The Land-Use Dialogue: A New Engagement Platform to Address Competing Stakeholder Interests in Implementing the Landscape Approach

The Land-Use Dialogue: A New Engagement Platform to Address Competing Stakeholder Interests in Implementing the Landscape Approach
World Forestry Congress XIV – Durban, South Africa
Thursday 10 September 2015 from 12:45 to 14:15

Background

Addressing the often-competing interests of different stakeholders in a landscape is now accepted as central to sustainable land management and key for broader economic and social development. For example, in the development of national REDD+ strategies the shift of focus from “projectised” to “jurisdictional” REDD+ has seen a focus on cross-sectoral approaches. The case for a ‘landscape approach’, and for the principles that should underpin it, have been strongly made and widely accepted, but despite the renewed emphasis on a landscape approach, there are few examples of successful implementation. Indeed, knowledge and processes for implementing a landscape approach, including those for addressing and reconciling competing interests, are less well-developed than landscape concepts and principles themselves. Attention is now turning to addressing this implementation gap.

Some organizations have developed and refined landscape approaches in many countries and contexts. These experiences have confirmed that land use and management strategies are more likely to be effective and resilient where they are developed collaboratively across sectors and with local stakeholders. Examples that illustrate the landscape approach include:

  • IUCN’s SUSTAIN initiative, launched in Tanzania in 2014, supports sustainability and social inclusion through forming landscape level growth corridors built on partnerships for implementation among government, business and community stakeholders at all levels.
  • The Brazilian Forest Dialogue’s approach to facilitating dialogue among diverse actors in Santa Catarina state since 2008 has coordinated a successful mosaic approach to preserving prioritized conservation areas of the highly endangered Atlantic Forest biome.

The co-sponsors of this event, TFD, IUCN, and WBCSD are in the midst of launching a series of dialogues that will convene stakeholders from across the forest sector to address these issues.

Event Description

The Forests Dialogue (TFD), a multi-stakeholder driven engagement initiative, has been working since 2000 on reconciling competing interests over forest-related issues. In this conference event, TFD  will highlight the framework and objectives of the Land-Use Dialogue, an Initiative that is developing tools and approaches to help bridge this implementation gap by applying the landscape approach through initiatives in pilot sites in critical landscapes. The event will begin with a presentation by The Forests Dialogue describing its unique multi-stakeholder dialogue process and introducing its Land-Use Dialogue Initiative. This will be followed by a presentation by panelists on the Land Use-Pilot Dialogue to take place in Brazil, setting the stage for a discussion of how to implement the landscape approach. The four panel participants will include a representative from each of the following groups within the pilot site context:  producer company, consumer goods company, and NGO/community.  After this preliminary discussion, there will be a question and answer session with the side event participants.  At the end of the event, each panelist will give a short concluding thought.

Objectives

  • To demonstrate how TFD’s dialogue process can be adapted to long-term multi-stakeholder discussions on land-use planning
  • To illustrate how ‘landscape approaches’ have been implemented in the past and what kind of learnings from these early examples could be useful to the Brazilian pilot site
  • To explore how a ‘landscape-approach’ could be implemented in the pilot site in Brazil and what the goals and outcomes of such a dialogue could be

Location

Room 11A

Format

12:45 – 13:10 - Introductory Presentation – Gary Dunning, TFD
13:10 – 13:30 - Panel Discussion. Moderator: Chris Buss, IUCN.
Participants: Carlos Alberto Roxo (Fibria), Ivone Satsuki Namikawa (Klabin), Uta Jungermann (WBCSD)
13:30 – 14:10 – Discussion between participants and panelists
14:10 – 14:15 – Concluding remarks by panelists

Moderator
Chris Buss - Deputy Director, Forest Conservation Program, IUCN

Speakers
Gary Dunning - Executive Director, The Forests Dialogue
Uta Jungermann – Manager, Forest Solutions Group, WBCSD
Ivone Satsuki Namikawa - Forest Sustainability - Klabin
Carlos Alberto Roxo - Member of the Board’ Sustainability Committee, Fibria
 

Event Sponsors

The Forests Dialogue - The Forests Dialogue (TFD) was created in 1998 to provide international leaders in the forest sector with an ongoing, multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD) platform and process focused on developing mutual trust, a shared understanding, and collaborative solutions to challenges in achieving sustainable forest management and forest conservation around the world

WBCSD – WBCSD’s Forest Solutions Group brings together about 35% of global forest, paper and packaging sales. It is a global platform for strategic collaboration among value chain partners to bring more of the world’s forests under sustainable management and expand markets for responsible forest products.

IUCN – Working with communities, government agencies, NGOs and businesses, IUCN’s Forest Conservation Programme supports the development of locally-driven, sustainable measures that will improve forest management.

IUCN learns from experience about how to negotiate a balance between human and environmental needs and these lessons are being fed into national and international policy. One of its key initiatives is Livelihoods and Landscapes through which dozens of projects are underway across Africa, Asia and South America. Lessons from Livelihoods and Landscapes are feeding into the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration, of which IUCN is a key partner.