What are integrated landscape approaches and how do we put them in practice on the ground?

These questions – important when considering sustainable land-use management amid competing demands – will be discussed at the upcoming CIFOR and partner-hosted PEFC stakeholder dialogue in Bali and the Global Landscapes Forum in Marrakesh.

Integrated landscape approaches have received a groundswell of support from across sectors in recent years as a means to more sustainably manage land use within tropical landscapes. There is a growing body of theoretical knowledge conceptualizing how a landscape approach framework might best be applied in a practical sense. However, there is a suggestion that, as yet, this knowledge is not widely being translated into evidence of the effectiveness of the approach in practice.

Amongst other factors, this could be a result of the approach either not being widely implemented, or that practitioners simply lack capacity or incentives to evaluate and report progress where the approach has been applied.

In order to provide background to these assumptions, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and its partners recently completed reviews of both the theory and implementation of landscape approaches in the tropics.

Read the full story on the CIFOR website here. 

Photo credit: CIFOR