Landscapes, territories and the challenge of merging socio-ecological and socio-political strategies for sustainable development

Reflections from my trip to Montpellier, France, in late January for the ‘Living Territories’ conference.

I joined more than 250 others at the event, organized by CIRAD, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development, to debate and take stock of territorial approaches. Though my work at EcoAgriculture Partners in the past 15 years has focused on translating ideas to practice, previously I spent 25 years as a researcher, and I found it very stimulating to step back and consider our work at EcoAgriculture Partners more fully within the broader context of sustainable development.

Why what we call what we do matters, and when it doesn’t

In 2012, the partners of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature initiative, after considerable debate, decided to use ‘integrated landscape management (ILM)’ as a broad term to describe the myriad communities of practice that have emerged to enable multiple stakeholders in large places (landscapes, territories, bioregions, watersheds, et al) to negotiate and manage their shared natural resource, social and built assets to achieve sustainable and inclusive development. The actual terms in use keep rising, reflecting different ‘entry points’, emphases and philosophies. In 2013, our list had 80 terms that were sometimes or always used to convey these aims. In just the last two months my list reached 89, adding ‘co-existence landscapes’, ‘peoplescapes’ and ‘multi-output area development’.

The kinds of terms on my list (e.g. agroecology, evergreen agriculture, permaculture, holistic management) were often originated by academics, international agencies or social movements. In specific landscapes, people commonly coin names for their initiatives that reflect and appeal to their unique local identity and help inspire collective action. The initiative in the Naivasha River Basin in Kenya is called ‘Imarisha Naivasha’, drawing from Swahili terms for ‘Strengthen’ and ‘Life.’ A regional sustainability initiative in the northwest United States is called ‘Salmon Nation,’ after the iconic species whose conservation inspires actors from many sectors. Local strategies may be organized or inspired by a particular landscape community of practice, they may pick and choose appealing elements from various ones, or may craft a strategy on their own. Thus in practice, what they call themselves is typically a poor guide to understanding what they are actually doing.

However, the words you use are important when communicating with policymakers and funders. LPFN partners have found it useful to deploy integrated landscape management as a shared umbrella term so that all felt comfortable that their particular ‘brand’ or ‘approach’ was part of the family. Having such a shared term has been particularly useful in Integrated Landscape Management is the key term in the Little Sustainable Landscapes Book, and is used by the Global Landscapes Forum, the largest international forum devoted to outreach and engagement on landscape approaches.

I had always considered integrated landscape management as informing, or being part of, broader strategies of territorial development. Yet, ‘Living Territories’ was a reminder that there are differences, and even some friction, between the ‘landscape’-oriented communities of practice and those who describe their work as ‘territorial development’. Importantly, these differences in thought are taken up by institutions and shape their actions as they work to advocate for and implement the Sustainable Development Goals. Acknowledging these differences, and their roots in theory and terminology, allows us to learn from each other and collaborate more effectively. As two key communities at work shaping sub-national approaches to sustainable development, this is particularly important right now.

Territorial Development, city regions and integrated landscape management are all conceptual frameworks for organizing subnational sustainable development activity. Each has a different emphasis, so to mobilize support for subnational (local) planning and management of SDG implementation will require bridging the gaps between these communities of practice.

Territorial development – a socio-political emphasis

Technically, territorial development refers to integrated multi-sector development across a specific portion of territory, guided by a spatial vision of the desirable future and supported by strategic investments in physical infrastructure and environmental management. A movement for rural territorial development has been developing for more than 30 years, mainly in Latin America and francophone Africa, with a focus on processes of ‘simultaneous productive transformation and institutional change with the aim of reducing poverty and inequality in rural territories’ (Schejtman and Berdegué 2004 [PDF]). Its ‘entry point’ is socio-political—about regions wresting control of their own development process from a centralized state and from external economic actors and exploitative local elites. The broad trend towards administrative decentralization was coupled with an emphasis on empowering the voices of marginalized groups and democratizing the development planning process.

While natural resources has always been a theme in territorial development, the primary concern has been around achieving a more equitable access and control of natural resources, and stopping resource degradation by external actors (e.g., national or international mining or agribusiness companies). While often championing particular sustainable production systems for their local values and control (e.g., agroecological farming practices or participatory forest management), they have been less often focused on the technical challenges of sustaining ecosystem processes or biodiversity management across the whole territory.

Integrated landscape management – a socio-ecological emphasis

By contrast, in most ‘landscape’ approaches, sustaining natural resources and ecosystems through improved land, water and vegetation management in the diverse land use systems in a landscape has been especially central. These approaches have been informed by the fast-growing fields around landscape ecology that have deepened understanding of the flows and interdependencies of ecosystem services, and how spatial patterns of land use and management influence them.

Most communities of practice emphasize links between natural resources, livelihoods and economic development, and some are fiercely committed to promoting improved human well-being and equitable outcomes. But many are less invested in analyzing, and less focused on strategically influencing, underlying socio-political processes and relationships. Indeed, getting politically dominant actors in the landscape to engage constructively in multi-stakeholder processes may be seen as critical to addressing urgent environmental threats, sometimes muting the politics. In many cases, landscape initiatives have emerged from a history of intense inter-stakeholder conflict around resources that have not been resolved. With all sides exhausted from and frustrated by those unsuccessful efforts, the parties are willing to commit to collaborative multi-stakeholder processes as an alternative.

Convergence to advance sub-national approaches to the SDGs

CIRAD has made it clear, with the production of the ‘Living Territories’ conference and the recent publication of Living Territories to Transform the World (Caron, et al 2017), that it is committed to an inclusive and collaborative definition of territorial development. The book is one of the most successful efforts I have seen to integrate landscape and territorial thinking. It is an academic treatment in the positive sense of the term, with deep reflection on the concepts and implications for theory of development, society and environment.

My fellow keynote speakers at Living Territories drew linkages across communities of practice in their work. Saskia Sassen of Columbia University asked us to re-think territorial development in an age when territorial boundaries and sovereign control are shifting. Bruno Horsch of CIRAD argued that changing patterns of globalization meant that conventional paradigms of economic development are unlikely to generate the growth and poverty reduction benefits hoped for–especially in Africa and other still-poor regions–and that territorial development strategies that invest in intra-territorial economic linkages may be a more realistic option. Martin Bwalya of NEPAD challenged us to clarify the problems our approaches are meant to resolve, rather than marketing new answers with different names, and called for more emphasis on effective implementation, no matter the name of the approach, in Africa. Julio Berdegue of FAO shared powerful data illustrating how most rural landscapes today are urban-rural mosaics, and thus integrated urban-rural strategies will be key to successful territorial development.

My own address highlighted the linkages between territorial development and integrated landscape management (along the lines of this article), and I was encouraged to hear that many leaders of the territorial development school of thought appreciate that EcoAgriculture Partners’ approach does seriously address socio-political issues (for instance, our recent work on participatory landscape governance assessment).

Yet there is much more we, and our partner organizations, could do to incorporate the political into our approaches. Deeper political analysis should play a part in the formation of integrated landscape initiatives and strategies, ultimately leading to improved socio-political action. This should be informed by the rich analyses being done around territorial development.
At the same time, despite common reference to environmental issues in the conference (and the book), missing from much of the territorial development discussion was a deep analysis of ecosystem processes or ecosystem degradation, their impacts on territorial development options and strategies, and implications for governance and social institutions. There is also much that the territorial development community could learn from integrated landscape management researchers and practitioners that would enrich their work.

It is imperative that we pursue convergence between the socio-political and socio-ecological perspectives, in our work in landscapes and in framing national policy. A first place to start is in the upcoming dialogue at the High Level Political Forum for the Sustainable Development Goals, as part of this year’s Forum will be on sub-national strategies to meet the SDGs. I have committed to work together on this with a group of champions of both integrated landscape management and territorial development, including the rural-urban linkages that underlie them. I encourage you to join us.