Landscapes across many developing countries are experiencing rapid changes mostly due to increasing demand for food and other natural resources, exacerbated by drivers such as climate change. Over time, these frontier landscapes often give rise to “novel societies” with a diversity of actors that have different productive strategies, cultural and migration histories, and access to capital, technology and markets.
Panelists will share their experience on fostering sustainability in such dynamic, multi-actor landscapes, focusing on relative success stories, where changes in political representation, dialogue spaces, technology, information and learning, have generated positive social and environmental outcomes. Local perspectives will be complemented by views from meso- and high-level decision makers to assess how policy processes account for, and are informed by, the diversity of local interests.
In the Discussion Forum panelists will address questions including how context dependent success stories are, how they can help promote learning and positive outcomes in landscapes elsewhere, and what mechanisms are most effective in connecting tailored, bottom-up solutions to sustainability problems with top-down policies. Audience participation will be central to the discussion and facilitated by a “hidden” panel of experienced participants with diverse backgrounds and charged in advance with testing the positions of the panel and facilitating audience participation.