Mt Kilimanjaro is undoubtedly one of the most iconic and biodiverse features in East Africa. Towering at a height of 5895m above sea level, its three peaks of Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira attract thousands of tourists annually, creating a thriving local and regional economy, infrastructure and employment, benefiting local communities. The ecosystem is also very suitable for agriculture. The rich volcanic soils have created suitable conditions for farming, where coffee, maize, and other crops are grown by community members, thus diversifying the local economy.

The challenge now for the Mt Kilimanjaro ecosystem–and indeed many ecoregions in Africa–is that a changing climate is transforming the landscape and putting the livelihood of people at stake. Coffee farmers on the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro have been battling with low productivity and fluctuating market prices for coffee. As a result, many farmers are abandoning coffee farming to pursue other ventures, reducing livelihood stability and income. The increased vulnerability of smallholders has led to calls for landscape investments to build resilience for livelihoods as well as to protect threatened biodiversity and ecosystems.

A group of stakeholders from across Africa have been gathering over the last couple of years under the auspices of the African Landscape Dialogue (ALD), to unpack these challenges and identify workable solutions to build resilience.

Landscape finance innovations
The last ALD in Arusha, Tanzania between 12-15 November had a major focus on landscape finance, as a key driver of building resilience. Landscape finance in its simplest form can be defined as investments in integrated landscape management (ILM) that support multiple outcomes, which may include biodiversity conservation, agricultural production or livelihoods. ILM is important because of the multifaceted challenges of managing complex socio-ecological systems with competing interests and trade-offs. Landscape investments can take the form of either ‘asset’ investments, which are geared towards delivering returns to their investors or ‘enabling’ investments, which are designed to create suitable policy conditions for asset investments.
The ALD as a dialogue and networking platform for landscape leaders is used to share best practices, tools and to build landscape partnerships. In the Arusha meeting, landscape investment case studies were shared from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. From the discussions it was clear that a lot of experimentation is taking place at the landscape level on improving financial flows, testing best practices in funding models and forming innovative partnerships.

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