Agroforestry for Sustainable Landscape Management

Agroforestry and sustainable landscape management are key strategies for implementing the UN-Sustainable Development Goals across the world’s production landscapes. However, both strategies have so far been studied in isolation from each other. This editorial introduces a special feature dedicated to scrutinizing the role of agroforestry in sustainable landscape management strategies. The special feature comprises eleven studies that adopt inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives, integrating ecological, agricultural, and socio-economic sciences, and in some cases also practical knowledge. The studies relate to a range of different ecosystem goods and services, and to a diversity of societal sectors (e.g., agriculture, forestry, nature conservation, urban planning, landscape protection) and demands, including their mutual synergies and trade-offs. They inform land-use policy and practice by conceptualizing agroforestry as a set of “nature-based solutions” useful to help tackle multiple societal challenges. The studies encompass four themes: social-ecological drivers, processes, and impacts of changes of agroforestry landscapes; the sustainability outcomes of agroforestry at landscape scale; scaling up agroforestry through multi-stakeholder landscape strategies; and development of conceptual and operational tools for stakeholder analysis in agroforestry landscape transitions. Key steps to harness agroforestry for sustainable landscape management comprise: (i) moving towards an “agroforestry sustainability science”; (ii) understanding local land-use trajectories, histories, and traditions; (iii) upscaling agroforestry for landscape-scale benefits; (iv) promoting the multiple economic, environmental, social, and cultural values of agroforestry; (v) fostering inclusive forms of landscape governance; and (vi) supporting the innovation process of agroforestry system analysis and design.

Open Access funding provided by Projekt DEAL. TP’s contribution has been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—project number 426675955. Support for JMR’s work has been received from the European Commission through the LIAISON (H2020-grant agreement No 773418), TERRANOVA (Marie Curie-H2020 grant agreement No 813904) and SUSTAINOLIVE (PRIMA 2018-2022) research projects. Inputs from LB and SJS were supported by a grant to EcoAgriculture Partners from the Hitz Family Foundation.