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Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
with Integrated Landscape Management
The United Nations’ adoption of Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) with 169 targets, presents a monumental opportunity to the global community to improve human well-being and equality while also conserving Earth’s natural resources and the vital ecological functions on which we all depend. But agreement on the goals is just the first step.
To achieve the goals by 2030 will require a radically different paradigm of development than was applied to the Millennium Development Goals. A new approach that breaks down sectoral barriers, capitalizes on synergies in land uses and human development, and strengthens coordination and participation of a wide range of stakeholders is needed. Integrated landscape management (ILM) is that approach.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
City region landscape planning promotes markets for local food, fuel and fiber, which supports robust urban and rural economies and helps sustain “green belts” that provide ecosystem services like clean water, air and recreation to communities.
Restoring degraded land for both forests and agricultural production stores carbon in trees and in the soil, while reducing the need for further agricultural expansion that exacerbates climate change.
Participatory planning secures community support, and sustainable use, of protected forest, grassland, desert and mountain habitats for wild animals, allowing them to avoid agricultural areas where they may damage crops or threaten people.
Spatial planning optimizes sustainable production of a variety of food and fiber products valued in local, urban and international markets contributes to resilient economic growth in rural areas, where 75% of the world’s poor live.
Landscape management includes “remote” stakeholders or their representatives, like fishermen who have an interest in protecting fish spawning habitat upstream. Without landscape-scale management, these critical services are often overlooked or undervalued.
Planning locally-appropriate and synergistic renewable energy sources, like biogas, solar, and wind power, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, empowers communities, and improves human health.
Landscape management captures the synergies between clean fuel and energy sources, a healthy environment that provides traditional medicinal plants and culturally appropriate foods, and social inclusion, multiplying impacts on health and well-being, especially for women and youth.
Landscape management properly values sustainable agroecological intensification, with its ecosystem service, biodiversity and health benefits, contributing to farmer premiums, easier access to credit, and economic resilience, helping break cycles of poverty.
Landscape planning allows all stakeholders, including women and youth, to make decisions about the kinds of economic opportunities they want to pursue that will support a healthy, prosperous and sustainable community.
Landscape planning helps communities and governments protect the value of services provided by wetlands, swamps, and barrier islands, which provide natural flood and storm protection plus water filtration. The value of these services has been estimated at $70 billion annually.
Sustainably managed and lightly used habitat for native plants, birds, bees and beasts provides critical ecosystem services like pollination, pest predation, and wildfire and land slip protection, along with being culturally significant, beautiful and valuable in its own right.
Thriving communities are driven by engaged citizens who have real opportunities to affect the development of their economies and environments: exactly what integrated landscape management is all about.
Siting solar, wind, hydropower and other renewable energy projects so they have neutral or positive impacts on other goals, like food security, biodiversity protection and human health is best achieved at a landscape level.
Landscape planning ensures riparian buffer zones are maintained to prevent soil erosion and siltation of rivers and streams, store rainwater and filter agricultural runoff. This keeps clean water available for downstream users, and improves fisheries and hydroelectric power efficiency.
Agroforestry systems like shade coffee, cocoa, tea, and multi-story annual-perennial systems improve the food security, resilience and livelihoods of farmers and their neighbours in town and downstream, while providing habitat and renewable building materials.
Sustainable management of forests and trees preserves biodiversity and secures the long-term wellbeing of people who rely on timber and non-timber forest products for income and cultural traditions.
Economic growth, improved health and well-being, increased social inclusion, and food security help ensure that investments in education achieve transformative educational outcomes.
Community-based fisheries management is a critical starting point for more systematic planning of contributing ecosystem services in the landscape, connecting human activities on land, including greenhouse gas emissions and consumption and production patterns with the preservation of healthy oceans.
Space, training and time for household food production are not trivial, and are rarely considered in development initiatives unless local knowledge is included. They provide important food security in times of shortage or economic stress.
Integrated landscapes provide the environment, the platforms for investment, and the opportunities for employment and education that help rural communities, where 75% of the world’s poor live, prosper and thrive.
Click the buttons on the image below to see how integrated landscape management allows interventions in the landscape to help achieve multiple sustainable development goals.
Take a Look“You are not outside of me and I am not outside of you. You are more than just my
environment. You are nothing less than myself.”
Integrated landscape management has been implemented and is successful in a wide range of environments and cultures across the globe, providing practical examples of place-based implementation to enhance ecosystems and livelihoods.
Some countries are pioneers in promoting more integrated, participatory and adaptive approaches to sustainable landscape management to achieve their ambitious national development goals. They have valuable lessons to share about supporting such approaches.
For example, Rwanda has adopted a national landscape restoration strategy with a goal of improving rural livelihoods while enhancing forest and land resources. Ethiopia is overcoming chronic food insecurity with landscape approaches to agricultural restoration and water management. In Colombia, public-private partnerships for integrated watershed management are improving water quality and lowering municipal water treatment costs while also reducing business risks for commercial brewers. Indonesia is adopting integrated landscape approaches to conserve forest in areas of rapid agricultural development. Eight nations in Central America are implementing an area-based approach to rural development that supports participatory regional planning to address agriculture, environment, health, human development and climate change in an integrated way.
“Addressing the challenges of climate adaptation, water stewardship and building community relations all require ‘more than the sum of the parts’ thinking.”
Within landscapes, research shows, key capacities are needed to effectively implement ILM.
Commitment to collaborative management by stakeholders is key. This includes both stakeholders within the landscape, such as producers’ organizations, local government, civil society groups and businesses, as well as stakeholders outside of the landscape at regional, national and even international levels.
Spatial and technical information, such as maps of important areas for biodiversity, agriculture and hydrology, is essential to plan strategically for a multi-functional landscape. Adoption of ILM also often requires technical information and capacity, such as improved varieties of crops or enhanced biodiversity conservation techniques.
Incentives for individual land managers, such as market-based premiums for improved practices or payments for the provision of ecosystem services, are often needed to spread practices that promote ILM, since many lack the capital needed to make changes.
Surveys of integrated landscape initiatives (ILIs) reveal that many are trying, and failing, to meaningfully engage business in integrated planning. Around the world, only 1 in 5 surveyed ILIs reported having private sector partners.
Private sector involvement is vital. Without engaging this critical sector in proactive collaborative planning, we will continue a pattern of resource conflict, miss major opportunities to transform financial flows, and frankly, fail to address a root cause of unsustainable development. Both regulatory and voluntary measures will be necessary to get business on board, but many leading companies are already making integrated landscape management a part of their sourcing or operations strategies.
“We need scientific approaches that overcome barriers between disciplines and methods. We need a holistic vision of the challenges to build integrated responses. And we need local and global political leadership informed by solid science and innovative approaches to problem solving.”
Integrated landscape management—with its emphasis on multi-stakeholder participation and negotiation, inter-sectoral coordination, and using natural resources creatively to create renewable value—is the best way to empower everybody to create a sustainable future for humanity.
The partners of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative, more than 80 international, regional and local development, conservation and agriculture organizations are already helping national governments tackle the challenges of sustainable development through ILM.
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