Energy and Landscape

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Overview of Landscapes

• What is the Global Landscape Forum?

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) is a movement that puts communities first in addressing landscape-level issues, rooted in the framework of the Landscape Approach. Having connected 3,000 organizations and 25,000 people through summits in Warsaw, Lima, London, Paris, Marrakech and Jakarta, along with a further 32 million online, the GLF has become the world’s largest science-led platform on sustainable land use. 

With science and traditional knowledge at the core, GLF outreach, events and projects are designed not only to spark dialogue, but also follow-through to impact in addressing some of the most complex and multi-stakeholder problems facing our earth and our communities.

Recognizing the multitude of diverse objecties found in landscapes - food, livelihoods, health, energy, biodiversity, business development, trade, climate regulation and water - and the need for holistic approaches, the GLF is founded on four principles, aiming to engage 1 billion people: connecting, sharing, learning and acting.  

• The Landscape Approach
  

Energy Technologies and Landscapes

Energy production and consumption are key aspects of a landscape and an essential component of the balance between human prosperity and environmental conservation.  Managed effectively, and supported by an inclusive and empirical dialogue, energy production can alleviate poverty and achieve other socio-economic goals without impacting the environment.  Mismanaged, however, energy can permanently degrade landscapes.

A comparison between the two largest hydroelectric powerstations in the world (which are also the largest powerstations of any kind in the world), the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Itaipu Dam in Brazil/Paraguay, is instructive.  The Three Gorges Dam has been widely criticised for the human and environmental consequences of its construction, which include significant landslides and the displacement of over 1.3 million people, with that number increasing as degradation continues. The Itaipu Dam, however, integrated a plan to create a buffer around the edge of the reservoir, reducing erosion and encouragin water to filter through the soil naturally.  Although farmers have migrated to the area to benefit from new, irrigated territories, a reforestation project has also been delivered to revive and maintain ecosystems. The measures taken to mitigate the negative effects of the Itaipu Dam, which are typical of hyroelectric power generation, are an example of the Landscape Approach in action:  a broad range of multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder initiatives based on an explicit acknowledge of social, economic and environmental concerns.  

Financing and Business Models of Landscapes

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The Landscape Approach seeks to recognise the economic factors that influence land use and reconcile these with land rights, community requirements and conservation in a way that is beneficial to all and, in the case of private enterprise, amenable to investment and conducive of growth.  The overlap is often encapsulated in the thesis of sustainability, which forsees that exploitative, unregulated land use and resource extraction will eventually destroy the capacity of the landscape to support these activities and the livelihoods that depend on them.  For example, in Ethiopia, the forestry sector is a vital job-producing part of the economy in a country with chronic underemployment.  However, the government has aimed to combine the long-term future of the industry with a commitment to reforestation and afforestation; these conservtion aims are treated as worthy aims in themselves, but also safeguard the capacity of forests to provide lumber into the future (Jobs might grow on trees in Ethiopia).  Mutually beneficial strategies have paved the way for a wider movement of divestment from unsustainable resource extraction.  (Q&A: Divestment from fossil fuels points to shift towards sustainable finance)

Monitoring & Evaluation of Landscapes

Part of the broader context of Landscape approaches, and the rise of such organisations as the Global Landscapes Forum, has been a new intensity of scientific research, knowledge sharing and standards of oversight, scrutiny and publicly-available information.  This revolution has sought to overcome one of the central problems recognised by the landscape approach:  a criticial dearth of communication between sectors, particualrly in reference to monitoring and evaluation.  In the absence of such practices, it has proven impossible to fully understand the impact of potentially destructive activities and equally difficult to see tehs cope for mutually beneficial policies (Understanding impacts of mining).  With a new dawn of consultation and transparency, different parts of the landscape have been able to come togther to deliver sustainable solutions (Success Factors for sustainable bio energy).  

Policy Framework

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Policy, if sufficently inclusive, consultative and consistent, can become the keystone of integrated and holistic landscape governance.  Overcoming silos, even those that exist in policy circles, is an essential step in reconciling the needs, rights and aspirations of different sectors and communities.  For government, this may involve more regulatory intervention or, in other cases, a willingness to let issues find resolution in local contexts freed of overbearing administration.  (Sustainable forest management)

Climate Change and Landscapes

The issue of climate change sits at the heart of the concerns about sustainability and mututal benefit that govern thinking about landscapes.  It embodies the issue of making a future habitable for all, including those with the most to gain in the short term from the unsustainable exploitation of landscapes for whatever reason.  As an issue rooted in a time-consistency problem, it is for all concerned parties to exorcise short-termism under the umbrella of scientific rigor. (More than “nice to have” – the real value of tropical forests)

Further Information

• Global Landscapes Forum
• Landscape Forum