B-ACT (Business Agroecology Criteria Tool) is an Excel-based assessment framework developed by Biovision to evaluate how closely businesses align with the 13 agroecological principles established by the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE). Designed as a complementary tool to conventional business and financial analysis, B-ACT helps investors, donors, entrepreneurs, and development practitioners assess the environmental, social, and systemic contributions of agribusiness enterprises. Rather than focusing solely on financial performance, the tool incorporates ecological health, social equity, resilience, and sustainability considerations into business evaluation. Developed as part of Biovision’s broader suite of agroecology assessment tools, B-ACT complements the Agroecology Criteria Tool (ACT) for projects and Farm-level ACT (F-ACT) for farms.
Tag: Decision-making
Meta-framework guide resource. Reflection checklist to support holistic agrifood system assessment series. United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) policy tracking tool. Checklist 10
The CFS Policy Tracking Tool, developed by the Transformative Partnership Platform on Agroecology in collaboration with the Research and Innovation Working Group of the Agroecology Coalition, is designed to monitor the extent to which governments implement the agroecology-related policy recommendations adopted by the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The tool translates 62 action points from the 2021 CFS policy guidance into 22 priority actions that collectively reflect the intent of the five CFS policy recommendations while aligning with the 13 agroecological principles established by the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE). Its purpose is to provide a structured framework for assessing policy support for agroecological transitions and food system transformation at national and subnational levels.
Metrics Meta-framework guide. Guidance for developing holistic assessments of agrifood systems: A 10-step approach
There is increasing recognition that we need to measure food and agriculture (agrifood) systems’ performance holistically, including social, environmental and economic aspects. As a result, hundreds of frameworks and tools have been developed, each one for a particular purpose (Crossland et al. 2025). Choosing between the hundreds of available frameworks and tools can be overwhelming, yet it is also likely that none of these assessment approaches will perfectly meet all your specific needs. There is no one tool that will be appropriate for everyone, everywhere. The TRANSITIONS Metrics project developed the Metrics Meta-framework (Box 1) to help you navigate through this diversity of available frameworks and tools and help you design a holistic assessment of agrifood systems that is fit for your specific purposes and needs. The Meta-framework presented in this guide takes you through a 10-step process to design such an assessment tool. If you follow the 10-step process presented in this guide, you will end up with a practical method for a holistic agrifood system assessment that meets clear objectives and user needs. It might be a simple implementation of a standard tool. It might be a modified version of an already existing tool. Or, it might be a completely new and original assessment tool.
Meta-framework guide resource. Reflection checklists to support holistic agrifood system assessment series
The reflection checklists aim to help you think through and reflect on what types of data and output a few commonly used tools produce, helping you select the right tool for your needs. They may validate your choice of tool, lead you in adapting or modifying it, or prompt you to think of an alternative.
Understanding gendered aspirations, decision-making, and fruit tree preferences in Makueni County, Kenya
In Makueni County, Kenya, smallholder farmers face erratic rainfall, severe droughts, recurrent floods, and water scarcity due to climate change. Understanding farmers’ aspirations is therefore essential to ensuring that support is relevant and responsive. This study explored: (1) farmers’ aspirations for farm composition, particularly fruit tree species, and potential changes in response to market and climate shifts; (2) gender dynamics shaping fruit tree cultivation decisions; and (3) connections between cultivated species, aspirations, and decision-making across gender and age. Data collected via focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and key informant interviews revealed a shift towards fruit-tree-based livelihoods, ostensibly offering improved food and income security and reduced labour. However, this shift, dominated by a few exotic species, may reduce farm- and landscape-scale species diversity. Decision-making was strongly gendered: men dominated species selection and management and controlled large-scale sales of higher-value fruit, owing to land ownership, knowledge and cultural norms, while women held greater power over small-scale sales, lower-value species and the income these generated. To foster equitable, resilient farming systems, we recommend inclusive, gender-responsive fruit tree production and management training. Transforming gender relations to amplify women’s voices in species selection could diversify fruit tree portfolios and lead to more equitable and biodiverse farming systems.
Tree diversity and land use choices in agroforestry systems: co-learning through the FORCES game in Indonesia
Farmers make choices about their land-use portfolio based on their experience, incomplete information and social connections. Rather than imposing normative economic or ecological rationales for farmer choices, a participatory simulation game can lead to co-learning. We utilized a plot-level game, Farmer Options, Risks in Complex Ecological-Social system (FORCES), to explore the management of tree and crop diversity in three contrasting landscapes in Indonesia. We assessed farmer management choices, responses to socio-ecological pressures and quantified game impacts on changes in farmer discourse. We found gendered preferences for plant species and land-use practices. Most older farmers preferred tree-based system, while young farmers chose annual food crops, opting for higher income despite risks. Social, cultural, and ecological reasons played important role in decision-making alongside economic factors but depended on the local context. By clarifying consequences of farmers’ choices, a top-down and bottom-up approach can be reconciled in the search for sustainable landscape management.
