A New Approach to Investments for Sustainable Landscapes
To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), additional investment in the management of key natural resources will be required. To achieve these multiple outcomes, new investment models are needed that encourage collaboration among diverse stakeholders that compete for the various natural resources within a landscape.
Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) has arisen as a response to identify creative strategies for addressing trade-offs and synergies among stakeholder groups. In order for ILM to be successfully implemented, investments in both the institutional foundation and in tangible assets must be made available.
Social and Financial Motivations
Climate change, drought, and increasing demand for food and natural resources are making access to energy and raw materials more costly for land-based enterprises, from small farmers to large agribusiness. In many cases, these risks cannot be mitigated solely through on-farm management or supply chain programs and must be dealt with at the landscape scale. This means that a single private sector investor cannot mitigate those risks alone.
Towards a Strategy for Financing Integrated Landscape Investment
Escaping the conventional, sectoral approach to development is a difficult task, but a necessary step to ensure a sustainable future. This brief discusses the key challenges for financing integrated landscape investments, and recommendations for financiers and investors to advance investment and finance in ILM.
This figure illustrates how a strategy for financing integrated landscape investment might look. It includes the roles of financiers, a landscape investment facilitator, a multistakeholder platform, a landscape investment fund as well as potential asset and enabling investments.
