When Landscape Ambition Meets Reality: What CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Is Taking Forward from Tropentag 2026

Soils, water, biodiversity, food production, and livelihoods are interconnected within landscapes. The institutions,evidence, and investments shaping them often are not. Sectors pursue separate priorities, and decisions that advance one objective can create pressures elsewhere. 

This disconnect was central to discussions at Tropentag 2026, held from 15 to 18 September in Göttingen, Germany, under the theme Towards multifunctional agro-ecosystems promoting climate-resilient futures. For the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes (MFL) Science Programme, it brought a central question into focus: how can landscape actors turn a shared vision into coordinated action? 

Where landscape choices collide 

In his conference keynote, CGIAR MFL Program Director Lulseged Tamene Desta described the landscape as the practical scale for considering choices about land, water, food, markets and governance together. In its Living Landscapes, CGIAR MFL connects locally relevant solutions with participatory planning, inclusive governance, finance and evidence of change. 

Bringing these issues together does not remove the trade-offs. The 16 September workshop Towards Multifunctional Landscapes and Resilient Communities explored five linked processes: understanding a priority landscape, identifying options, tailoring combinations of solutions, implementing them with partners and assessing results so plans can adapt. 

This is not a neat sequence. New evidence, shifting priorities, and institutional realities can reopen settled decisions. As Lulseged observed, “The landscape is where interaction takes place.” The quality of that interaction matters. If government, businesses or marginalised groups enter too late, plans may assign responsibilities to actors who neither shaped them nor have the authority to act. 

A shared vision is only the beginning 

The challenge carried into Landscape Vision to Action Planning, a CGIAR MFL-led scientific session on 17 September. The Landscape Vision-to-Action approach uses shared visions and backcasting to identify what must change, who must act and how progress will be tracked. Examples from several countries exposed a recurring weakness: government and private-sector actors were sometimes absent even when plans assigned them major responsibilities. Without early and continuous engagement and clear ownership, a shared vision may remain an aspiration. 

Restoring the connections that sustain landscapes 

A shared message emerged from the workshop and scientific session: restoring socio-ecological functions requires ecological recovery, viable livelihoods, and institutions that help people manage resources together. 

The connections extend beyond individual farms. Evidence from Mandla, India, linked surrounding forest cover with pollinator visitation in homestead gardens, reinforcing the importance of considering agricultural production and habitat conservation together. 

Sustaining these functions also depends on people’s opportunities to act. Questions raised around Assam’s LEAF decision-support system showed why investment planning must account for land tenure and access to information. Meanwhile, consumer research from Greater Tunis underlined the importance of affordability and perceived value when developing markets for agroecological products. Ecological knowledge needs to inform decisions alongside an understanding of rights, livelihoods, and the economic conditions that make change possible. 

Tracking recovery for people and nature 

These connections must also be visible in how progress is assessed. A systematic review presented at Tropentag revealed an evidence base that gives greater attention to spatial and environmental change than to social, institutional and governance outcomes. It brought renewed relevance to Sarah K. Jones’s question during the workshop: “What is actually working for whom, and how do we know?” 

For CGIAR MFL, this points to the need to assess whether restoration strengthens both ecosystem functions and the lives of people who depend on them. Habitat recovery and pollination, for example, need to be considered alongside livelihood security, access to land and people’s influence over resource decisions. More trees or restored hectares alone cannot tell that story. 

Combining ecological monitoring with community perspectives and longer-term evaluation would help identify who benefits, where trade-offs remain, and how interventions need to adapt. That evidence is essential to guide restoration towards lasting improvements for people and ecosystems. 

From Göttingen to Living Landscapes 

For CGIAR MFL, Tropentag reinforced the need to pursue ecological recovery and human wellbeing together. Better soil and water management, for example, must be considered alongside food security, secure livelihoods, and people’s ability to shape decisions about the resources they depend on. 

The wider lesson is that restoration requires knowledge and collaboration that reflect these connections. Bringing scientific evidence together with local experience can help identify where priorities reinforce one another and where difficult choices remain. Success ultimately means landscapes that sustain nature and improve people’s lives over time. 

Author; Regina Edward-Uwadiale