The European Tropical Forest Research Network (ETFRN) will dedicate the next issue of ETFRN news to landscapes. In this way, ETFRN News aims to provide practitioners and policy makers with an opportunity to share their practical experiences in the application of landscape approaches. Deadline for submission is 17 March 2014.
The ETRFN team is inviting you to submit a short article (maximum 3,000 words) to this ETFRN News on your experiences with the landscape approach. We are interested in information based on practical experiences and (on-going) research on landscapes, landscape restoration and landscape performance at the nexus of agriculture, forests and biodiversity in mosaic landscapes in the tropics, and in a context of climate change. This may be an excellent opportunity to showcase your work and to contribute to the discussion on landscapes.
If you are interested to contribute, please contact ETFRN at {j.chavez.tafur@gmail.com}, briefly outlining a proposal of about 200 words for your article, before March 17th, 2014.
Background
Well-managed, productive tropical landscapes critically support international efforts towards meeting the challenges of feeding the world's population, producing the commodities that consumers need, managing the impacts of climate change and conserving critical ecosystem services. The variety of resources originating from tropical landscapes, and the services provided by their ecosystems provide an engine for sustainable growth, jobs and self-reliance in tropical countries. Therefore, productive, climate-smart landscapes represent a shared global interest.
What exactly is a "landscape" is a matter of perspective. Different actors look at landscapes through different lenses: landscapes are multi-functional and multi-scale. Often, a landscape is defined around a certain problem or issue, for instance, watershed management. For the purpose of this ETFRN news, we define "productive landscapes" as landscapes capable of providing a wide range of products and (ecosystem) services and fulfilling the social, economic and environmental requirements and aspirations of present and future generations at the local, national and global level. Intensified agriculture, small-scale agro-industrial wood production, small scale logging, water capturing and storage, ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation and biomass storage are examples of local and global functions that can be combined in these productive landscapes.
To achieve productive and climate-smart landscapes calls for "landscape approaches". The Principles for Forest and Landscape Restoration provide ten requirements that must be in place for making collaborative decisions to enhance local livelihoods and reconcile competing land uses. These emphasize, for instance, the importance of continuous learning and adaptation, multi-functionality, and multiple scales of landscapes rather than technically optimal land use and conservation solutions.
Productive landscapes
In many parts of the tropics, landscapes are subject to rapid change as a result of increasing populations, climate change, increasing demand for resources, infrastructure development and other factors. A diversity of local, regional and global stakeholders claim a share of land and resources based on a range of pre-existing, newly acquired or imposed rights. In consequence, landscapes must fulfil an increasing number of functions to satisfy a broader range of stakeholders holding more divergent interests, in a context which is dynamic. In many cases, this leads to conflict and unsustainable land use. There is a high need to manage these lands effectively and efficiently, and to combine functions for as wide a range of actors and interests as possible.
Therefore, an important dimension of productive landscapes is legal, legitimate and sustainable land use supported by mechanisms that resolve competing claims based on inclusive and informed negotiation of the interests of stakeholders. This requires government and governance, and the existence of laws, policies and practical arrangements that manage the relations between stakeholders and their interests and facilitate fair, sustainable and productive use of landscape mosaics. The absence of effective governance frameworks for the interaction between actors who differ in power has widely led to social conflict, exclusion, poverty and degradation of forests and former forest lands in the tropics. Large areas of land now lie idle, or fulfil only a fraction of their potential functions, while on the other hand outsiders grab productive lands for investment or export purposes.
While there is a fairly broad consensus on process and general framework conditions for successful landscape interventions, there is insufficient clarity about the actual and desired outcomes in the field, and how to achieve these. The definition of productive landscapes provided above hardly represents a practical and attainable goal or reality on the ground, but a certain ideal. A common understanding of what a productive landscape means in practice, in the eyes of different actors, is largely lacking. There is a need for a language to communicate about the disparate components of landscape functioning, trade-offs, and performance. Further, there is a need to distinguish between landscapes which are able to deliver 'triple win solutions' in terms of social development, environmental sustainability and economic development, and those which are not. Local stakeholders, governments and donors need be able to monitor and understand the effects of landscape-level interventions. There are also calls3 to include landscape performance measures among the post-Rio Sustainable Development Goals.
The role of forests and trees
Increasingly, forest ecosystems and trees are integrated components of productive multiple use landscapes. Forests provide disproportionate environmental, social and economic values, including stable environments beyond the forest. They are a source of food, energy and clean water; and deliver global public goods such as climate stability and biodiversity. Natural resources from forests contribute directly to economic development and poverty alleviation. The value of forests in the landscape and the way they are used changes as more of their functions are recognised in policies or by markets. While this recognition seems to be growing, the extent to which productive landscapes critically depend on the presence of forests, where and how much of them, is not well understood.
