The Landscape Approach

The Landscape Approach is a conceptual schema designed to guide the management of land-uses in a integrated and holistic fashion.  The genre of “landscape approaches” arose in response to the trade-offs that need to be made between conservation and development objectives. The landscape approach recognises the need to address the priorities of people who live and work within the landscapes concerned even when they conflict with the traditional goals of conservation.  Non-alignment between these two sets of objectives has historically posed a problem with no clear definitive formulations. 

The approach recognises that prevailing jurisdictional boundaries and fragmented administrative systems are mismatched with the multifunctionality of landscapes.  At its heart, the framework strives to move beyond this segregated land administration, which fails to acknowledge the profound interconnections and mutual interests that exist between land uses.  Land governance can only be optimised if governing structures match the sets of overlapping ecological, socio-cultural and economic networks that constitute a landscape, with decision-making moving from hierarchical silos to complex, adaptive and inclusive network structures. 

The Ten Principles of the Landscape Approach

• Continual learning and adaptive management: Landscape processes are dynamic. Despite the underlying uncertainties in causes and effects, changes in landscape at- tributes must inform decision-making. Learning from outcomes can improve management.  Nonlinear relationships, external shocks, and unforeseen interactions and thresholds imply neverending potential for surprise. Each surprise is an opportunity for learning, leading to the development of new under- standings as a basis for revised strategies. This learning and revision requires con- tinual adjustment in which new knowledge is derived from multiple sources. Adaptive management and, more recently, “adaptive collaborative management” have emerged as practical approaches to this process of continual learning.
• Common concern entry point: Solutions to problems need to be built on shared negotiation processes based on trust. Trust emerges when objectives and values are shared. However, stakeholders have different values, beliefs, and objectives. Totally aligned objectives are unlikely, costly to establish, or devoid of immediate significance. Identifying immediate ways forward through addressing simpler short-term ob- jectives can begin to build trust.  Each stakeholder will only join the process if they judge it to be in their interest. Initially achieving consensus on overarching objec- tives may be difficult. Launching the process by focusing on easy-to-reach intermediate targets may provide a basis for stakeholders to begin to work together. In working toward this first goal, there will be opportunities for shared learning. The process will build the confidence and the trust needed to address further issues. Forest landscape negotiations in California and the Pacific Northwest of the United States illustrate how in- cremental progress can be made toward shared goals.
  
• Multiple scales: Numerous system influences and feedbacks affect management outcomes, but these impacts unfold under the influence of a diverse range of external influences and constraints.  Outcomes at any scale are shaped by processes operating at other scales. Influences include feedback, synergies, flows, in- teractions, and time lags, as well as external drivers and demands. An awareness of these higher and lower level processes can improve local interventions, inform higher-level policy and governance, and help coordinate ad- ministrative entities. Studies by Ostrom in various sites illustrate the importance of ad- dressing multiple scale issues.
  
• Multifunctionality: Landscapes and their components have multiple uses and purposes, each of which is valued in different ways by different stakeholders. Tradeoffs ex- ist among the differing landscape uses and need to be reconciled.
  Many landscapes provide a diverse range of values, goods, and services. The landscape approach acknowledges the various tradeoffs among these goods and services. It addresses them in a spatially explicit and ecosystem-driven manner that reconciles stakeholders’ multiple needs, preferences, and aspirations. The difficulties of quantifying and managing the interactions among these multiple func- tions have been extensively studied in the European Union.
  
• Multiple stakeholders: Multiple stakeholders frame and express objectives in different ways (principle 2). Failure to engage stakeholders in an equitable manner in de- cision-making processes will lead to sub- optimal, and sometimes unethical, outcomes. All stakeholders should be recognized, even though efficient pursuit of negotiated sol- utions may involve only a subset of stake- holders. Solutions should encompass a fair distribution of benefits and incentives.
  Developing a landscape approach requires a patient iterative process of identifying stakeholders and recognizing their concerns and aspirations. Progress requires com- munication, which needs to be developed and nurtured, and mutual respect of values is essential. There is often a need to address conflicts, and issues of trust and power. Stakeholders and their concerns are not static but will change. Although many management agencies aspire to involving all stakeholder groups in decision-making, the transaction costs of doing this comprehen- sively can be prohibitive and total agree- ment can be elusive.
  
