Presented by Terry Sunderland, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) in Merida, Yucatán, Mexico, on July 12, 2017. #ATBC2017

1. Terry Sunderland
54th Meeting of the ATBC
Merida, Mexico
12th July 2017
INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE APPROACHES TO MANAGE
SOCIETAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE TROPICS

2. INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE APPROACHES: WHY?
• A response to the failings of sectorial land
management approaches
• The latest in a series of attempts to
concurrently address conservation,
development and restoration challenges
• A refinement of previous approaches
• A method to integrate stakeholders at
multiple scales
• A framework to integrate policy and practice
• A land management strategy to fulfill social,
economic, ecological & cultural objectives,
including forest restoration
• A tool to assess performance and manage
trade-offs within the landscape
• All of the above?

3. THE ORIGIN OF THE “LANDSCAPE APPROACH”
1980s 1990s 2000s 2010 - present
1980s: Integrated
Rural
Development
1998: Integrated Natural
Resource Management
(INRM)
1985 onwards: Integrated
Conservation & Development
projects (ICDPs)
Contributing Sciences:
Ecosystem Management
Landscape Ecology
Island biogeography
Conservation rooted
frameworks e.g. “Ecosystem
Approach”
1992: “Landscape Approach”
first documented (Barrett
1992)
Last decade:
(Integrated) Landscape
Approach frameworks

4. MAPPING THE RESEARCH ON LANDSCAPE APPROACH
26,303 scoping results
in WoK using 35 revised
search terms
13,290 Publications
captured with refined
search terms
All TITLES screened
271,974 results from
initial 56 main search terms
trialed in WoK
1,171 Relevant studies
All ABSTRACTS screened
382 Relevant studies
All FULL TEXTS screened
82 Final studies of
relevance

5. EMBRACING THE LANDSCAPE APPROACH –
INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS FOR PEOPLE ACROSS SECTORS
“Despite some barriers to
implementation, a landscape approach
has considerable potential to meet social
and environmental objectives at local
scales while aiding national commitments
to addressing ongoing global challenges.”
Reed et al. 2016, Global Change Biology.

6. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

7. OPERATIONALISING THE LANDSCAPE APPROACH:
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
THEORY & POLICY
PRACTICE:
Integration &
evaluation
Local stakeholders:
NGO’s; CSO’s
Local communities
Private sector
Local government
Drivers:
Researchers
Policy makers
Central government

8. “We conclude that landscape approaches are a welcome departure from
previous unsuccessful attempts at reconciling conservation and
development in the tropics but, despite claims to the contrary, remain
nascent in both their conceptualization and implementation”. (Reed et
al. 2017)

9. FORESTS SUSTAINING AGRICULTURE
How does landscape configuration maximise the provision of these
goods and services for both forestry and food production???
Water regulation
Climate regulation
Pollination
Pest control

10. “When incorporating forests and trees within an appropriate and
contextualized natural resource management strategy, there is
potential to maintain, and in some cases, enhance agricultural yields
comparable to solely monoculture systems”. Reed et al. 2017

11. KEY FINDINGS
Optimizing adoption of landscape approaches:
• Evaluating progress within a landscape is fundamental
to determining where gains or losses are being made
• Hybrid, multi-level and cross-sectorial governance
structures that integrate internal traditional knowledge
and external institutional and financial support are
increasingly preferable
• Must acknowledge the need for contextualisation and
not subscribe to panaceas
• Inclusive, participatory stakeholder negotiation can
help align local socio-cultural and global environmental
concerns
• Should recognise dynamic processes and perverse
outcomes

12. CURRENT BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION
• The on-going development of theory
and conceptualization may be
stimulating time lags
• The proliferation of terms
associated with landscape
approaches may be impeding policy
and practice progress
• Operating silos persist at all levels
and scales
• Engaging multiple stakeholders is
all too often seen as a box-ticking
exercise to satisfy project
requirements
• Monitoring remains the least well
developed area of landscape
approach application

13. CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS
• Landscape approaches remain
contentious and under-theorized –
“old wine, new bottles?”
• There is good evidence of landscape
approaches being implemented
within the tropics but weak evidence
of effectiveness
• Multi-level engagement seems
fundamental to success but remains
elusive
• Attempts to implement must be
contextualized and willing to
embrace complexity
• Metrics need to continue to develop
• Move beyond “projects” to “process”

14. THINKING beyond the canopy
t.sunderland@cgiar.org
@TCHSunderland