Landscape approach initiatives and traditional village systems: learning for sustainable use of natural resources

Per Angelstam, Robert Axelsson, Marine Elbakidze, Monica Castro-Larrañaga, Karl-Erik Johansson, Ngolia Kimanzu, Shyamala Mani, Andrzej Szujecki, Johan Törnblom

Management

ABSTRACT: Sustainable Development (SD) and sustainability imply a major turning point for the formulation of global, national andbusiness policies on the governance and management of natural resources and landscape values. Even if SD and sustainability has manyinterpretations, it is ultimately about satisfying ecological, economic and socio-cultural dimensions, and how they can be balanced byadaptive governance at multiple levels. To realize the vision of SD as a process and sustainability as a goal in actual landscapes, a numberof concepts have been developed with the aim to create local governance arrangements where landscapes’ actors and stakeholders canmeet, cooperate, produce and apply new knowledge for sustainable use of natural resources. The term ‘landscape approach’ captures this.We review the contents of four international, four African, four European and four Indian concepts designed to implement SD andsustainability policies on the ground. We make two conclusions. First, even if the starting points in terms of different dimensions of SD ofactual landscapes as integrated social-ecological systems were different, the evolution of different local initiatives and different concepts hasbeen similar in terms of balancing different dimensions of sustainability. However, the level of collaboration among actors and stakeholder insocial-ecological systems differ, and often sustainability outcomes are not evaluated. Second, we argue that new and emerging conceptshave much to learn from regionally adapted traditional village systems with governance systems that have evolved over long time before theSD discourse appeared. Finally, we stress the need to learn about the experiences from implementation of different landscape approachconcepts by empirical applied interdisciplinary knowledge production using multiple case studies in real landscapes as social-ecologicalsystems. Landscape approach initiatives located in large regions with differences in economic history and local governance arrangements,such as in Africa and the European and Indian subcontinents, are particularly interesting.

***DISCUSSION: The presentation was followed by a discussion on how to actually go about merging different disciplines and competences atthe landscape level in one research project. This particular initiative has strived for: 1) building partnerships with different forest users suchas the church, forest companies and municipalities, who have all realised that collaboration is necessary, and 2) formulating an agendabased on different actors’ interests, rather than focusing on fixed targets and projects.

Outline

• Research: need for knowledge production and learning

• Landscape approaches– Need to diagnose/evaluate concepts, application

initiatives, and outcomes on the ground• Traditional Village System• Prescribe change to efforts which are:

– Long-term, collaborative, on-the-gound, integrative, imply more work together, provide learning opportunity

Managers’ reality is not disciplinary

• Natural sciences– Goods– Species, habitats and ecosystem processes

• Human sciences– Humanities (cultural values and context)– Social sciences (understanding decision-makers life

world, planning processes, governance etc.)• Tools and engineering

– “Hardware” – management of natural resources– “Software” – learning and governance

Knowledge production

• To produce the needed knowledge+• To communicate the knowledge to the

people that need it = • Social learning processes

(Gibbons et al. 1993, 1999)

“The path forward liesin shifting to an integrated landscape

approach, working with partners outside the sector to develop

sustainable multi-sector responses.”

XIII World Forestry Congress 2009, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Forest Development: A Vital Balance, Findings and Strategic Actions.

Landscape approach as a tool• Focus on a concrete area (= landscape)

– 10,000 to 1,000,000 ha• Collaboration (sustainable development process)

– Private, public and civil sector• Commitment to sustainability (tangible and intangible

benefits)– Criteria & Indicators & Norms

• Production of new knowledge and tools– Quality assurance by external peer-review

• Sharing of knowledge and experiences– Education, communication and public awareness

Different kinds of research

(Tress, Tress and Fry 2006)

Economic andenvironmental

historyGeography

Finding scientific common ground?

Space

Conservation biologyEcology

Policy

Social sciences

Policy

Management in actual landscape

”Policy cycle”

Assessment Governance

Policy

Management in actual landscape

”Policy cycle”

Assessment Governance

(Michael Grodzinski 2005)

Step 1: To identify a case studylandscape

Step 2: To study the environmental and economichistory

Step 3: To map actors, stakeholders,products and land use

Step 4:To analyse policies andthe system of governance

Step 5:To measure the ecological, economic and socio-cultural situation

Step 6: To assess sustainabilitydimensionsin the landscape

Step 7: Synthesis of empiricaldata and development of integrated tools for accounting and adaptive governance

Continuous communication

with societal actors at

multiple levels

Collaboration among academic

and non-academic actors

Diagnosing sustainability (outcome) + sustainable development (process)

1. Identify a case studylandscape

• Biophysical conditions (e.g., ecoregion)

• Economic history• System of

governance

2. Environmental history

• What happened?– Important phases

and consequences• Who did it?

