Land-use Decisions in Complex Commons: Engaging Multiple Stakeholders through Foresight and Scenario Building in Indonesia

In the midst of global change uncertainties, Indonesian spatial planning authorities are developing 20-year strategies. However, the lack of collaborative engagement of stakeholders and unclear methodology around using futures studies in addressing land management undermine such plans and affect environmental governance. A crucial question is how to link a future-oriented process with governance transformation processes, particularly related to land-use planning and management. To address this issue, we used a co-elaborative scenario-building approach, referred to as participatory prospective analysis (PPA), to facilitate the creation of local multistakeholder platforms considering future-oriented perspectives. The PPA design combines equally the knowledge of local communities, technical experts and decision-makers, and was applied in a series of sequential multistakeholder workshops in two regencies in Indonesia, followed by public consultations on the main results. In both regencies, participants agreed on a common topic related to spatial planning in their jurisdiction to be explored with a 20-year time horizon. They reached consensus on relevant variables, analyzed their dependence/influence, and developed several plausible yet contrasting scenarios for land management and road maps with guidelines for the implementation of desired outcomes. The PPA approach stimulated stakeholder engagement and ensured that more local voices were not only heard but also duly included in the process. It allowed participants to consider strategies that would otherwise have been less readily accepted by their respective organizations. It showed that it is possible to improve existing spatial planning processes in Indonesia by integrating tools for a more inclusive and long-term future-oriented collaborative approach.

More than a meeting? The potential and limitations of invited multi-stakeholder spaces in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon

In the Amazon, invited multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) have been organised by governments to engage civil society with policy and decision making. Given the unequal histories of access to resources in the region, in contexts where mainstream politics have failed to include local people and rights concerns in environmental decision-making, there is much optimism regarding the potential for collaboration in invited MSFs. Yet, questions remain on whether they are more than bureaucratic steps organised to legitimise pre-approved government decisions. The article presents comparative insight from interviews with 208 organisers, participants, and nonparticipant stakeholders to four invited MSFs that were legally required decision-making spaces for land and resource use planning in jurisdictions of the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon. Although the same type of forum was selected in each country, research revealed different processes and outcomes based on how organisers framed their challenges and solutions. This impacted who was invited to participate, and under what terms, including the knowledge they were able to bring to the process. Examining their processes, the article examines challenges in the conception and implementation of forums and the possibility of refocusing MSF activities to better support the inclusion of civil society perspectives in policy and decision making.

Integrating relational and instrumental values of nature in planning land use for multiple ecosystem services (LUMENS): tools and process

The recent reframing of global biodiversity policy from (unsuccessfully) dealing with ‘underlying causes’ to focusing on spatial allocations and planning implies renewed urgency of reconciling goal-oriented spatial planning of rights to use land and water with harmony-oriented ‘co-production’ by the relevant stakeholders. Current understanding of spatial and temporal variation in the balance between goal-oriented instrumental and harmony-oriented relational values of nature recognizes different decision-making styles. Taking Indonesia and Vietnam as examples, we explored how current tools and processes of land-use planning for multiple environmental services (LUMENS) deal with that balance, and what further steps may be needed to meet current expectations, across all sustainable development goals in a mega-diverse country with an export-oriented economy and its changing norms. So far, relational values are expressed primarily as stakeholder preferences through the ‘co-production’ process, consultations, and priority setting, while instrumental values and economic multipliers are formally presented.

Small scale agriculture continues to drive deforestation and degradation in fragmented forests in the Congo Basin (2015-2020)

The Central African region hosts the largest continuous tract of forest in Africa, regulating global climate while providing essential resources and livelihoods for millions of people and harbouring extensive biodiversity. Extractive industries, infrastructure development and industrial agriculture have often been cited as major threats to these forests and are expected to increase. A regional collaborative effort has produced the first systematically validated remote sensing assessment of deforestation and degradation drivers in six central African countries for the 2015–2020 time period. Multiple, overlapping drivers are assessed through visual interpretation and show that the rural complex, a combination of small-scale agriculture, villages, and roads contributes to the majority of observed deforestation and degradation. Industrial drivers such as mining and forestry are less common, although their impacts on carbon and biodiversity could be more permanent and significant than informal activities. Artisanal forestry is the only driver that is observed to be consistently increasing over the study period. Our assessment produces information relevant for climate change mitigation and land use planning which requires detailed information on multiple direct drivers to target specific activities and investments.

Politics and power in territorial planning: insights from two ‘Ecological-Economic Zoning’ multi-stakeholder processes in the Brazilian Amazon

The use of multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) in territorial planning has gained global popularity. These MSFs aim to bring diverse actors together to collaboratively and equitably develop a plan that assigns optimal land uses to a territory. However, as promoting particular land uses and benefits for some actors often comes at a cost to others, territorial planning MSFs may reproduce or even exacerbate, rather than mitigate, conflicts and asymmetries. We comparatively analyze collaboration, power relations and sustainability goals in the Ecological-Economic Zoning commissions of Acre and Mato Grosso, Brazil, which fall under the same federal mandate but operate in contrasting contexts. We show how territorial planning MSFs have better chances of meeting their goals when they are understood as political processes: in this case, when they emerge from and are nourished by powerful local social-environmental movements and alliances, rather than being technocratic initiatives opposed by powerful local production-business alliances.

