Second Mesoamerica Ecoagriculture Leadership Course

Event Details

Costa Rica
CATIE campus
November 16, 2008 - November 26, 2008

31 participants from 8 Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay) participated in the second Mesoamerica Ecoagriculture Leadership course.  The course was offered in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Tropical Agriculture Research and Training Center (CATIE), and held from 16-26 November, 2008 at the CATIE campus in Costa Rica. Partner organizations included Ecoagriculture Partners and the University of California Berkeley Center for Sustainable Development, while collaborators included the National University of Costa Rica, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the Costa Rica Ministry of Agriculture.

The main topics discussed at the course were: ecoagriculture management of landscapes; planning for collective action; public policy and markets; analysis of market opportunities; collaborative leadership, and participative landscape planning as well as a tour of the field and. During the course, Dr JJ Campos, Director General of CATIE and Chris Hansen, Deputy Director General of IICA enthusiastically endorsed the institutionalization of an ecoagriculture leadership and integrated territorial management course as an annual event in Mesoamerica. Future courses will be held in the region, with possible expansion throughout the hemisphere.  Initial requests have come from Paraguay, Mexico and Brazil.

For more information please contact Dr. Robin Marsh, Co-Director, Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program, UC Berkeley, and Coordinator, Ecoagriculture Leadership Development, Ecoagriculture Partners at rmarsh@nature.berkeley.edu