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Agroforestry systems (AFS) upscaling has the potential to integrate sustainability and resilience objectives into agriculture. However, this is a daunting task requiring multi-actor collaboration across public and private sectors at multiple governance levels, coupled with innovative approaches to jointly managing AFS knowledge. Understanding such multi-actor interactions from a network perspective may help to unravel how social structures, created by relational patterns enhance or hinder AFS upscaling. Our paper aims to comparatively explore the role of regional actor-networks on AFS upscaling for a selected farming system. By conducting semi-structured interviews, we collected information about the ties of 86 actors supporting cacao agroforestry systems (CAFS) across two regions of Colombia. We use social network analysis (SNA) to comparatively visualize and understand the general structure of these networks, find relational patterns between the diverse categories of actors involved, and identify a set of key players bridging the majority of the actors within these networks. We find highly centralized networks that connect multiple actors by a low number of mostly non-reciprocal ties. Within these networks, we identify a predominance of bridging ties over bonding ties, homophily patterns among research and education institutions, and heterophily configurations among farmer-based organizations. We also find that the composition of the sets of key actors and the platforms where they converge varies substantially from region to region due to decentralized agricultural policies and differing characteristics across regions. Our approach provides key entry points for promoting multi-actor coalitions that can effectively expand the benefits of AFS in tropical agricultural systems.

National and international cooperation and development projects (CDP) are fundamental for peacebuilding. However, unforeseen global crises, like COVID-19, can endanger such projects, requiring rapid adaption. In Colombia, the coronavirus outbreak threatens to slow the implementation of peace-related projects, while simultaneously violence over control and ownership of land increases. Although the mid- to long-term consequences for peacebuilding are unknown, exploring risk-adapted strategies of national and international CDP can help identify crucial aspects for future processes and implementations. This study explores the key challenges and coping strategies of implementing agencies and stakeholders to COVID-19, thus helping to derive and improve risk-adapted strategies. After reviewing academic and grey literature, and implementing a semi-structured survey, peacebuilding risked-adapted strategies to COVID-19 are explored with respect to conflict-affected and vulnerable areas of Colombia. Findings show that increasing complexity rooted in top down governmental measures, the rise of new local power relations (e.g. armed groups, illicit activities), and social alienation are negatively affecting peacebuilding in Colombia. Future CDP risk adapted strategies should build on local interests and needs through public-private and environmental cooperation.

Agroforestry systems (AFS) are proved to enhance sustainable land management. Thus, there is increasing demand for effective ways to scale up AFS so that more people can benefit. Consequently, this study assesses the scaling-up potential of agroforestry systems (AFS) using cacao farming and cattle ranching in Caquetá and Cesar, Colombia, as examples. An ex-ante assessment using the ScalA tool is conducted through interviews with AFS experts from institutions promoting AFS. Using a comparative approach, results reveal that AFS have different scaling-up potential depending on the type of farming system and location characteristics. In our case, it is slightly higher for cacao farming than for cattle ranching in both regions and it is higher in Caquetá than in Cesar for both systems. Factors hindering the scaling-up potential for both regions are economic conditions at the local and regional levels since there is a lack of stable and differentiated markets to absorb AFS products. In contrast, the scaling-up potential in both regions is increased by the factors related to the capacity of the organizations that promote AFS and the attitudes of local communities toward them. The study generates information about factors that may hinder or foster AFS scaling-up, including not just the capacities and mechanisms to promote them but also the enabling conditions. This contributes to prioritizing AFS interventions and better allocating their resources to increase their chances of successful scaling-up. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10457-022-00730-1.

Silvopastoral systems (SPS)—production systems integrating trees, forages, and livestock within the same land area—are recognized as critical for reducing tropical deforestation and improving livelihoods, ecosystem services, and carbon sinks. Yet, research on how scaling SPS influences forest cover changes at large geographical scales is scant. Our study delves deeper into the interlinkages between scaling SPS and deforestation. In two surveys conducted among 144 Colombian Amazon livestock producers with traditional or SPS farms, we assessed changes in herd composition between 2016 and 2020. Results showed a change in herd composition, with fewer males and more cows/heifers, suggesting a shift toward specializing in milk production, which, with the appropriate environmental incentives and safeguards, would unlikely broaden deforestation. However, interlinkages between the dairy and beef value chains suggest that extra male cattle from SPS intensification would be moved for fattening as a source of beef to new pastures at the forest border. If SPS scaling interventions in the Colombian Amazon are to be truly deforestation‐free, they need to be designed based on a clear understanding of the interlinkages between food and land systems. Therefore, policies advancing the livestock and land‐use agenda must create mechanisms that support deforestation‐free livestock intensification, based on biophysical and socioeconomic evaluations. While our research results support previous findings, indicating that silvopastoral systems offer ecological and economic benefits at farm level, they also urge that environmental safeguards be put in place to prevent possible deforestation leakage due to the aggregated effects of farm‐level changes in herd composition from broader adoption of sustainable livestock production systems.

