Developing guidance materials to support delivery of the TEEBAgriFood trainings

Promoting sustainable Practices in agrifood: capturing the insights from the
TEEBAgriFood for Business Project

TEEBAgriFood

The agricultural and food sectors rely heavily on biodiversity and nature to maintain healthy and productive soils, as well as on the well-being of workers and thriving smallholder farming communities. However, current farming and business practices often fail to support essential environmental conditions, while farmers’ livelihoods and workers’ rights continue to face significant challenges.

The TEEBAgriFood for Business project (2020-2023) is an initiative which seeks to promote more sustainable practices by helping food & agribusinesses understand and incorporate the economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity into their operations and supply chains.

As the project neared completion, the idea emerged to create a repository of knowledge products to ensure that agrifood professionals can continue to access and benefit from the valuable insights accumulated over the years.

The main resource is the ‘Putting Nature and People at the Centre of Food System Transformation’ training program, designed to support businesses towards creating a naturepositive and socially just food system. This self-guided training is freely accessible and is intended to support the TEEBAgrifood hubs in their capacity building. It can also be an entirely self-guided learning journey, allowing learners to complete the training at their own pace.

What did we do?

Nature^Squared was tasked with creating guidance materials to support delivery of the TEEB training ‘Putting Nature and People at the Centre of Food System Transformation’.

We supported by:

Advising on the content and structure of the training program and slide decks (4 modules)
Creating detailed facilitator guides to support trainers in delivering the trainings
Developing a trainee workbook to help learners navigate the exercises

Learning outcomes

Learners will discover the theory behind a capitals assessment. By the end of this training program they will have gained an understanding of how to measure and value impacts and dependencies on nature and people and how to act on this understanding.

More specifically, by the end of the course, learners will:

Understand how the capitals approach can enable better business decision making
Gain familiarity with how to assess business risks and opportunities based on natural, social human capital
Have a basic understanding on how to assess, measure and value impacts and dependencies on nature and people across operations and value chains.
Become familiar with the process of a capitals assessment and become equipped withh the tools to start an assessment.
Be inspired to drive change, by sharing data, setting targets and transforming business actions

Set-up of the course

The training consists of 4 modules:

Module 1: Frame – why is a capitals assessment relevant to my business?
Module 2: Scope – what would be an appropriate objective and scope for my capitals assessment?
Module 3: Measure & Value – how to start measuring and valuing the impacts and dependencies on the capitals?
Module 4: Apply – how to interpret and verify the results of the assessment and how to take action?

All modules provide:

Inspiration about the food system change
Real business cases and videos
Theory regarding the capitals approach
Exercises to apply the theory to own business case
Summary of lessons learned

Learners will utilize the TEEBAgrifood Operational Guidelines for Business throughout the training program to support businesses with implementing the TEEBAgriFood Evaluation Framework. Learners are encouraged to join the TEEB AgriFood Community, where they can connect with others and share experiences as they work towards a nature-positive and socially just food system.

Slide decks & facilitator guides

We have developed editable slide decks and facilitator guides per module to support trainers in delivering the training. The trainers packages include: a module intro and description, practicalities, a proposed agenda, a slide-by-slide walkthrough, tips for exercise facilitation and a glossary.