Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

Box 4.1
What Is a Landscape Approach?
The landscape approach should incorporate the following
elements:
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Builds understanding and a shared vision of desirable
future landscapes
Determines the factors that will shape the landscape in
the future so that they can be mitigated or influenced
Builds multidisciplinary teams to tackle these complex,
intersectoral landscape-scale problems
Explores possible future scenarios for the geographical
areas in question and their peoples
Provides a framework for negotiations between
stakeholders who have different views of desirable
landscape-scale outcomes
Makes the knowledge, assumptions, and desires of
different stakeholders more apparent and easily
understood by other stakeholders
Source: Authors’ compilation using Sayers 2006.
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Identifies key leverage points that can be used to get
the ecosystem or landscape to change in desirable
ways
Establishes a flexible monitoring and evaluation system
to monitor and measure impacts on the landscape
to allow for changes to be made in implementation
Several approaches exist for implementing strategies
that integrate management of land, water, and living
resources and promote conservation and sustainable
use in an equitable manner (for example, an
ecosystem approach). The elements listed above are
generic to several of these approaches and provide
practical operational entry points.
poor. In addition, the productive use of forests can significantly
contribute to economic development, while the management
of biological and ecological services from forests
can provide numerous local as well as global environmental
benefits. As noted in the strategy, forests (and their users
and beneficiaries) both have an impact on and are affected
by policies and actions in other sectors, as well as by biophysical
changes in adjoining or biologically linked areas (as
examples, forest fires can result from land-use practices in
agricultural lands, or macroeconomic reforms can affect the
opportunity cost of land) (see chapter 6: Mainstreaming
Forests into Development Policy and Planning). In this context,
optimizing forest functions 3 in a landscape can unlock
the full potential of forests.
A landscape-focused program can facilitate the assessment
of broader, wide-ranging trends, influences, and management
impacts to more adequately assess economic and
ecological sustainability and identify the appropriate management
strategies to maintain these resources for the benefit
of all. In certain World Bank client countries where land
conversion is a major threat to forests, a landscape approach
can minimize site-specific activities negatively affecting or
conflicting with each other. It can also enhance any synergies
that otherwise may be overlooked. Similarly, in client
countries where landscapes are a mosaic of land uses, an
approach that takes the landscape into account can assist in
internalizing positive externalities and minimizing negative
externalities from individual land uses.
While the global rate of deforestation has fallen from
0.22 percent in the 1990s to 0.18 percent in the 2000s, the
development and conservation communities continue to
bemoan the imminent loss of forests, biodiversity, and associated
economic and environmental services. However, not
all deforestation is inevitable and not all deforestation is
necessarily bad because many countries are replanting native
and/or exotic forests on former forest lands and in natural
grasslands. These new forests are having landscape-,
regional-, and global-level impacts although they do not
provide significant biodiversity conservation and are not a
substitute for natural forests. The landscape approach can
aid in better understanding the tradeoffs and potential synergies
among competing land claims and uses in forest
zones. Thus, a balance would be attempted among pressures
to increase protected areas; expand the area of independently
certified and sustainably managed natural forest; and
convert forests to sustainable agroforestry-based farming
systems, timber plantations, commercial-scale agribusiness
estates (such as soybean farming or cattle ranching), or
crop-based biofuels manufactured from sugar or oil palm.
All of the multilateral environmental agreements now
seek to achieve their objectives through the integrated management
of natural resource systems at large spatial scales.
124 CHAPTER 4: OPTIMIZING FOREST FUNCTIONS IN A LANDSCAPE