Discussion forums

ICRAF; CIFOR

The case for a landscape approach to ecological-based management has been made for several decades, but that for a landscape approach to sustainable development only more recently. However, our thinking about how to achieve the goal of integration at a landscape scale is progressing. For example, Sayer et al. (2013) propose 10 principles central to implementing a landscape approach. These principles set out a framework approach but the next stage has to be to give guidance on operationalizing these principles. The major challenges are measurement (“you cannot manage what you cannot measure”), spatial organization, feedback loops and the issue of scale. In spite of the numerous attempts at designing “landscape approaches” to reconciling conservation and development an effective and comprehensive system for assessing whether these projects are succeeding or not remains elusive – we have to confront and address this reality.

Key questions the Forum will address:

1. How can we move beyond principles and definitions towards managing at the landscape scale for multiple objectives?
2. How do we measure success (or failure) and define whether a landscape is being managed “sustainably”?
3. How to find the right compromise between achieving the potential breadth and depth to understand a single landscape and understanding the implication of an intervention across a great number of landscapes?
4. What are the most pressing research needs in the field?

Background reading 

1. Sayer et al. 2013. Ten principles for a landscape approach to reconciling agriculture, conservation and other competing land uses. PNAS 110(21):8349-8356.
2. Frost et al. 2006. Landscape-scale approaches for integrated natural resource management in tropical forest landscapes. Ecology and Society 11(2): 30.
3. How a landscape approach can work on the ground?
4. Haberl et al., 2009. Towards an integrated model of socioeconomic biodiversity drivers, pressures and impacts. A feasibility study based on three European long-term socio- ecological research platforms. Ecol. Econ. 68(6), 1797-1812.
5. Douthwaite et al., 2005, Ecoregional research in Africa: learning lessons from IITA’s benchmark area approach. Expl. Agric. 41:271-298.

Contact details: r.nasi@cgiar.org, a.gassner@cgiar.org

Keynote Speaker

• Robert Nasi

  Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry

• Anja Gassner

  Co-leader Research Methods Group, World Agroforestry Center

Speakers

• Ruth De Fries

  Denning Professor of Sustainable Development; Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, The Earth Institute, Columbia University

• Terry Sunderland

  Principal Scientist, Forests and Livelihoods programme, CIFOR

• Jaboury Ghazoul

  Professor of Ecosystem Management, ETH Zurich

• Catalina Santamaria

  Programme Officer Forests, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

Moderator

• Peter Holmgren

  Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Rapporteur

• Anja Gassner

  Co-leader Research Methods Group, World Agroforestry Center

• Robert Nasi

  Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry