Abstract
Current concepts that aim to align economic development with sustainability, such as the circular and green economy, often consider natural systems as externalities. We extend the green economy concept by including the landscape as the provider of social, economic and environmental values. Our aim is to explore how companies could engage in creating landscape-inclusive solutions for sustainable landscapes. We propose a conceptual model of the relationship between companies and landscape services based on a demand for landscape benefits by companies, implications for wider society. We present a short overview of how scientists addressed the role of companies in landscape-inclusive solutions. We also give some examples taken from the World Wide Web to illustrate the variety of ways in which companies already invest in landscape services. Our findings suggest that the relationship between companies and landscapes is not yet strongly recognized in sustainability science. However, examples from practice show that some companies do recognize the added values of landscape services, to the extent that they invest in landscape management. We conclude that future research should provide information on the added value of landscape-inclusive solutions to companies, and increase their capacity to engage in regional social–ecological networks.
Highlights
The rise of sustainability as an overarching concept to embrace economic, sociocultural and life-support systems has generated new economic paradigms
The green economy has been criticized for economizing nature as an externality; critics argue that instead the economy is totally dependent on the natural system [7]
We propose that landscape scientists and scholars in sustainability science and the green economy work together on a research agenda that calls for a joined-up approach to this challenging topic
Summary
The rise of sustainability as an overarching concept to embrace economic, sociocultural and life-support systems has generated new economic paradigms. It calls for collaboration among all tiers of society: governments, businesses, communities and citizens In this explorative review we are interested in how (big) companies, as influential players in supply chains and in the economic arena in general, could internalize services provided by the landscape and how this would connect them to landscape governance in the region. As pointed out by Houdet et al [5], businesses become more interested in what nature has to offer as biodiversity becomes progressively associated with raw materials, products and sources of new technologies We take this conceptual thinking a step further and consider how the natural processes in landscapes may provide benefits to companies and how these benefits may involve companies in the management of landscapes. In the perspective section (Section 6) we speculate about motives that a company may have to get involved in landscape governance networks, and we end with a proposed research agenda
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