This Earth Day, we’re celebrating the many ways in which integrated landscape management (ILM) also means insect-loving management.

ILM is the process through which community stakeholders come together across sectors and interests to collaboratively plan and design their environment, agreeing on sustainable ways to use land. EcoAgriculture Partners promotes ILM around the world because we fiercely hold to a vision of sustainable landscapes capable of supporting thriving people, food, and nature worldwide. With ILM, diverse, locally-responsive, and just solutions for land and resource use become possible.

What does that have to do with insects?

Biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices used to produce crops and livestock, such as organic cropping, integrated pest management, and agroforestry are vital to the protection of bees and insects. These systems and strategies are bound to intersect and overlap, and integrated landscape management allows actors across sectors to collaborate, select and combine them in ways that best address the condition and goals of particular landscapes. Integrated landscape management facilitates community-led efforts to put an end to practices that harm insects and pushes us toward resilient and sustainable agricultural ecosystems where the life-supporting systems we rely on remain intact.