards resilient and diverse landscapes and food systems (Theme 2) – Moderator: Hannes Gaisberger

Session B.1 – Transforming livelihoods through agroecological approaches with trees (Theme 3) – Moderator: Fergus Sinclair

Session B.2 – Nature-based solutions to address the climate crisis (Theme 4) – Moderators: Christopher Martius and Plinio Sist

Session B.3 – Inclusive governance for sustainable landscapes (Theme 5) – Moderator: Anne Larson


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