Central Africa Humid Tropics Transect Sentinel Landscape (CAFHUT): A stocktaking pilot study [Revised Edition, May 2021]

Revised edition, May 2021. This publication is part of the Sentinel Landscape network initiative established in eight sites around the world representative of widely different biophysical and socioeconomic contexts. Here we present and summarize the results of the research and baseline studies carried out in the Central Africa Humid Tropics Transect sentinel landscape, four sites in Cameroon indicative of the African humid forest ecological zone.

Land-use Decisions in Complex Commons

In the midst of global change uncertainties, Indonesian spatial planning authorities are developing 20-year strategies. However, the lack of collaborative engagement of stakeholders and unclear methodology around using futures studies in addressing land management undermine such plans and affect environmental governance. A crucial question is how to link a future-oriented process with governance transformation processes, particularly related to land-use planning and management. To address this issue, we used a co-elaborative scenario-building approach, referred to as participatory prospective analysis (PPA), to facilitate the creation of local multistakeholder platforms considering future-oriented perspectives. The PPA design combines equally the knowledge of local communities, technical experts and decision-makers, and was applied in a series of sequential multistakeholder workshops in two regencies in Indonesia, followed by public consultations on the main results. In both regencies, participants agreed on a common topic related to spatial planning in their jurisdiction to be explored with a 20-year time horizon. They reached consensus on relevant variables, analyzed their dependence/influence, and developed several plausible yet contrasting scenarios for land management and road maps with guidelines for the implementation of desired outcomes. The PPA approach stimulated stakeholder engagement and ensured that more local voices were not only heard but also duly included in the process. It allowed participants to consider strategies that would otherwise have been less readily accepted by their respective organizations. It showed that it is possible to improve existing spatial planning processes in Indonesia by integrating tools for a more inclusive and long-term future-oriented collaborative approach.

Building a more sustainable landscape, Together

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is working together with public and private stakeholders in the Kwaebibirem-Atiwa landscape to co-design a Landscape Development Strategy that will support coordinated planning and action towards more sustainable and people-centred commodity production.

Spatial distribution and perceived drivers of provisioning service values across an East African montane forest landscape

Increasingly, resource managers and planners seek to manage forested landscapes for the value of the services they provide. This is especially true in the Mau Forest of Kenya, a montane area that harbors some of Kenya’s most important headwaters but has lost a quarter of its forest cover since 1999. While managing for the Mau Forest’s landscape services is a priority, it is critical to understand why and how people value these services differently. Otherwise, land management policies risk exacerbating rather than alleviating conservation and environmental justice problems. This is particularly true of provisioning services, a category of landscape services on which communities directly depend. This research combines participatory mapping and semi-structured interviews to understand how socio-cultural values of provisioning services are distributed across two sites within the Western Mau Forest and analyze linkages between mapped values, their locations, and influencing factors. In total, 55 informants were interviewed. Frequently listed provisioning services were water, firewood, cultivation, grazing, timber, and medicine. Results indicate that four main factors influence the location from where these services were derived: historical and legal arrangements, social relations, economic conditions, and biophysical conditions. How these factors influence where people value provisioning services differ based on the service and community in question. This study demonstrates that communities can use and value provisioning services differently and that the distributions of these services are influenced by the factors mentioned above. Understanding this heterogeneity can enable managers and policy makers to create local land use plans that account for spatially-explicit values.

Can multistakeholder forums empower indigenous and local communities and promote forest conservation? A comparative analysis of territorial planning in two Brazilian states with contrasting contexts

Multistakeholder forums (MSFs) are applied in territorial planning with the goal of bringing together diverse actors in decision‐making, allowing the participation and empowerment of indigenous and local communities, protecting their territories, and promoting community‐based conservation efforts. However, important questions remain. How are territorial planning MSFs shaped by context and power? Can they represent communities’ diversity, respect their ancestral rights, and bring real change? This article explores how context and power affect the capacities and challenges of territorial planning MSFs to include, represent, empower, and benefit communities. Examining actors’ perceptions, we comparatively analyze two cases, in two Brazilian states with contrasting contexts. We conclude that territorial planning MSFs are highly political spaces influenced by complexities in context, power relations, and communities’ diversity. They may include, represent, and empower communities and help recognize and conserve their territories, but not necessarily. Especially in difficult settings, communities face more challenges than other actors to be represented and participate at MSFs, and territorial planning may empower or “invisibilize” communities. Other mechanisms (e.g., social action) can be key for communities instead of, or in synergy with, MSFs.

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