CGIAR Initiative: Transformational Agroecology across Food, Land, and Water systems <p class="ql-align-justify">Food&nbsp;systems&nbsp;should&nbsp;drive&nbsp;stability, food and nutrition security, poverty reduction,&nbsp;and economic growth.&nbsp;Instead, not only have they&nbsp;failed&nbsp;to feed the&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">690&nbsp;million&nbsp;people&nbsp;currently&nbsp;undernourished,</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;they are&nbsp;responsible&nbsp;for&nbsp;much&nbsp;of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions<span style="background-color: inherit;">vi</span>, for&nbsp;deepening&nbsp;social inequities,&nbsp;destroying biodiversity<span style="background-color: inherit;">vii</span>,&nbsp;polluting&nbsp;water sources<span style="background-color: inherit;">viii</span>,&nbsp;and depleting&nbsp;natural&nbsp;resources<span style="background-color: inherit;">ix</span>.&nbsp;Despite two-thirds of hungry people living and working in rural areas and 475 million of the 570 million farms globally being small-scale operations,&nbsp;&gt;95% of research&nbsp;on&nbsp;agricultural and food systems&nbsp;is&nbsp;irrelevant to small-scale farmers.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">A redesign of&nbsp;food systems8&nbsp;is urgently needed to simultaneously achieve ecological, economic, and social sustainability<span style="background-color: inherit;">xi</span>.&nbsp;Agroecology&nbsp;is&nbsp;gaining prominence as&nbsp;an approach&nbsp;to&nbsp;achieve&nbsp;this&nbsp;radical shift.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/agphome/scpi/Agroecology/Agroecology_Scaling-up_agroecology_what_why_and_how_-OxfamSol-FINAL.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Evidence</a>&nbsp;demonstrates how agroecological approaches can contribute to sustainable,&nbsp;resilient agricultural and food systems today and in the future<span style="background-color: inherit;">xii</span>.&nbsp;Agroecology goes beyond demands for technical change, recognizing that enhancing the agency of farmers and&nbsp;FSAs&nbsp;(especially women and youth) is a prerequisite for transformative change<span style="background-color: inherit;">xiii</span>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">However, despite&nbsp;many&nbsp;locally-appropriate&nbsp;agroecological&nbsp;solutions&nbsp;at&nbsp;farm level,&nbsp;mechanisms for scaling them to&nbsp;broader food, land, and water&nbsp;(FLW)&nbsp;systems&nbsp;are&nbsp;limited<span style="background-color: inherit;">xiv</span>.&nbsp;Barriers include:&nbsp;(i) insufficient evidence and lack of knowledge&nbsp;of what agroecological innovations work, where, when,&nbsp;and why;&nbsp;(ii) insufficient&nbsp;integration of required&nbsp;capacities and resources;&nbsp;(iii) lack of,&nbsp;or misaligned, policies, institutions,&nbsp;and governance practices; and&nbsp;(iv) lack of financial mechanisms.&nbsp;This Initiative (the Agroecological Initiative (AE-I))&nbsp;will provide evidence&nbsp;for&nbsp;the transformative nature of agroecology and its broad&nbsp;applicability to&nbsp;FLW&nbsp;system&nbsp;change, including&nbsp;identification of&nbsp;institutional innovations&nbsp;to promote uptake.&nbsp;By&nbsp;testing agroecological approaches across seven different socio-economic-political geographic contexts, we will&nbsp;use learning on&nbsp;what&nbsp;agroecological&nbsp;innovations&nbsp;work,&nbsp;where,&nbsp;and for whom,&nbsp;to craft replicable&nbsp;<strong>agroecological transition models</strong>&nbsp;that can subsequently (2024-2030) be applied&nbsp;to the&nbsp;FLW&nbsp;systems of other LMICs, eventually&nbsp;contributing&nbsp;to a critical mass capable of triggering broader-scale transformation of the&nbsp;FLW&nbsp;systems throughout the Global South.&nbsp;</p>