Agricultural intensification has increasingly led to a loss of non-cultivated habitats and simplification of the landscape, and the elimination of important agro-ecological infrastructures leading to biodiversity loss, which in turn reduces the ecosystem services on which agriculture depends.

This cluster seeks to understand complex relations between ecosystem services as affected by tree cover loss or gain, and human wellbeing. Analyzing these interactions will provide a basis to examine and provide information on their effects on biodiversity, water quantity, quality and regularity flow. Tree cover changes also have a direct impact on climate. As such, this work interacts with FTA’s work on climate change and value chains, as well as with the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). This knowledge and evidence will be used to mobilize action, as well as inform the tradeoffs and synergies required for sustainable use of ecosystem services in meeting optimal human and development needs.

Well-meaning interventions on restoration are often faced with challenges of sustainability and scaling. This largely stems from a lack of alignment with local realities and possibilities. Work in this cluster explores whether and to what extent ‘restoration’ is feasible, including ways climate change adaptation can be built into traditional ‘steady-state’ or seemingly permanent restoration concepts.

FTA analyzes the consequences of landscape changes with a focus on multiple pathways of anthropogenic influence as identified in the previous cluster. Questions of ‘so what’ and ‘who cares’ are addressed here with respect to the quantity and quality of various ecosystem services. Another focus is the tradeoffs and synergies between services (provisioning, regulatory, aesthetic and cultural) under multiple conditions.

Tree cover changes have a direct impact on climate, while the various interactions in the landscape inform efforts on value addition. As such, this work interacts with FTA’s work on climate change and value chains, as well as with WLE.

At different scales, from village to global level, the quality of diets is linked to the quality of the landscapes that fundamentally provide for them. Landscape diversity is key to dietary diversity and therefore to good nutrition.

This cluster of activity explores ways in which landscape diversity management through forests and tree-based systems/agroforestry can contribute to healthier food systems and diets, and therefore food security and nutrition. It seeks to provide evidence, knowledge and information on the practices, mechanisms and strategies through which forests and trees on farms, and related value chains, can enhance food systems and diets under different conditions and contexts including rural–urban food system linkages.

It analyses how trees contribute to various components of healthy diets in rural and urban contexts, and the ways in which these can be influenced by changing tree-cover related landscape-level patterns, including land-use transition, agricultural intensification, shifting cultivation, home gardens, cropland–forest mosaics and forest management intensities. This cluster also assesses how inland water, fish, insects, bush meat and wild indigenous tree products can form parts of diverse diets in rural and urban contexts, compatible with sustainable harvest intensities.

The evidence generated is used by land planners, decision makers, development agencies and communities for developing interventions, implementing them and evaluating failures and successes as a basis for further learning. The overall objective is the provision of means for an increase of on-farm production of a diversity of fruits, nuts, vegetables and legumes, and increased amounts of collected wild resources including wild fruits, vegetables, bush meat, mushrooms, insects and fish from forests. It also aims at increased value capture by producers/collectors of nutrient-rich food, reduced post-harvest losses of wild and cultivated nutrient-rich food, and increased incomes and employment. Finally, it targets increased dietary diversity of low-income rural and urban consumers using a variety of nutrient-rich wild and cultivated foods available during economic, social and/or environmental shocks.

In most landscapes, various interventions to meet the Sustainable Development Goals tend to be conducted in parallel, driven by different stakeholders with varying interests. However, in a landscape, what happens in one sector impacts other sectors and hence there is a need to integrate actions by multiple stakeholders.

This cluster of activity aims to provide ways for institutionalizing, on the ground, the landscape approach, in a bid to create appropriately informed governance schemes and evidence-based environments for collective decisions, to manage tradeoffs and maximize synergies between various actors and sectors, and have other complex dynamics well considered in order to achieve multiple objectives.

Investments for restoring ecosystem services tend to be uncoordinated, unaware of enabling or disabling laws and policies, and largely driven by the perspectives of the investors rather than ecosystem and community needs. An integrated approach will promote synergy, avoid duplication of efforts and provide opportunities for shared learning.

There are many ways by which ecosystem services can be restored within landscapes in terms of both different desired changes (e.g. restoration to forest or agroforest, use of ecosystem-service-friendly agroforestry practices) and different types of intervention (regulations, incentives or markets for ecosystem services). There is a need to devise processes and institutions to help stakeholders understand the range of possible options available in a landscape and to make decisions given multiple objectives.

In addition, there is growing concern for the need to provide attractive employment and livelihood perspectives for young people in agriculture and forestry. Many countries are confronted with an aging population of farmers and/or an increasing active population with high rates of youth unemployment. Youth need platforms that can launch their entrepreneurial skills, creativity and ambitions with a focus on providing profitable solutions for food security and environmental management. To create impact, interventions also need to enhance gender equity.

FTA assesses the enabling conditions and elements including improved local governance and related instruments (e.g. land-use plans, green economy plans), and examines how policy instruments and incentives (including payments for ecosystem services) can be deployed to enhance the achievement of multiple objectives on the ground; FTA also aims at better conceptually defining the role of research in support of and embedded into these processes, in contact with stakeholders, including through action research.

FTA’s work looks to strengthen gender and youth innovations through institutional capacity to increase their ownership and voice in natural resource management as well as paying specific attention to environmental justice concepts and their application in local institutions. This will allow for critical reflection on current generic theories of change and the diverse roles of agency for change, while also taking into account political economy and political ecology aspects of the constraints to guiding policy and enhancing landscape governance.

Multiple methods, tools and approaches are developed. Central to the process are inclusive and participatory approaches (landscape democracy), alongside decision and negotiation support and capacity-building tools. This cluster also links with other FTA work on property management and governance. It further provides a platform for an exchange of lessons learned across FTA. It also serves as a link to the other three clusters of activity by collecting, synthesizing and packaging results and information into formats that can be shared as evidence for policymaking and other intervention efforts by various actors.