Today, sectors such as agriculture and forestry are a leading driver of greenhouse gas emissions and degradation around the world. To accommodate the needs of growing populations, these sectors are facing increasing competition for land and resources. The Landscapes For Our Future programme aims to provide innovative solutions to such challenges by supporting 22 Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) projects across 19 countries and 3 sub-regions throughout the Global South.

The ILM approaches adopted by these 22 projects are showing great promise in helping manage competing land uses and reconcile fragmented public policies. ILM is integral to the European Union’s (EU) ambitious post-2020 biodiversity and food systems agendas and its commitment to the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, helping support an inclusive green recovery consistent with the EU Green Deal. Adoption of ILM approaches ensures the interests of all those who use the land, from farmers to herders to animals, tourists and conservationists are expressly accounted for. Each group benefits from land and its resources in unique ways, but their needs must be aligned and coordinated from the community to the national level. By facilitating dialogue, planning and implementation across sectors, scales and stakeholders, ILM approaches contribute to more effective management of the socio-environmental conflicts that threaten the resilience of vulnerable ecosystems and peoples.

The Landscapes For Our Future programme will until 2025 help design and implement sustainability solutions to context-specific land-use challenges in each of the supported countries, focusing specifically on three thematic areas: (1) food and nutrition security, job creation and resilient and sustainable agriculture; (2) climate change mitigation and adaptation; and (3) biodiversity, land and forest ecosystems conservation, restoration and sustainable use.