The global community recognizes that silvopastoral systems (SPS), which are considered a form of sustainable land use, could reduce forest loss. Studies indicate that SPS can improve livelihoods, provide ecosystem services and act as carbon sinks. What has been missing from the literature, however, is how scaling SPS influences forest cover. Our research results from the Colombian Amazon point to possible unintended deforestation due to aggregated effects of farm-level changes in herd composition from broader SPS adoption with the absence of safeguards, appropriate incentives and government agencies devoted to implementing traceability of dairy and beef products to their deforestation-free origins. Our conclusions are drawn from surveying 144 livestock producers with traditional or SPS farms in Caquetá, one of the departments with the highest deforestation rates in Colombia. Land grabbing, in tandem with cattle pasture, is one of the major deforestation and conflict drivers in Colombia. We surveyed the farmers twice, both in 2016 and 2020, to determine the impact of SPS on herd composition. Our results show that surveyed SPS farmers reduced the number of male cattle and increased the number of lactating cows and calves in the herd. This suggests that these farmers specialize in producing milk, a move that constitutes a process of intensification that with the proper safeguards and incentives would unlikely broaden deforestation at the local scale. The availability of more calves and male cattle from SPS adoption, though, may exacerbate the drivers of deforestation because there is a risk that these extra calves and males would be moved to new pastures at the forest border, where they can be fattened as a source of beef. Our findings, as such, warrant a further investigation into the risk of unintended deforestation from scaling SPS and on how to mitigate that risk to make the process deforestation-free.

La zona costera del Noroeste de México cuenta con una gran cantidad de lagunas costeras, con características y condiciones favorables para el desarrollo de la industria de la acuacultura. Actualmente, el cultivo de camarón es una de las industrias con mayor crecimiento en el mundo. Esta industria ha tenido un crecimiento acelerado en Norte y Sudamérica, y particularmente en México en el Golfo de California. En 2010, 70.3% de la producción acuícola de México provino del litoral del Golfo de California, de la cual 97.7% fue de granjas de camarón. Sin embargo, se han documentado diversos efectos adversos de la acuacultura: conflicto con otras actividades económicas (por ejemplo agricultura, pesquerías y turismo), el cambio de uso de suelo, la deforestación de manglares y diferentes tipos de contaminación (principalmente asociada a la descarga y filtración de materia orgánica). Los isótopos estables de C y N son una valiosa herramienta para detectar los posibles impactos de la acuacultura en los ecosistemas, ya que ayudan a determinar la dinámica de la materia orgánica descargada y/o filtrada a los ecosistemas marinos. Estos estudios permiten evaluar y planear el desarrollo sustentable de la acuacultura. Este enfoque se relaciona con el uso de los fundamentos de la eco-tecnología, los cuales buscan la auto-regulación y el auto-mantenimiento de los ecosistemas, causando alteraciones ecológicas mínimas. ABSTRACTThe coastal zone of Northwest of Mexico has many coastal lagoons with characteristics and conditions for the development of aquaculture industry. Actually, shrimp aquaculture is one of the industries with the major development in the world. This industry has had an accelerate growth in North and South America, and in México, particularly around the Gulf of California. In 2010, around 70.3% of the aquaculture production came from the Gulf of California littoral, and 97.7% of this total was from shrimp farms. However, there are documented many adverse effects associated to aquaculture: conflicts with other activities (e.g. agriculture, fisheries and tourism), change of use of land, mangrove deforestation and different types of pollution (mainly associated to discharge and filtration of residual organic matter). The stable isotopes of C and N areis a valuable tool in studies to detect the possible impacts of aquaculture on ecosystems, because help to determine the dynamic of organic matter discharged and/or filtered to marine environments. These studies allow evaluate and plan the sustainable development of aquaculture. This approach is related to eco-technology fundaments which seeks auto-regulation and auto-maintenance of ecosystems, causing minimal ecological disruption.

It is widely recognized that increasing agricultural production to the levels needed to feed an expanding world population requires sharply increased public investment in research and development and widespread adoption of new technologies, but funding for national and international agricultural research has rather declined in recent years. In this situation, priority setting has become increasingly important for allocating scarce research resources among competing needs to achieve greater impacts. Using partial equilibrium economic surplus models and poverty impact simulations, this paper assesses cassava research priorities in Africa, Latin America and Caribbean, and Asia based on the potential economic and poverty reduction impacts of alternative research and technology options. The results showed that efficient planting material production and distribution systems and sustainable crop and soil fertility management practices have the greatest expected economic and poverty reduction impacts in the three regions. Lack of clean planting materials is a major constraint to adoption and it is envisaged that efficient production and distribution systems for planting material can accelerate technology adoption by farmers. Similarly, sustainable crop and soil fertility management practices play a key role in closing the observed yield gaps, especially in Africa. The paper discusses the results of the priority assessment for key cassava research options and concludes with the implications for cassava research priorities.