Indicators to assess viable entry points for implementing landscape approaches

Background

This paper addresses the difficulty of implementing integrated landscape approaches (ILAs) in practice in tropical regions where deforestation, biodiversity loss, poverty, and climate risks converge. Although ILA principles are widely cited, many conservation and development efforts still begin from narrow sectoral entry points such as agriculture, forestry, or certification, and rarely evolve into genuine integrated governance because concrete indicators for assessing their potential are lacking. This article focuses on rural tropical landscapes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, drawing on the Collaborating to Operationalise Landscape Approaches for Nature, Development and Sustainability (COLANDS) initiative, which seeks to close the gap between landscape governance theory and practice.

Goals and Methods

This study aims to develop a practical set of principles, criteria, and indicators (PCI) to evaluate whether existing landscape initiatives can serve as viable entry points for full ILAs. The authors conduct a systematic review of 31 peer-reviewed articles (2013-2024) from Web of Science and Scopus, focusing on tropical cases that discuss principles or constraints for landscape governance while excluding sector-specific PCI frameworks. They code and synthesize findings using an expanded version of Sayer et al.’s (2013) ten ILA principles, adding “good governance” and “financial capacity.”

Conclusions and Takeaways

This paper delivers a PCI framework featuring indicators, including inclusive stakeholder participation, bridging organizations, cross-scale coordination, clear tenure and benefit-sharing rules, multi-stakeholder platforms, participatory Theory of Change, and user-friendly monitoring systems. For practitioners, the PCI set offers a diagnostic tool to assess and strengthen ongoing initiatives so they can mature into integrated landscape approaches, facilitate fair negotiation of trade-offs, and better align local actions with national and global conservation and development goals. This paper stresses that good governance and sustained financing are essential enabling conditions, but that indicators must be adapted to local political and cultural contexts rather than applying uniform external standards.