Abstract
Scholars, planners and practitioners worldwide are increasingly recognising that landscape governance is a promising approach for restoring forested landscapes and simultaneously achieving ecological, economic and social objectives. Because of its integrative nature, landscape governance involves actors who restore landscapes while operating in different economic and policy sectors and at various scales. Consequently, the governance of landscape restoration is typically associated with multi-stakeholder dialogue and negotiation on the different types and forms of restoration, and what these mean in terms of necessary trade-offs. In this article we consider landscape governance to be an indispensable element of landscape restoration that deserves specific attention in the restoration debate. Despite the growing body of literature on the challenges faced in landscape restoration, literature on the role of landscape governance in overcoming these challenges is scarce. Scholars often refer to the importance of the capabilities of the landscape actors involved, but without specifying the capabilities required, which actors require them and why. This article aims to fill this knowledge gap by analysing landscape restoration from a governance perspective, focusing on the key challenges faced by landscape governance and the key capabilities required by landscape actors to overcome them. To define landscape governance capabilities, and to identify their dimensions and categorisations, we consult the literature on landscape governance and on capability. We complement this literature review with our empirical data on the landscape governance capabilities as perceived by landscape professionals engaged in landscape restoration projects and programmes. Based on both, we develop an analytical framework that specifies some of the typical capabilities required for addressing the challenges faced by landscape governance aiming to achieve well-balanced and long-lasting landscape restoration legitimately. The framework not only helps fill a knowledge gap but can also be used to structure the debate on landscape restoration by elucidating landscape governance in various contexts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 104020 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
| Journal | Land Use Policy |
| Volume | 104 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This article could not have been written without the collaboration of our colleagues from CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research, Horn of African Environmental Network, ICIMOD International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Pacto Mata Atl?ntica, Tropenbos International, Forest Foundation Philippines and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, who (co-)organised the workshops. We thank the Global Landscapes Forum for giving us the time and space to present and discuss our findings. We thank all those landscape professionals who participated in our surveys. And we thank Dr Joy Burrough for professionally language-editing the near-final draft of our paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019
Funding
This article could not have been written without the collaboration of our colleagues from CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research, Horn of African Environmental Network, ICIMOD International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Pacto Mata Atlântica, Tropenbos International, Forest Foundation Philippines and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, who (co-)organised the workshops. We thank the Global Landscapes Forum for giving us the time and space to present and discuss our findings. We thank all those landscape professionals who participated in our surveys. And we thank Dr Joy Burrough for professionally language-editing the near-final draft of our paper.
Keywords
- Balanced outcomes
- Capabilities
- Challenges
- Governance
- Landscape
- Legitimacy
- Restoration