title: Ten principles for a landscape approach to reconciling agriculture, conservation, and other competing land uses.
abstract: "Landscape approaches" seek to provide tools and concepts for allocating and managing land to achieve social, economic, and environmental objectives in areas where agriculture, mining, and other productive land uses compete with environmental and biodiversity goals. Here we synthesize the current consensus on landscape approaches. This is based on published literature and a consensus-building process to define good practice and is validated by a survey of practitioners. We find the landscape approach has been refined in response to increasing societal concerns about environment and development tradeoffs. Notably, there has been a shift from conservation-orientated perspectives toward increasing integration of poverty alleviation goals. We provide 10 summary principles to support implementation of a landscape approach as it is currently interpreted. These principles emphasize adaptive management, stakeholder involvement, and multiple objectives. Various constraints are recognized, with institutional and governance concerns identified as the most severe obstacles to implementation. We discuss how these principles differ from more traditional sectoral and project-based approaches. Although no panacea, we see few alternatives that are likely to address landscape challenges more effectively than an approach circumscribed by the principles outlined here.
authors.affiliation: Center for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia. jeffrey.sayer@jcu.edu.au
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sayer
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sunderland
authors.forename: Jaboury
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ghazoul
authors.forename: Jean-Laurent
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Pfund
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sheil
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Meijaard
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Venter
authors.forename: Agni Klintuni
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Boedhihartono
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Day
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.forename: Cora
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: van Oosten
authors.forename: Louise E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Buck
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development*
keywords: Convention on Biological Diversity; agriculture environment trade offs; food security; integrated development approaches; social ecological systems