AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT 88433 N O T E S ISSUE 12 JUNE 2014 Moving Toward a Sustainable Landscape Approach to Development BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE FOR A Erick C.M. Fernandes SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE APPROACH Increasing food and nutrition insecurity and increasing poverty in the face of a rapidly changing climate and a degrading natural capital base are daunting challenges for agriculture, livestock, forests, and fisheries. To address these challenges, the World Bank’s client countries are increasingly seeking support to move toward a more The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation proj- ect in China is an example of an integrated landscape approach. Centuries of overuse and overgrazing in the Plateau led to one of the highest erosion rates in the world and widespread poverty. The project set out to return this poor part of China to an area of sus- tainable agricultural production. Through the project, more than 2.5 million people were lifted out of pov- erty. Agricultural production improved from generat- Rehabilitated landscapte in the Loess Plateau. ing a narrow range of food and low-value grain com- modities to high-value products with per capita grain integrated approach to managing competing demands output increasing from 365 kg to 591 kg per year. for land, water and other natural resources. This comes out Project households’ incomes more than doubled from of simple recognition that it is the most efficient thing to about US$70 per year per person to about US$200 do given the complex interlinkages among the different through agricultural productivity enhancement and components of natural capital and, most importantly, it is diversification. The employment rate increased from essential for the communities that live in a reality in which 70 percent to 87 percent, and employment opportu- all is connected: that is, in the landscape. nities for women increased significantly. The project also encouraged natural regeneration of grasslands, Traditional development approaches have typically tree, and shrub cover on previously cultivated slope- focused on one sector and/or one resource decision maker lands—replanting and grazing control allowed the at a time, and also tended to consider short timeframes. perennial vegetation cover to increase from 17 to 34 This individualistic approach in terms of decision making percent. Flow of sediment from the Plateau into the has struggled to produce lasting results. Even recent policy Yellow River has been reduced by more than 100 innovations such as REDD, CSA, and PES do not go far million tons each year, while better sediment control enough in their cross-sectoral and multiple decision-maker has also reduced the risks of flooding. The project’s outreach. Problem diagnosis, assessment of resource use principles have been adopted and replicated widely, alternatives, intervention implementation, and tracking and it is estimated that over 20 million people have results are all improved when conducted at spatial and benefited from the replication of the landscape temporal scales that capture the sector and stakeholder approach throughout China. Some associated interconnectedness. television documentaries produced on the project’s integrated approach illustrate its impacts. Landscape approaches all help to promote sustainable intensification of food production. When agriculture is viewed in relation to the other land uses within the broader and Latin American countries. Another approach is Community landscape, the need for more “crop per drop” or crop per acre of Driven Development which gives control over planning and land becomes apparent. It thus creates demand for production decision making for investments to local communities of a systems that target sustainable intensification. Taking a landscape particular area. The concept of “ecosystem approach” has been view on productive activities can also lead to better risk developed in order to mainstream biodiversity into productive management. Opportunities for income diversification and risk landscapes. pooling between the different stakeholders will become more visible and thus more feasible. While each of these concepts puts some emphasis on a particular element of natural capital or on the governance of natural DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE resources at the community (or larger) level, a full-fledged APPROACH landscape approach will consider both natural resources and communities. Protecting natural resources can only be successful The term “sustainable landscape approach” is defined here in if it provides tangible benefits to the individual households and terms of taking a spatial, ecological, and socio-economic approach communities through enhanced agricultural productivity, food to managing land, water, and forest resources, and forms the security, and income while sustaining and improving the natural foundation—the natural capital—for meeting countries’ goals of capital base of the landscape. This in turn implies the possibility of food security and inclusive green growth. A landscape approach operationalizing income transfers among different agents already describes interventions at spatial scales that attempt to optimize operating in the landscape, as those who have a negative impact the spatial relations and interactions among a range of land cover on others’ activities would, in effect, now need to pay for it. types, institutions, and human activities in an area of interest. A sustainable landscape approach also has a time dimension: it aims A landscape approach should not be limited to optimizing the at reaching sustainable landscapes in the long term, and through interactions only within the geographical zone of interest. Many inclusive stakeholder consultations, maintaining and enhancing important drivers that influence activities within the landscape are them and the services they provide. Hence, a sustainable found