“But how do we communicate an approach that has no common language?” asked Tony Simons, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre. He literally threw this question on the audience by tossing into the air a set of 74 note-cards containing different terms used to describe integrated landscape management. “These words are neither comprehensive nor coherent.”
So many times I’ve wanted to do that with those little note-cards people make you write on during workshops… Follow the fun of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature International Forum on Twitter.
This is asking for trouble for agriculture. The big conservation organizations will be laughing all the way to the bank about `people and nature’. These are the same people who for decades were kicking farmers out of new `nature reserves’. That didn’t work (farmers manage landscapes – anyone notice?) and now the multi-million dollar conservation agencies located in developed countries are looking for new ways of pushing farmers around. Let’s try real `integrated landscapes’ first by letting everyone back into the 15% of global land cover in strictly protected areas and see if that works. It could, but there is no chance whatever of it happening as there is no funding in it for the mega-Conservation lobby.