– Actors• Why did it happen?

– Ideology, economy?

3. Map actors and their useof “products” and land use

• Land owners• Land users• Goods, services

and values• Management

systems• Related to land

cover and land cover change

4. Analyse policies andsystem of governance

• Multiple levels– Local to global

• Multiple sectors– Private, public, civic

• Level of co-operation– From information to

partnership

5. Measure ecological, economic and socio-cultural dimensions

• Choose indicators• Use indicators

– Statistics– Maps– GIS– Field work– Remote sensing– Interviews

6. Assess sustainability dimensionsin the landscape

• Reference conditions

• Ecological thresholds

• Compare state and trends of indicators with policies

7. Synthesis

• Comparative studies

• Education material• Communication• Learning processes

Sweden and Russia

The Habsburg EmpireKRAKOW

LJUBLJANA

Europe as a ”landscape laboratory”

Scaling up using multiple case studies

• Concepts aiming at landscape approach– Review of 16 concepts’ trajectories of development

• Initiatives’ profiles in actual landscapes– Comparison of Biosphere Reserve and Model Forest

globally (n=32+32)• Outcomes

– Governance of agriforestry developement in the Vi Forest Programme in East Africa

• Pattern• Process

16 concepts• Global

– Agenda 21, Biosphere Reserve, Model Forest, Ramsar

• African– Campfire, Vi Agroforestry, Land husbandry,

Community-based SFM• European

– Leader, Regional nature park, Promotional forest complex, Russian National Park

• Indian– Joint Forest Management, Panchyati Raj, Water

management, Participatory irrigation management

Economic

Ecological Social

Economic

Ecological Social

Biosphere Reserve (n=32) and Model Forest (n=32)

• ecological values

• culturalvalues

economical values •

• socialvalues

Biosphere Reserve

Model Forest

(Robert Axelsson, Per Angelstam ms.)

Vi Agroforestry Programme(Karl-Erik Johansson, Ngolia Kimanzu, Robert Axelsson, Per Angelstam ms.)

• Mara region in Tanzania from 1994• How are outcomes in terms of tree survival

linked to...• ...the governance arrangement (sector,

level, power)– 21 households per village– 102 villages– District, regional, national and international

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

1997* 1998* 1999* 2000** 2001***

No of new ≥1srv Hhs accumulated No of ≥1srv Hhs

Households with surviving trees

Variation in Agroforestry adoption

Inter-village variation in the proportion of households with 10 or more AF-trees

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101

villages

prop

ortio

n

47%

Governance arrangement is key (= sector + level + power)

Public Private Civil

Macro

Meso

Micro

Rostochya, Ukraine

Village structure...

settlementsout-field / forest

in-field / meadow

in-field / crops

...and social system

Traditional village system

SilvaSaltus

AgerHortus

Domus

Magnus JirströmLennart OlssonAgnes AnderssonThomas RosswallBernard VanlauweLennart Båge

SLU’s mission:

• Research• Education• Environmental assessment• Collaboration

• Need to improve integration CONSIDERABLE!

Obstacles to be overcome

• From disciplinary/silo to integrative –weaken department and faculty borders

• Collaborative work requires funding also for non-academic partipants

• On-the-gound vertical and horisontal integration among levels and sectors

• From short-term projects (3-4 yrs) to long-term learning (a decade) with bell-shaped funding

Read more• Axelsson, R. 2009. Landscape Approach for sustainable development. from

applied research to transdisciplinary knowledge production. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Sueciae 94.

• Elbakidze, M., Angelstam, P. 2007. Implementing sustainable forest management in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains: The role of traditional village systems. Forest Ecology and Management 249: 28–38.

• Elbakidze, M., Angelstam, P., Axelsson, R. 2007. Sustainable forest management as an approach to regional development in the Russian Federation: state and trends in Kovdozersky Model Forest in the Barents region. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 22: 568-581. .

• Lazdinis, M., Angelstam, P., Lazdinis, I. 2009. Governing forests of the European Union: institutional framework for interest representation at the European Community level. European Environment and Policy 19: 44-56.

• Duit, A., Hall, O., Mikusinski, G., Angelstam, P. 2009. Saving the woodpeckers: Social capital, governance, and policy performance. Journal of Environment and Development 18:42-61.

• Elbakidze, M., Angelstam, P. 2009. Cross-border cooperation along the eastern border of European Union: a review and approach to learning for sustainable landscapes. Central European Journal of Spatial and Landscape Planning 20(1):33-42.

• Elbakidze, M., Angelstam, P., Sandström, C., Axelsson, R. 2010. Multi-stakeholder collaboration in Russian and Swedish Model Forest initiatives: adaptive governance towards sustainable forest management? Ecology and Society 15(2): 14.