Agriculture and ecology experts meet next week at a high-level forum to discuss a critical challenge facing humanity today – how to effectively transform the world’s fundamentally unsustainable food systems.

Discussions at the forum will revolve around the acute need to transition to regenerative solutions that address and find solutions to why food systems face the impacts of, and significantly contribute to what experts call a global “polycrisis”.

The polycrisis refers to the interconnected challenges of persistent food and water insecurity, accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, widespread land and ecosystem degradation, and growing income inequality.

A paper titled ‘A Strategy for Transforming Food Systems Through Regenerative Landscapes’, will be launched during the forum. Experts say transitioning to regenerative solutions that address the systemic challenges inherent in the multiple crises requires pursuing solutions that go beyond farm fences and food value chains.

Solutions that also protect the bounty and services of our natural world as well as the irreplaceable cultural and natural heritage of farming and indigenous communities who are intimately intertwined with a place.

Green infrastructure

“For this, we must support and sustain community-led landscape partnerships (LPs). These can serve as voluntary platforms for diverse groups to strategise and collaborate to develop regenerative landscapes over the long term,” the authors of the paper state.

“They can grapple with such challenges as managing the tension between local and global food demands, aligning agricultural production with ecosystem management, built and green infrastructure, and securing funding and policies that foster coordinated landscape-wide change,” they added.

Experts explain that while local governments are critical partners, LPs offer a natural space to bring together public, private and community sectors, and to connect with actors responsible for people, food, and nature outside the landscape at higher scales. LPs, they note, take diverse forms, from informal to highly structured.

The paper seeks to promote dialogue and action among global, national and sub-national movers and shakers of the regenerative agriculture and food system transition – in farming policy, finance, business, civil society and science.

The paper argues that community-led landscape partnerships are a key solution, and provides insights and recommendations on how food system leaders can become strong allies in achieving landscape success.

The analysis is based on lessons learned from the partners of 1000 Landscapes for One Billion People (1000L) – and other partners in Regen10 – who cumulatively bring many decades of expertise to this challenge.

Partnership

The work is illustrated by numerous cases showing the rich diversity, impacts, and transformative potential of landscape partnerships as well as innovative tools, programs, policies and financial models that contribute to their success.

Landscape partnerships are the foundation of idealized regenerative landscapes where sustainable, diverse farming systems thrive, producing a mix of crops, livestock, and forest products that regenerate soil, conserve water and enhance biodiversity.

It is an environment where farmers and communities – supported by green infrastructure such as pollinator pathways, living windbreaks and restored waterways – collaborate to create a mosaic of productive lands and interconnected ecosystems. This equitable relationships across value chains connect local producers with consumers who value sustainability. There is a shared sense of community, purpose and love of place.

Their investments in landscape-regenerating projects generate four kinds of returns revealed in the white paper: The first is inspiration, through increased connection to the landscape, thus motivating stewardship. Second is human well-being characterised by strengthened communities, health, nutrition, food and water security and social resilience.

A third return is healthy nature, including biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and resilience, while the fourth one is regenerative economies fostering long-term economic resilience and prosperity of communities and businesses.

LPs have emerged as a way to advance such regenerative landscapes and are now widespread, facilitated by trusted NGOs, local governments, or other interested agents. By bringing together diverse stakeholders from across the landscape, LPs enable coordinated planning and action.

They provide spaces for inclusive decision-making, open dialogue, negotiation, and the co-creation of solutions that balance environmental and public health with social, cultural, and economic goals.

An overview of the collaborative landscape process shows that integrated landscape management (ILM) provides a practical, proven framework for guiding LPs toward achieving returns of inspiration, human well-being, healthy nature, and regenerative economics.

The five elements of ILM are building a strong landscape partnership, fostering a shared understanding of the landscape, forging a long-term holistic vision, and a transformation strategy with a clear agenda for investment and short-term action plans.

It also involves mobilising and securing financing for the action plan, and promoting systematic learning and impact assessment for continuous adaptation.

Digital platforms

Most landscape partnerships struggle to get the support they need. For them to thrive, experts say food system leaders can play strategic roles through five actions illustrated in the paper by examples and synthesized learnings.

First, LPs need strong, sustained funding for long-term, community led partnerships for agricultural and landscape regeneration capable of realising their transformative vision. LPs provide a key social infrastructure for regenerative landscapes to implement processes such as governance, facilitation, assessments, coordination and monitoring.

Another key element is the strengthening of programs to support landscape partnerships and facilitate connections with landscape-friendly businesses and other external actors to provide technical, market and other services.

LPs require digital platforms, data systems, and software as well as learning resources and tools targeted to their needs. There is therefore need to promote learning networks to develop and disseminate these innovations local leaders seek for landscape food system transformation.

There is also need to establish financial services for landscape partnerships to foster and align investment-ready projects and implement coordinated finance strategies. National coalitions of landscape partnerships further need assistance to accelerate knowledge sharing and advocate for policy, financial, and institutional support.

Mobilsing key levers for landscape partnerships’ success demands the strengthening of farmer organisations as landscape leaders, mobilising businesses to source agricultural products from, and invest for the long term in regenerative landscapes. In the call to action at next week’s forum, the agriculture and ecology experts are appealing for the promotion of public policy and planning that enable LPs to be effective.

Governments can play critical roles by establishing policy frameworks and decentralising public finance, strengthening indigenous, farmer and community rights, establishing services for LPs and regenerative agriculture, and aligning land-use planning and design across sector investments. International agreements setting goals and rules around land-use should explicitly promote regenerative agriculture and landscapes.