Project Highlights
Funders
ISEAL Innovation Fund
Partners
This work was delivered by the Sustainable Agriculture Network in partnership with Fundación Natura, Swisscontact, and Equiori—bringing together field expertise, private-sector engagement, and community networks to ground the Blueprint methodology in local realities and accelerate adoption on the ground.
Implementation dates
May 2019
-
May 2024
Commodities
Banana
Oil Palm
Cacao
Beneficiaries
Colombian farming communities and local authorities (shared territorial strategies), supply-chain companies and VSS (reliable landscape risk intelligence), and field technicians/M&E teams (92-indicator toolkit for precise, participatory assessments).
About the project
SAN’s Blueprint Assessment Methodology connects farm-level realities with landscape priorities through a high-precision, participatory approach centered on social research. It blends focus groups using Appreciative Inquiry and Community Capitals in selected villages, on-farm adoption observations, GIS analysis, immersive landscape walks, and municipality-level secondary data to build a shared territorial agenda and actionable strategies for communities and local authorities. Designed to fix common gaps—imprecise small-area assessments, limited data democratization, biased secondary datasets, and errors from automated satellite interpretation—the methodology delivers a practical, multi-level toolkit that reflects true socio-economic and environmental conditions and accelerates locally owned sustainability plans.
Outcomes
Blueprint delivered a practical, repeatable way to read small territories with precision. The team built a 92-indicator landscape set—5 GIS, 22 secondary data, 15 focus group, and 50 farmer-interview indicators—plus an ODK mobile manual, a GIS replication protocol, a matrix of indicators, and clear guidance for selecting secondary data and driving community participation. The package includes a methodological guide in English and Spanish, a multiscale land-cover analysis for Zona Bananera, key recommendations to VSS for operating at landscape level, and a Colombia case study documenting the tool’s evolution.
The result is fast, transparent risk intelligence that reflects on-the-ground realities. By combining short, effective questionnaires with adoption-observation on farms and high-resolution land-use comparisons, Blueprint accurately surfaces deforestation exposure, livelihood gaps, climate adaptation needs, and water risks. Co-designed and co-managed with Colombian farming communities, it anchors a Common Territorial Agenda and turns local assets—natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built capitals—into actionable strategies for supply chains and land-based production systems.