Hosted by EcoAgriculture Partners, IUCN, SAI Platform and the Sustainable Food Lab, a group of diverse leaders from business, government and civil society met from 31 May to 2 June at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, where they shared experiences and mapped out priorities for increasing business participation in sustainable landscapes.   

“The experts at the Bellagio workshop identified gaps in current approaches to sustainable landscapes and areas for greater collaboration,” said Gerard Bos, Director of IUCN’s Global Business and Biodiversity Programme.  “The new Action Agenda outlines key areas for mobilising government support and investment that will drive change and scale up much needed landscape partnerships.”

Companies and corporations of all sizes have significant impacts on land use patterns and rely significantly on natural resources, making them critical partners in advancing landscape partnerships.

However, such partnerships require pioneering leadership from agribusiness and other key stakeholders to develop business cases, access to finance, government support and greater capacity, as highlighted in the Bellagio Action Agenda.

Priority actions to support landscape approaches

The landscape partnership champions in attendance identified four key steps that could help leverage the benefits of landscape approaches at the scale needed to promote both sustainable development and successful agribusinesses around the world:

1. Develop and communicate a case for businesses to invest in landscape approaches to encourage private sector leaders to consider landscape partnerships as a valuable tool and support them in achieving their sustainability goals.

2. Increase access to sustainable finance in integrated landscape management by promoting collaboration on advising and facilitating landscape project finance, including blending public and private investments.

3. Mobilize governments to incorporate landscape management into development and investment strategies to advance more coherent, supportive policies and coordination frameworks.

4. Improve tools, methods and skills for convening, facilitating, designing and implementing landscape initiatives to accelerate knowledge-sharing, support businesses in assessing landscape partnerships and improve landscape outcome metrics.

Private sector, government, and civil society stakeholders are increasingly realizing that the challenges they face need to be solved in a more integrated manner in order to achieve the global goals for sustainable development and climate change, as well as ensure successful business and supply chains in the long term.  

Read more about IUCN's work on landscapes, by visiting the SUSTAIN-Africa pages.

For more information on the workshop, visit the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature website.