Adverse selection and severe design constraints in PES: A choice experiment in a deforestation hotspot of the Brazilian Cerrado
Incentivising conservation in agricultural frontier regions presents complex challenges for long-term effectiveness. This scoping study investigates the potential and limitations of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) to prevent legal deforestation of surplus Legal Reserve (LR) areas in MATOPIBA, a rapidly expanding soybean-producing region in Brazil. Specifically, we examine the feasibility and constraints of different PES designs in high-opportunity-cost agricultural frontiers, discussing under which contextual conditions PES may or may not be a suitable conservation instrument. Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 81 soybean producers who possess native vegetation beyond legal requirements, we estimate willingness-to-accept (WTA) compensation under varying contract attributes—including payment size, permanence requirements, payment structure, and funding institutions. Results from mixed logit and latent class models reveal significant heterogeneity in preferences and motivations. High payments would be needed to engage producers likely to deforest, while low-cost participants often exhibit low ex-ante additionality. The requirement to convert surplus areas into permanent reserves (RPPNs) drastically increases WTA, often exceeding the likely opportunity cost of land. Social influence, especially peer familiarity with PES, significantly reduces compensation demands. Our findings highlight risks of adverse selection, limited permanence, and the illusion of cost-effectiveness when targeting only low-WTA landowners. We conclude that PES programs in agricultural frontier contexts must prioritise careful targeting, behavioural insight, and complementary strategies – such as land acquisition or peer-based outreach – to achieve meaningful outcomes, but may also in the current context not be an adequate conservation instrument.
Benefits of forests in Cameroon: global structure, issues involving access and decision-making hiccoughs
Among many other stakes, the economic stake derived from the exploitation of tropical forest resources is a burning issue. This is evidenced by insecurity in intergenerational access to forest resources and financial benefits relating to the latter, on the one hand, and by a deep iniquity at the intra-generational level, on the other hand. The following paper highlights, as a moral, social and policy dilemma, how stakeholders and generations, ‘self-interested’, mark out access to forest resources and to financial benefits relating to the latter. Through intensive participatory research, quantitative data collection, participant observation, future scenarios and some International Forestry Research’s social science methods and interactive games (SSM & IG) based on the evaluation of the sustainability of forest management systems, field research conducted in the forest zone of Cameroon on access to forest resources has generated two central results. Firstly, future generations will be confronted—in a dramatic way—to quantitative and qualitative scarcity of forest resources, following their over exploitation by present generations. Secondly, as concerns the intra-generational access benefits generated by commercial exploitation of forests and the assessment of the circulation of forestry fees, there is much inequity, in as much as those benefits are more profitable to a ‘forestry elite’—‘a self-interested block’—than to local communities, who strongly claim to have historical rights over these forests. As a contribution of social science to public knowledge and to policy development, this article is nourishing ‘rational choice’ and ‘rational egoism’ theory and is targeting decision-making processes in the ever first attempt of forest management decentralization and ‘legal’ benefits sharing in Central Africa (the second largest forest of the World). The article recommends the shortening of the distance between decision-making and beneficiaries, downwardly accountability, ‘bottom-up’ mechanisms of public dialogue in forest management and a collaborative infrastructure in the circulation and the distribution of forest benefits.
Improving equity and livelihoods in community forestry: a global action research initiative in support of a strategic partnership on rights and resources
In 2006, the Center for International Forestry Research, in coordination with the Rights and Resources Initiative, launched a global research project in over 30 sites in 10 countries aimed at understanding the origins, nature and initial outcomes of forest tenure reform. The countries are in Asia (India, Nepal and the Philippines), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Nicaragua). Preliminary research was also conducted in Laos. The project took a rights-based approach and had the simultaneous goals of studying the forest tenure reform and catalysing efforts to advance local control and sustainable forest management The result is a wealth of multi-scalar information and analysis obtained through diverse entities and methods and covering a large variety of reforms in multiple contexts. This CD Rom presents a number of project outputs. It includes 12 country and region reports, 8 policy briefs, 2 Latin America synthesis reports, and several conference papers, journal articles and book chapters. These publications can be accessed by country, and cross-country comparisons are organised by world region. The CD Rom also includes the introductory chapter to Forests for People: Community Rights and Forest Tenure Reform – a book analysing key cross-cutting issues from the research
Revisiting Community-Based Forest Governance: Case Study from Nepal on Community Attributes, Social Capital and Consensus Decision-Making
Community forest management (CFM) originated in 1970s as an alternative arrangement of forest governance, which has now become a flagship institution for sustainable management of forests in developing countries. The premise of CFM asserts that the control over forest use and management is devolved to the forest users at the community level. With the increasing knowledge about role of forests in climate change, CFM has been identified as a core strategy for implementing climate change mitigation policies such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+). This thesis is motivated by research questions that are crucial for advancing our understanding of the gaps and weaknesses of CFM in its current form. Hence, in this thesis, I set out to revisit its key elements, i.e. decision-making, user participation and the collective capacity (in the form of social capital) of forest users to engage in collective management of forests. Nepal provides an excellent study site because of its extensive history of community forest user group (CFUG) establishment since forty years. CFUG is a local-level institution for forest management where the local people make decisions regarding forest management, utilization, and the distribution of benefits from the forests.