Exploring enabling conditions for implementing agroforestry schemes: an application of Q methodology to the Peruvian Agroforestry Concession Scheme

Agroforestry has evolved from a land use management system that combines trees with crops towards policy solutions to promote rural development, conservation, and land restoration. In Peru, the Agroforestry Concession (AC) scheme seeks to integrate small-scale family farmers encroaching on public forest land into the formal economy as a strategy to improve local livelihoods while controlling deforestation. This research aims to contribute to the identification of the AC scheme´s enabling conditions of success by implementing a Q methodology. Q methodology is a qualitative and quantitative statistical research approach designed to uncover subjectivity among a group of people. Through face-to-face interviews and an online software, a set of 43 enabling conditions were sorted by 18 stakeholders involved in the AC scheme with different profiles. Four discourses on enabling conditions were identified and analysed to understand participants' points of view. The first one (F1) represented participants in favour of farmers' legal security, accompaniment and simple processes. In the second (F2), participants had a profit-oriented view. In the third (F3), participants believed in the importance of political will and the scheme aggregated value. In the fourth (F4), participants favoured strengthening farmer-government relationships while improving institutionally. Results suggest a lack of consensus, even when participants belonged to the same institution or sector, and conflicting views regarding what needs to be prioritised for successful implementation. Insights on areas of consensus, potential compromise and conflict about the more critical enabling conditions will help policy-makers to guide a participatory Theory of Change in which the pathways for achieving the scheme's desired impacts will be defined.