outside the landscape (for example, land tenure, price of landscape approach is a dynamic process. agricultural and energy products, energy subsidies, water pricing, subsidies for adoption of green technologies, trade agreements, The sustainable landscape approach builds on a wealth of and consumer demand); thus a broader approach is needed. accumulated experience. Approaches similar in many respects to a strong sustainable landscape approach have been developed over Developing a sustainable landscape approach revolves around the past decades; integrated watershed management projects three dimensions: (i) horizontal—spatially optimizing across have been implemented in many developing countries. Similarly different decision makers the management of various activities “territorial approaches” have been developed in some West African that depend on natural capital: agriculture, livestock, forests, and Rangeland Remote fisheries to ensure that synergies among them are sensing systems captured and tradeoffs minimized across space; Physical (ii) vertical—taking into account the external monitoring systems drivers (higher-level institutions, policies, political Original forest ecosystem economy constraints, markets, climate, and Traditional communities technology) that continuously shape the diverse Commercial forestry activities within the landscape and might alter the relationships among them, but also provide Conveyance Farmer receives opportunities; and (iii) time—ensuring that SMS messages dynamic sustainability is achieved through built-in, Research station Tea plantation inclusive, well-informed decision-making processes that will respond quickly to internal and external Conservation Private and public changes to the landscape. tillage and advisory services intercropping Skilled employees Most importantly, a “climate-smart” lens needs to Pump be systematically applied to projects/strategies/ Carbon credits policies related to landscapes, meaning, to what Planned reserves Drip irrigation extent can the contemplated intervention achieve Water monitors the triple win of enhanced productivity, increased Source: WDR team. Source: World Development Report 2010 (Climate Change and Development). 2 resilience/adaptation, and reduced GHG emissions? This is achieved through climate-smart practices at the field and farm Landscape approaches in large watersheds may have a differ- scale, diversification of land use across the landscape to provide ent emphasis in the “upper” and “lower” river basin. In Kazakh- resilience, and management of land use interactions at landscape stan the Syr Darya/Northern Aral Sea Control program has scale to minimize trade-offs and achieve positive social, economic, supported a range of measures to restore natural flooding and ecological impacts. regimes and improve land and water management. The results have included restoration of grazing lands, improved While many of the practices that are considered to be essential to reliability of irrigation and drinking water, wetland ecosys- achieving the triple win are not new, power and positive outcomes tems restoration, and recovery of the Northern Aral Sea (with will flow from embracing practices that jointly incorporate the partial recovery of its fisheries). Further up the watershed in three goals. As is known, and being increasingly seen, interventions the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan the focus is on improved solely targeted at delivering productivity gains do so at high risk groundwater and irrigation management, while in the hilly if they are not applying practices to increase the resilience and areas of Tajikistan the focus is on community watershed adaptive capacity to climate change—their sustainability in a +2°C, management, which includes water harvesting and erosion let alone +4°C, world would be fragile at best. Equally, reducing control measures. emissions from more efficient fertilizer use not only provides public goods, but also makes sense for the farmer from an economic A landscape approach looks very different depending on regional perspective—a situation where both public and private goods and country circumstances. For Latin America countries, one of come together. The use of plants with deeper, more extensive the biggest challenges is tackling the drivers of deforestation. For root systems not only helps farmers manage climate risks, but Middle East and North America, optimizing the management of also results in storing more carbon in the soil than previously. water resources to ensure food security is likely to be at the top Harvesting and storing water enables farmers to become more of their agenda. While for Africa, addressing land degradation to resilient to periods of insufficient and/or unpredictable rainfall, but sustain food production is essential. also saves energy that would otherwise be required to pump water from either above or below ground. HOW DO WE GET THERE? Good governance is also crucial to the effectiveness of a landscape To be effective, it is necessary to move toward a jointly agreed approach. This poses additional challenges in terms of how development agenda by all the stakeholders in a landscape— governance across multiple sectors—particularly land, water, and public, private, and civil society. As landscapes often involve forests—and across different decision makers, can be mediated. waterways, protected areas, farm land, and forests, as well as human-made infrastructures for transport and industry, there will be a need to embrace the expertise and experience from In Rwanda, agriculture is challenged by uneven rainfall, different ministries and institutions to strive for synergies and production variability, small land holdings, limited commer- effective coordination. Local governments (district and municipal) cialization, and land constraint due to population growth. The are likely to play an increasingly important role in planning Land Husbandry, Water Harvesting and Hillside Irriga- and implementing landscape