Policy context
Landscape approaches are not new. What is new is the broad and high-powered interest in the approach, which is triggered by a growing awareness that global challenges such as food insecurity and climate change need integrated solutions. Several international coalitions have put the landscape centre stage. Forest Day and Agriculture and Rural Development Day made way for the first Global Landscape Forum at UNFCCC CoP19 in Warsaw to demonstrate that landscapes must be addressed as part of a broad sustainable development agenda. The Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration promotes the restoration of forests and degraded lands that deliver benefits to local communities and to nature, and fulfil international commitments on forests. The Bonn Challenge seeks to restore 150 million ha of degraded forestlands by 2020. The Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative supports integrated agricultural landscape approaches to simultaneously meet goals of food production, ecosystem health and human wellbeing. Landscape dimensions emerge in initiatives that address governance as a generic condition for improved land and forest use, e.g. in REDD+. The landscape dimension even emerge value chain approaches as round table initiatives on palm oil (RSPO), soy (RTRS), biofuels and others seek to address the social and environmental consequences of high impact land use at a landscape level by requiring the identification and management of High Conservation Value Areas. Responsible sourcing initiatives increasingly address the spill-over effects of product chains beyond the farm- or facility-scale, recognizing that long-term business success is tied to healthy communities and ecosystems.
Objectives
In summary, the general challenge of policies seeking to achieve sustainable development at the landscape level will be to create the conditions under which multiple stakeholders reconcile their competing claims and interests through negotiated trade-offs of landscape level functions at various spatial scales. The general question to be answered is whether such efforts have led, and will lead, or are even able to lead, to resilient and flexible landscapes that promote local economic development, increase food security and water management and benefit livelihoods, the climate and biodiversity under a range of scenarios of change.
As its contribution to the discussion, this ETFRN News aims to bring together information based on practical experiences and (on-going) research on landscapes and landscape performance at the nexus of agriculture, forests and biodiversity in mosaic landscapes in the tropics, and place this in a context of climate change. Contributions are expected to cover aspects of landscape governance, landscape management and landscape restoration, focusing on questions such as:
-The role of forests in mosaic landscapes: We invite good examples of critical assessments of the role of forests, in particular of synergies between forest functions and agricultural functions at the landscape level. Is there practical evidence supporting claims that forests increase the performance of multi-purpose landscapes and their resilience to climate change, to the benefit of local stakeholders?
-Success and failure: With special reference to the landscape approach, what are the key factors contributing to success in landscape management, landscape restoration and landscape adaptation to climate change? And what factors contribute to failure? Can these factors be managed and how? How do the landscape restoration principles work out in practice?
-Landscape arrangements: What suitable governance arrangements exist at the landscape scale and what are the experiences with them? How do bottom-up and top-down landscape governance approaches to landscape planning compare? To what extent can distant stakeholders of productive landscapes be committed to paying for the (global) services generated by productive landscapes; what is practically the importance of, and experience with, quantifying these benefits?
-Landscape performance measures: What distinguishes 'successful', 'functioning', 'productive' and climate-smart' landscapes in social, political, cultural, institutional, economic and/or environmental terms? What should we look at and is there a way of practical and meaningful comparison? What are the practical experiences with measuring landscape performance? Is there a language (criteria; indicators) in which landscapes can be compared? How to deal with the issue of comparing totally different aspects of landscape performance, e.g. production vs cultural values?
Working Method
The ETFRN News will consist of individual articles, partly from invited authors and partly obtained through an announcement distributed over the internet, list servers and social media.
Articles should describe and analyse on-going or recent research and practical experiences related to the subject, completed with papers introducing policies and key concepts. A synthesis paper will summarise the papers and identify implications for policy, practice and research. Full articles shall not exceed 3000 words.
Submissions will be selected against the objectives of this ETFRN News issue, and subsequently be edited for relevance (against the objective), consistency and readability, looking for cross-connections between individual contributions as much as possible. A balance will be sought between different disciplinary and geographic perspectives, and between policy and practitioners' perspectives.
The editing work, and the development of the synthesis article, will be conducted by Tropenbos International supported by the guest editor, Jorge Chavez-Tafur.
A sounding board will be established for the production of this issue of ETFRN News. Its tasks will be to give feedback on these ToR, to guide the process of selecting and editing articles and structuring of the publication, and to contribute and/or review the synthesis article.
The audience of the ETFRN News will be policy makers, donors, NGOs and the research community, especially those involved in landscape aspects of agreements such as REDD+, Round tables, landscape initiatives etc. at (inter)national level. The regular ETFRN subscribers comprise another level of audience.
Partners
This ETFRN News will be published as part of a combined effort by Tropenbos International (ETFRN News) and ILEIA (Farming Matters) to build an integrated perspective on agriculture and forest approaches to improve the livelihoods of rural communities and strengthen multifunctional landscapes; and to widely share emerging insights on these landscape approaches through its respective dissemination channels. A synthesis will be prepared on the basis of the articles published in this ETFRN News and the companion issue of Farming Matters.
Financial support for this issue of ETFRN News has been made available by the German International Cooperation, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, FAO, UNEP and SIDA.
Tentative time table
The production of this ETFRN News will start in January 2014 and is expected to be completed by November 2014. The deadline for the submission of proposals for articles is 17 March 2014. Full articles will be due in May, with revisions taking place until June.
Contact details
Jorge Chavez-Tafur
T : +31-6-3041 6470
E: {j.chavez.tafur@gmail.com}
S: Jorge.en.ileia
Roderick Zagt
T: +31-317-702028
E: {roderick.zagt@tropenbos.org}
S: roderick_zagt
