Creating Sustainable Value Chains for Commodities from Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes: A Proposed Framework

Socio-ecological production landscapes (SEPLs) are places that support and are supported by biodiversity and that play important roles in maintaining biodiversity as well as providing the goods and services that society demands. SEPLs exist with, by and for people. The lack of sustainable value chains that give advantage to goods and services produced in SEPLs threatens the continuation of sustainable practices, many of which are manifestations of traditional ecological knowledge, in an increasingly globalized and efficiency-driven economy. Sustainable management of SEPLs will be an important contribution to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. To determine the approaches for creating sustainable value chains for goods and services from SEPLs, we gathered information from practitioners and experts on SEPLs using (1) an online questionnaire to experts, (2) an online knowledge-sharing session, and (3) focus group discussions, under the framework of the International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI). Through the questionnaire (13 respondents) and the online session, we identified key issues and obstacles, as well as solutions to them in practice. Focus group discussions were held on value chains specific to cacao and rice to gain a deeper understanding of value chain issues from these vastly different commodities. As a way to create value chains that contribute to sustainability of SEPLs, we present a theory of change consisting of five approaches that producers can implement to shorten value chains. The proposed evaluation framework of this theory will use case studies produced by IPSI members and beyond on diversity of commodities from SEPLs. This is a call to action on an important element of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.