Transdisciplinary research to promote biodiversity conservation and enhanced management of tropical landscape mosaics

By developing methods and instruments that help to inform and facilitate coherent landscape planning across various spatial scales, research institutions can support decisions by communities, conservation agencies and policy-makers. Ideally, these would help to define management options that integrate biodiversity and livelihoods and promote equitable participation in planning processes. Within a joint ‘Biodiversity Platform’, the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) centres CIFOR and ICRAF aim to better understand biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in mosaic landscapes with intermediate land uses such as utilized forests and agroforests. Inter- or transdisciplinarity is one of the key issues in landscape ecology and management (Wu and Hobbs 2002). This paper reviews historical trends of research on conservation and development and identifies lessons from past attempts to combine biodiversity and livelihood aims in tropical landscapes. Based on recent experiences of integrated research the paper concludes with recommendations for transdisciplinary research in tropical landscape mosaics