COS 154-1 - A transdisciplinary approach to landscape planning: reconciling biodiversity conservation and food security at a landscape-scale through applying participatory scenario planning and backcasting

Background/Question/Methods

Conserving biodiversity and achieving food security are two of the biggest contemporary global challenges. The two sectors are interconnected and evolve as part of the same social-ecological system, especially in a smallholder-dominated agricultural landscape of the global south region—a landscape characterized by exceptionally rich but declining biodiversity and growing food insecurity. Over the last decades, landscapes in the global south region have undergone rapid changes that exacerbated biodiversity loss and negatively impacted local people's food security. Reversing such negative impacts of landscape change requires proactive landscape planning. Such comprehensive planning and management, in turn, requires a transdisciplinary approach that integrates the science and practice of landscape planning, draws on diverse understandings of past trends and uncertainties, develops possible future trajectories (scenario planning). In addition, identifying desirable landscapes and strategies needed to reach the desired future (Backcasting) is important to initiate collective action toward harmonizing conservation and food security goals. However, studies that apply transdisciplinary approaches in harmonizing landscape-scale conservation and food security goals in sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. Thus, this study fills this methodological and empirical gap by applying participatory scenario planning and backcasting in southwestern Ethiopia.

Results/Conclusions

Specifically, we conducted 21 multi-stakeholder workshops at multiple governance levels to identify plausible future landscapes for 2040, envisioning the desirable future and strategies for transitioning to the desired future landscape in southwestern Ethiopia. Our empirical study developed four plausible future scenarios: (1) gain over grain: local cash crops; (2) mining green gold: coffee investors; (3) coffee and conservation: a biosphere reserve; and (4) food first: intensive farming and forest protection. These scenarios differ in biodiversity and food security outcomes and stakeholders' preferences. Importantly, three of the four scenarios involved trade-offs between food security and biodiversity, while "coffee and conservation: a biosphere reserve" was a scenario driven by agroecological production methods that support diversified livelihoods, a multifunctional landscape, and social-ecological resilience. Given fewer trade-offs, an agroecological development pathway, a feature of "coffee and conservation: a biosphere reserve," likely generate synergies between food security and biodiversity conservation. The trajectories identified in our case study may apply similarly to many other landscapes worldwide. Thus, the transdisciplinary approaches applied in this study are powerful to empower local people, proactively navigate alternative futures, and devise strategies and collective action towards achieving sustainable future landscapes that harmonize conservation and development goals.