Landscapes for People, Food and Nature (LPFN)
There are many approaches and entry points for integrated landscape management (ILM). Some are not ‘approaches’ as such, but more or less well-funded international programs with goals to realize across several landscapes. The African Landscape Restoration Initiative or AFR100, the Great Green Wall, the Bonn Challenge, and REDD+ are examples of this. These programs have national ramifications and seek to use a landscape approach to implement their goals and policy objectives.
Most of these approaches are not mutually exclusive and could actually coexist, overlap or even blend into each other, if they rely on sound cooperative frameworks. However, while all approaches insist on the centrality of local people in ILM, scant detail is available on the institutional arrangements and processes that can make that a reality.
Current approaches usually place emphasis on the architectural design or outcomes of ILM, less on the social and organizational requirements to ‘get there’. The “how” question remains: how are stakeholders actually brought together in ILM and how do they get to negotiate their values, interests and objectives and to coordinate their actions beyond one single project, program or initiative?
Local ownership and social structuring of the process is at the heart of the long-term resilience and sustainability of the landscape approach. It starts with the means and method for mobilizing and convening landscape stakeholders and follows with the real-life processes through which landscape insiders gain or exercise ownership and coordination of landscape decisions and transformations.
This can rarely be done in isolation. NGOs, experts and volunteers, as well as external funds and projects, are needed and have crucial roles to play, but are bound to leave eventually. This is why the place and role of local stakeholders in ILM is such an important question to raise in relation with the approaches and methods that can help achieve a level playing field in landscape governance. This is particularly significant in Africa, where weak capabilities and conditions of poverty and inequality create a downward pressure on the exercise of leadership by local groups and communities.
LPFN is based on the conviction that the following key elements are needed for the successful transformation of Africa’s environments: (i) an area to be developed , (ii) a partnership for development, (iii) a process of development, and (iv) a support network. The area is a landscape or ecosystem. The partnership is voluntary and inclusive, from local farmers, women’s groups and indigenous people to national policy-makers, enterprises and universities. The process is a journey of dialogue, experimentation and innovation designed to understand what “sustainability” means in a given landscape and then use the partnership to work toward it. The network should be at local level and can itself be nested into other networks of higher inclusivity at local, regional and international scales. As an example the network of Model Forests is given, with over 60 Model Forests in more than 30 countries and organized within the International Model Forest Network (IMFN).
The LPFN web site publishes blogs with profiles of 40 case landscapes, mostly in Africa, in which the IMFN principles have been or are being implemented. It also contains tools for helping to sort out the complexity of landscapes, case studies, reports and journal articles, guides and manuals.