CHAPTER SEVEN

Landscape Governance

Engaging Stakeholders to Confront Climate Change

Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Wei Zhang, Hagar ElDidi, and Pratiti Priyadarshini

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Landscape governance engages stakeholders for integrated management of natural resources to address climate change

Confronting climate change requires governance at the landscape level where actions are taken that support natural resource management for adaptation and mitigation. Landscape-level governance can foster a shared vision and coordinated actions among people with diverse livelihoods, resource uses, and interests.
Integrated, landscape-level coordination and incentive structures must actively involve multiple communities, government, and the private sector. Different geographic and time scales require different formal and informal institutions for governance — from local user groups to state institutions to nationally determined property rights.
Integrated landscape approaches are still being developed, with much to be learned. Treating these pilots as “learning labs” can help to build knowledge quickly.
Human and social capital, such as leadership and trust, are important assets for landscape management that should be fostered to increase stakeholder engagement. Addressing power inequities among landscape-level stakeholders is essential for knowledge-sharing, cooperation, and participation.

Multistakeholder platforms (MSPs) can facilitate coordination and engagement in knowledge exchange and decision-making for landscape governance.

Policy priorities should include:

Develop MSPs to build collective action on climate change. Effective MSPs require investment of time and resources to build a shared vision among actors, as well as to strengthen community and government capacity for cooperative landscape management.
Strengthen resource rights to support long-term investments. Tenure security, including both individual rights and collective rights over shared resources such as forests and irrigation systems, is essential to create incentives for long-term investments.
Devolve resource rights and management responsibilities. Shifting rights and responsibilities to communities can promote locally appropriate actions on climate change and encourage governments to collaborate across sectoral divisions and with communities and the private sector to help address climate change and other goals.

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