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In this document, we provide guidance on selecting, accessing and tailoring maps that form the crucial basis of this spatially explicit multi-stakeholder planning process. The use of these maps is subsequently described in eight steps of a planning and monitoring cycle, which start with the use of maps to identify important areas in terms of landscape benefit supply (such as water supply and regulation, crop production, habitat provision and moderation of extreme climate events). In a next step, stakeholders share ideas and identify areas where changes leading to improved landscape benefits flows are desired, and identify the current governance actors for these areas. The guide has a specific monitoring element that recommends stakeholders to carefully describe landscape benefits in a measurable, spatially explicit way. Based on the specified landscape benefits and selected areas where change is desired, in a subsequent step, stakeholders jointly discuss how a potential change in the landscape will affect different landscape benefits flows and beneficiary groups. After agreement is reached, stakeholders plan and implement a preferred change in the landscape using a range of maps and involving relevant governance actors. The last step guides stakeholders in setting up a strategy to monitor and evaluate changes in benefits flows after implementation of the planned intervention. Stakeholders are guided to use information about changes in making their landscape planning adaptive to possible future change.

The manual is designed to assist in the mentoring of adult learners. Through practice in using the manual, professionals who are active in capacity building for SLM and related initiatives will develop the competencies needed to train project and program leaders, including M&E specialists, in groups. The manual emphasizes team building to develop effective leadership for SLM and similarly, a team approach to training. Training teams who use the manual to design and facilitate capacity development courses that bring a landscape perspective to SLM M&E should view themselves as facilitators of learning whose primary role is to assist trainees to think deeply and creatively about SLM and ways that monitoring and evaluation can be practiced to improve SLM initiatives and outcomes. The manual is designed therefore, to help training teams establish a climate conducive to learning, encourage learners to draw from their wealth of knowledge and experience to enrich the learning environment, help them identify and utilize a variety of resources to accomplish their learning objectives, and give them a strong role in delivering learning material. Features of the manual to help users develop competency in facilitating the learning of leadership teams about SLM M&E from a landscape perspective are highlighted below.

ELTI’s training and leadership programs focus on a range of themes that contribute to the conservation and restoration of native biodiversity and the enhancement of local livelihoods within human-dominated landscapes in the tropics. Their seven focal themes support one unifying goal: to conserve and restore tropical human-dominated landscapes that are rich in biodiversity and support a variety of land uses, which were identified with in-country partners, and they include: 1. Native Species Reforestation and Tropical Forest Restoration 2. Integrating Trees and Forests into Cattle Ranching Landscapes 3. Rehabilitation of Mined Sites 4. Monitoring Restoration Initiatives 5. Mangrove Restoration 6. Financing Conservation and Restoration Projects 7. Watershed Restoration

ELTI invites participants to explore the social, biological, and political processes that shape reforestation and forest restoration in tropical regions. This course is designed for a diverse audience, including management professionals, policy makers, mid-career practitioners and others involved with natural resource management, land use decision-making, forest finance, or landscape restoration. This course course provides a unique opportunity to interact with environmental leaders and Yale F&ES faculty to learn about an issue of immense importance for the sustainability of tropical forest landscapes. Participants will learn about the following aspects, with a focus on tropical Asia, Africa, and the Neotropics: - Technical aspects of forest restoration in different biophysical and social contexts - Social, financial, and political catalysts and challenges - Protocols for monitoring and evaluating restoration for diverse objectives

· Land degradation neutrality (LDN) is a new initiative intended to halt the ongoing loss of healthy land through degradation. LDN creates a target for managing land degradation, through a dual-pronged approach of measures to avoid or reduce degradation of land, combined with measures to reverse past degradation. · The UNCCD defines LDN as “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security remain stable or increase within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems” (decision 3/COP.12). Within the UNCCD this definition is intended to apply to affected areas as defined in the text of the Convention. · The scientific conceptual framework for LDN was developed to guide countries in operationalising this definition through the implementation of strategies to address land degradation and achieve LDN.