Presentation by Melissa Leach, Vice-Chair of the Future Earth Science Committee and incoming Director of the Institute for Development Studies, UK, given at the 2nd Global Land Project Open Science Meeting in March 2014. The presentation considers the importance of integrating local knowledge about land management, the value of integrated science in challenging misleading policy myths and crisis narratives about one-way land degradation, and the importance of building sustainable cooperation and capacity in African settings. www.futureearth.info

1. The Future Earth approach and its
importance for understanding land use
change in Africa
Berlin, 19 March 2014
Flash talk session, Global Land Project conference

2. Future Earth and its approach
• A global platform for international research collaboration on
global environmental change and sustainable development
• Provides integrated research on major global change
challenges and transformations to sustainability
• Strengthens partnerships between researchers, funders and
users of research through co-design of research
• Is solutions-oriented, aiming to generate knowledge that
contributed to new more sustainable ways of doing things
Objective: To provide the
knowledge required for societies
in the world to face risks posed
by global environmental change
and to seize opportunities in a
transition to global sustainability

3. Meets African land use dynamics
• Complex and multi-scale, as global and regional change
intersects with local systems and practices
• Diverse and non-linear, as bio-physical and anthropogenic
processes interact to produce patterns of both enrichment and
degradation
• Represented and valued in multiple ways by different
stakeholders : Beyond degradation narratives? Sustainability of
what for whom? Whose knowledge counts?
Needs research that integrates the knowledges and perspectives
of diverse stakeholders – including local land users
To build a richer picture through respectful deliberation and
dialogue
What can we learn from existing activities – within and beyond
current GLP/GEC communities?

4. Exploring African Dark Earths (AfDE)
Amazonia: Rethinking of pre-Columbian land use dynamics through history,
archaeology, demography, soil science – significance of carbon-rich, fertile
Anthropogenic Dark Earths (Terra Preta)
Africa: Powerful orthodoxies: poor soils, land use only degrades (without
external inputs)
1990s anthropology/ecology/farmers’ knowledge: hypothesis that Terra Preta
analogues currently forming through local land use practice
a) b)
Integrated research soil science, botany,
anthropology, history, archaeology
(2009 – 13, ESRC)
Universities of Cornell, Sussex, Legon
Ghana, Njala Sierra Leone; Monrovia
Liberia; Kankan Guinea
Co-conducted with development NGOs
(eg. FOSED, Sierra Leone)

5. Indigenous African soil enrichment as climate-smart
sustainable agriculture alternative
FOSED – sustainable upland farming in Sierra Leone
EU BeBi project – locally-appropriate biochar developments
Ethiopia – indigenous fertilizers
Liberia Ghana
Totalorganiccarboncontent(Mgha
-1
)
0
100
200
300
400
500
AfDE
AS
**
**
**
**
-Formed through everyday waste deposits and cultural
practices – cooking, agri-processing
-Associated with old settlements and forming rings around
villages and farm camps
- High concentrations of carbon and other nutrients
- Valued by farmers for horticulture, agroforestry, cacao, tree
nurseries