approaches. The challenge of tion project addresses these challenges through a landscape implementing a landscape approach depends crucially on the approach by providing infrastructure for land husbandry (for existence of institutions that are able to both move across sectoral example, terracing and downstream reservoir protection), boundaries and to influence different segments of the local water harvesting (valley dams and reservoirs), and hillside population. irrigation (water distributions piping, fittings and field applica- tion for basin and furrow irrigation). In addition, the project A landscape approach can be seen as a mixture of art and science, provides training for farmers, supports farmer organizations, with some generic constants. First, there is the need to define the and enhances marketing and financing activities. As a result, boundaries of the landscape, considering the strength of inter- the productivity in rain-fed areas has tripled; small farmers linkages between land uses and livelihoods in the geographical now have access to improved farming methods, more land area of interest, and also the existence of relevant institutions to is protected against soil erosion, and the share of commer- deal with problems at the scale being considered. Second, define cialized agricultural products has increased. At the national a long-term, shared vision for the landscape through an inclusive level, Government adopted a program for “border-to-border” and participatory process. Third, set specific goals and expected landscape restoration, and intends to adopt an ecosystems outcomes for the short- and medium-term that are linked to this approach for implementation. vision. Fourth, devise an inclusive monitoring and evaluation 3 are mobilized to make transformational changes in the ways The Karnataka Watershed Development project—also landscapes are used. known as Sujala—increased the availability of water in seven drought-prone districts of northern Karnataka. The Landscapes are also influenced by the larger institutional and project pioneered a holistic approach, based on participato- regulatory environment. Two ingredients are key in this respect: ry watershed planning that involved both communities and (i) secure land tenure and water rights and rights to use and technical teams, and was facilitated by a highly qualified access trees and forests provide strong incentives for individual NGO. The resulting Sujala Watershed Action Plans reflected farmers, households, and communities to invest in improved a shared vision by all stakeholders and guided subsequent land and water management and to protect natural pastures, soil and water conservation investments. Treatments on the trees, and forests; and similarly; (ii) appropriate pricing regimes upper and lower reaches of watersheds helped raise water and regulatory frameworks encourage sustainable use of scarce tables, brought degraded lands under cultivation, enabled resources. farmers to diversify into higher value crops and horticulture, One critical element for building trust is to have all the and raised agricultural productivity. State of the art remote stakeholders speak from the same, jointly agreed, evidence sensing and GIS were used to help monitor project perfor- base. This evidence can be derived from both formal and mance and impacts. The project also integrated a livelihood local knowledge. It can also use technological advances in component to improve equity between landed farmers, the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to integrate satellite landless, and women. Household incomes increased signifi- imagery with other data (for example, socioeconomic data cantly, especially among poorer groups in the communities. including population density, road infrastructure, administrative boundaries, and service availability) to open new ways to framework of landscape interventions to ensure that the synthesize complex and diverse geographic data sets. Finally, implementation of the vision is on the right track, and to allow there should be open access to this data, and enhanced periodic adaptation of the trajectory to changing conditions communication, via ICTs where feasible, to help all stakeholders within or outside the landscape. participate in the process and to enable open discussion and Building trust among all stakeholders is key to a successful innovation. landscape approach, which calls for open and transparent In conclusion, the landscape approach is a social process processes. In the World Bank’s work it has been found essential operating in a larger political economy that continuously that: (i) all the stakeholders are given a space to voice their views makes choices on the protection, use, and development of its and desires for developing the landscape; (ii) a framework is natural capital. In such dynamic contexts, continuous learning developed to enable negotiations between stakeholders who and robust decision making through iterative stakeholder have different views on desirable landscape-scale outcomes; consultations and appraisals of available strategies lead the (iii) a multidisciplinary team is needed to tackle complex, way toward dynamically sustainable landscapes and thriving inter-sectoral landscape-scale problems; and (iv) investments communities. Sujala Watershed Project, Karnataka. This Note was written by David Tréguer (AES) and Eija Pehu (AES). The comments and input received from the following colleagues are gratefully acknowledged: Mateo Albala (AES), Ellysar Baroudy (CPFCF), Ademola Braimoh (AES), Jacob Burke (TWIWA), Christopher Delgado (AES), Peter Dewees (AES), Ijeoma Emenanjo (AES), Habiba Gitay (CPF), Valerie Hickey (AES), Stig Johansson (AES), Nalin Kishor (AES), Holger Kray (LCSAR), Flore Martinant de Préneuf (AES), Elisabeth Mealey (AES), Grant Milne (SASDA), Gayane Minasyan (EASER), Jorge Muñoz (AES), Christian Peter (LCSEN), Maurice Saade (MNSAR), and Marco Van der Linden (CPFCF). 1818 H Street. NW Washington, DC 20433 www.worldbank.org/rural