Piloting a living laboratory approach to sustainable agriculture
Country: Colombia
Partners: TerraViva Consortium- Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN), Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Fundacion Natura, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)
Summary: Integrated landscape approaches have emerged as a spatial unit for holistically managing various land uses and stakeholder needs within a region. It is a governance strategy that acknowledges the interdependencies of human and natural systems and seeks to optimise synergies and minimise trade-offs to harmonise wellbeing of rural communities with their environment. TerraViva is an emerging landscape management initiative, piloted in coffee-dominated landscape in the Gaitania area of Tolima Colombia to support the creation of a holistic plan with embedded platforms of good governance, wellbeing, livelihoods and traditional leadership to support small scale producers and their communities adapt to climate change and live in harmony with nature. The goal of TerraViva is to create a long-term development vision or Common Territorial Agenda (CTA) built from the perspective of local stakeholders that leads to a collection of solutions to meet both production, and environmental goals of the territory.
