Nicaragua

Structuring the complexity of integrated landscape approaches into selectable, scalable, and measurable attributes

Integrated landscape approaches (ILA) aim to reconcile multiple, often competing, interests across agriculture, nature conservation, and other land uses. Recognized ILA design principles provide guidance for implementation, yet application remains challenging, and a strong performance evidence-base is yet to be formed. Through a critical literature review and focus group discussions with practitioners, we identified considerable diversity of ILA in actors, temporal, and spatial scales, inter alia. This diversity hampers learning from and steering ILA because of the intractable nature of the concept. Therefore, we developed a tool—an ‘ILA mixing board’—to structure the complexity of ILA into selectable and scalable attributes in a replicable way to allow planning, diagnosing, and comparing ILA. The ILA mixing board tool presents seven qualifiers, each representing a key attribute of ILA design and performance (for example, project flexibility, inclusiveness of the dialogue, and the centrality of the power distribution). Each qualifier has five (non-normative) outcome indicators that can be registered as present or absent. This process in turn guides planners, evaluators and other participating stakeholders involved in landscape management to diagnose the ILA type, or its performance. We apply the ILA mixing board to three ILA cases in Nicaragua, Madagascar, and the Congo Basin to show some of the many possible configurations of qualifiers on the mixing board. Further application of the tool would allow comparative analysis of the complexity of ILA in a structured and manageable way thereby enhancing the understanding of ILA performance and informing the development of evidence-based land use policy.

Illusions and disillusions with poverty reduction strategies: Growth, crisis and the MDGs in Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua

Nicaragua: Agricultural R&D indicators factsheet

The IDB-funded PFPAS program has provided an important financial injection into Nicaragua’s agricultural research system during 2013–2018. The program has made important strides in rehabilitating some of INTA’s run-down research infrastructure, in offering degree and short-term training to research staff, and in strengthening linkages between agricultural research and producers. Notwithstanding the important achievements of PFPAS, Nicaragua’s agricultural R&D investment levels remain too low to provide the necessary technological solutions to enhance agricultural productivity and reduce rural poverty. As of 2020, the country invested just 0.22 percent of its agricultural GDP in agricultural research, which is insufficient to effectively address the many challenges the agricultural sector is facing. Nicaragua lacks a critical mass of highly qualified agricultural researchers. Building on the achievements of PFPAS, continued and accelerated training of young researchers to the MSc and PhD level remains critical. In addition, local university programs in agricultural sciences need to be strengthened so that more scientists have the opportunity to pursue higher level degrees in-country.