• Negotiated and transparent change logic: Trust among stakeholders is a basis for good management and is needed to avoid or resolve conflicts. Transparency is the basis of trust (principle 2). Transparency is achieved through a mutually un- derstood and negotiated process of change and is helped by good governance. The need to coordinate activities by di- verse actors requires that a shared vision can be agreed upon. This requires a broad con- sensus on general goals, challenges, and con- cerns, as well as on options and opportuni- ties. All stakeholders need to understand and accept the general logic, legitimacy, and jus- tification for a course of action, and to be aware of the risks and uncertainties. Build- ing and maintaining such a consensus is a fundamental goal of a landscape approach (principle 2). Numerous attempts to secure consensus around major tropical land con- version projects and the widespread use of the principle of free, prior, and informed consent illustrate the potential and the difficulties of reaching broad agreement on such issues.
  
• Clarification of rights and responsibilities: Rules on resource access and land use shape social and conservation outcomes and need to be clear as a basis for good management. Access to a fair justice system allows for conflict resolution and recourse.  The rights and responsibilities of different actors need to be clear to, and accepted by, all stakeholders. Clarification of conflicting claims will require changes, ideally negoti- ated, that may be legal or informal. When conflict arises, there needs to be an accepted legitimate system for arbitration, justice, and reconciliation. Recent decades have seen major changes in the mandates and man- agement cultures of natural resource man- agement agencies. Clarifying rights and responsibilities is now replacing the com- mand-and-control approach. Facilitation and negotiation are emerging as the core business of resource management agencies.
  
• Participatory and user-friendly monitoring: information can be derived from multiple sources. To facilitate shared learning, information needs to be widely accessible. Systems that integrate different kinds of information need to be developed.  When stakeholders have agreed on desir- able actions and outcomes, they will share an interest in assessing progress. In a landscape approach, no single stakeholder has a unique claim to relevant information, and the val- idity of different knowledge systems must be recognized. All stakeholders should be able to generate, gather, and integrate the informa- tion they require to interpret activities, progress, and threats (principle 1). The gath- ering and interpretation of information is a vital part of developing and updating the “theories of change” on which the landscape approach is based (principle 6). Participa- tory monitoring in the Sangha Tri-National Landscape as part of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership has demonstrated how local stakeholders and government agencies can learn and adapt together.
  
• Resilience: Wwholesale unplanned system changes are usually detrimental and undesirable. System-level resilience can be increased through an active recognition of threats and vulnerabilities. Actions need to be promoted that address threats and that allow recovery after perturbation through improving capacity to resist and respond.  Perturbations impinge on all landscapes and their social and ecological structures. Maintaining and bolstering resilience, which is the capacity to avoid or deflect such threats and to absorb and recover from their manifestations, is vital to sustain processes and benefits in the longer term. Factors that contribute to system resilience are diverse and reflect ecological, social, and institutional attributes. Resilience may not be well understood in every situation, but can be improved through local learning and through drawing lessons from else- where (principles 1 and 10). The challenge in agricultural landscapes is often to bring about transformational change while main- taining the attributes of the landscape that provide resilience to undesirable changes.
  
• Strengthened stakeholder capacity: people require the ability to partici- pate effectively and to accept various roles and responsibilities. Such participation pre- supposes certain skills and abilities (social, cultural, financial).
  Effective participation makes demands of stakeholders. The complex and changing nature of landscape processes requires competent and effective representation and institutions that are able to engage with all the issues raised by the process. The learning process of the landscape approach is one means by which stakeholders can improve their capacity to judge and respond. It also provides a platform to share experi- ences within and among sites. The prolifer- ation of local nongovernmental organizations addressing rural issues is a reflection of this and is recognized by the increasing will- ingness of development assistance agen- cies to support local civil society groups.

Further Information

• Landscapes Portal