Integrated landscape approaches to managing social and environmental issues in the tropics: learning from the past to guide the future.

Josh Van Vianen,Terry Sunderland,James Reed,Jos Barlow,Elizabeth L. Deakin

doi:10.1111/gcb.13284

Abstract

Poverty, food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss continue to persist as the primary environmental and social challenges faced by the global community. As such, there is a growing acknowledgement that conventional sectorial approaches to addressing often inter-connected social, environmental, economic and political challenges are proving insufficient. An alternative is to focus on integrated solutions at landscape scales or 'landscape approaches'. The appeal of landscape approaches has resulted in the production of a significant body of literature in recent decades, yet confusion over terminology, application and utility persists. Focusing on the tropics, we systematically reviewed the literature to: (i) disentangle the historical development and theory behind the framework of the landscape approach and how it has progressed into its current iteration, (ii) establish lessons learned from previous land management strategies, (iii) determine the barriers that currently restrict implementation of the landscape approach and (iv) provide recommendations for how the landscape approach can contribute towards the fulfilment of the goals of international policy processes. This review suggests that, 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.

Highlights

Poverty, food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss continue to persist as the primary social and environmental challenges faced by the global community (Godfray et al, 2010; Laurance et al, 2014; West et al, 2014)
By focusing on the tropics, this study aims to: (i) disentangle the historical development and theory behind the framework of the landscape approach and how it has progressed into its current iteration, (ii) establish lessons learned from previous land management strategies, (iii) determine the barriers that currently restrict implementation of the landscape approach and (iv) document how the landscape approach can help meet the goals of international policy processes
This review identified a number of prominent approaches that either emerged, or were re-visited, following the Rio Earth summit (e.g. these include Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) or Integrated Watershed Management (IWM); Ecosystem Approach (EA); Integrated Rural Development (IRD); Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM); Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDP’s); and Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR))

Summary

Introduction

Food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss continue to persist as the primary social and environmental challenges faced by the global community (Godfray et al, 2010; Laurance et al, 2014; West et al, 2014). There have been some successes in addressing these diverse set of challenges: from 1990 to 2015, the number of undernourished people globally has almost halved (FAO, IFAD & WFP, 2015), more than one billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty (UN, 2015), and a global network of protected areas has been developed covering over 15% of the terrestrial surface (UNEP/IUCN). While the primary social and environmental challenges – poverty alleviation, food security, biodiversity loss and climate change – are undoubtedly distinct, the solutions may be more readily devised through an integrated approach. This is primarily because stakeholder groups are likely to diverge in their perceptions on the relative importance of social or environmental challenges (Kutter & Westby, 2014). Increased agricultural production could lead to increased biodiversity loss or the creation of a protected area to conserve biodiversity may inhibit the socio-economic development of those communities excluded from access to wild resources

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