A recent seminar has attempted to better understand the landscape approach and how it can be made to work for the benefit of people and the planet.

A post on the blog of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature initiative summarizes the Unraveling the landscape approach – are we on the right track? seminar held in Wageningen, the Netherlands on 17 September 2014.

Much of the discussion focused on the definition of a landscape and how it is perceived differently by different stakeholders, often depending on whether their motives are economic, cultural, social or ecological.

“The urgency of managing landscapes sustainably and equitably is growing, and this urgency is increasingly felt by policy makers, companies, and civil society,” says the article.

Meine van Noordwijk, Chief Science Advisor with the World Agroforestry Centre, spoke about how forests and farms occur as mosaics, so we must acknowledge this in our policies and practices.

Participants at the seminar agreed on the need to break out of narrow sectoral approaches; consider the multiple functions of landscapes; engage local land users in identifying problems, making decisions, following up and monitoring; and that scale must be considered - from households to the national and even global level - each in its own merit.

The absence of a clear understanding on how to measure success in landscape approaches was acknowledged by participations. It was suggested that lessons could be learnt from looking back to a wealth of past landscape-level projects that provide a rich source for evaluating what went right, what went wrong and what should be done better.

“We should not shy away from radical action,” says the article, calling for the principles that underlie the landscape approach to be operationalized and efforts to be scaled up.

Read the full story: Unraveling the ‘Landscape Approach’—Are We on the Right Track?