Dominique le RouxWe, as the Central Component, talk a lot about “co-learning” and “co-creation”. From the start, our intention has been to arrive in landscapes not as experts with answers, but as partners with questions – listening first, and learning alongside communities, institutions, and practitioners.
As the Landscapes For Our Future programme draws to a close, we’ve been turning that lens inward and reflecting on our own insights about Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) – the things that only became clear through practice. Not the concepts we might have confidently shared at inception, but the penny-drop moments that emerged through real-world engagement across continents: from Bolivia to Burkina Faso, Cambodia to the Caribbean, Laos to Zimbabwe…
What strikes me about their reflections is how consistent they are. Again and again, my scientist colleagues point to the same underlying truth: that transformation is not driven by tools, detailed frameworks, or perfect project design. Instead, they highlight that progress hinges on trust, relationships, leadership, and process. Technical innovation matters – but only when it is carried by human systems that are aligned over time. Landscapes change when people change their behaviour together.
These reflections capture how ILM revealed itself in practice: as a living, multicomponent process; as something that unfolds through dialogue and adaptation; and as work that succeeds when multiple enablers – social, institutional, and technical – come together. They remind us that what matters is not only what we do in landscapes, but how we do it.
Kim Geheb
For me, 2025 was an incredibly busy year. I visited São Tomé and Príncipe, was in Belgium meeting our colleagues at the European Commission, and visited Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and out into the middle of the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. Then, I went into Southern Africa to visit the project in Zimbabwe and across the world to visit Peru, and of course, also sites here in Kenya. I don’t think I’ve ever visited so many countries in a single year of my life.
In virtually all cases with these visits, we were having workshops and meetings together with our project teams, and it’s hard to say which of the surprises I encountered was greater than the others.
Perhaps it was the penny dropping in Laos that strong team dynamics really matter when it comes to applying and adapting ILM, or perhaps it was the realization in Vietnam that sometimes landscape solutions need to be found from well outside the landscape. Perhaps it was seeing in Papua New Guinea that ILM has significant peace-building potential, or in Brussels, that ILM can be a really powerful way of heading off the unintended consequences of large-scale infrastructure projects.
I don’t really know which of these was the greatest surprise, but I think they are all really valid, and they all contribute towards understanding ILM and its immense potential.
Khalil Walji
One of the biggest things I learned through Landscapes For Our Future is that innovation in restoration isn’t really technical; it’s human.
We had the science and the frameworks. We had the tools. What made the difference was whether people trusted each other, whether institutions worked together, and whether communities had real ownership.
Where we’ve seen real progress and lasting impact, it wasn’t because we designed a perfect model; rather, it was in the landscapes where leadership was expressed and relationships built – this meant that tensions could be navigated, and solutions co-created around real constraints – through a process.
LFF showed me that you don’t transform landscapes ONLY by rolling out innovations – as necessary as these are. By aligning people, incentives, and power, these innovations can succeed over time. Our innovations succeed when they’re human-led — when they start with listening and trust – and the technical solutions then follow.
Peter Cronkleton
I think the most significant lesson I have learned through the LFF programme has been to understand that ILM is fundamentally a multicomponent process.
We started LFF by defining the ‘dimensions’ of effective ILM, which were usually depicted as six static fields. However, as we worked on describing ILM cases, it was clear that, rather than discrete finite topics, each dimension included elements of change, so interactive feedback needed to be included in how these concepts were depicted.
We realized that, rather than talking about multi-stakeholder platforms, we needed to think of multi-stakeholder processes. While the iterative learning/adaptation dimension clearly entailed a temporal aspect, as we tried to describe how this worked, we could see how iterative learning and adaptation crosscut and influenced other dimensions.
Conceptualizing how integration worked across these dimensions pushed us to see the dimensions more as strands in a larger thread that wound around and supported the collective whole.
Seeing ILM this way serves as a reminder that we need to work across all the dimensions and, if done well, that integration leads to effective management.
Natalia Cisneros
One key ILM insight for me is that trust and process matter more than tools.
In Simiátug, Ecuador, water helped align diverse actors and build a shared vision where fragmentation previously dominated. ILM advanced not through technical solutions alone, but through legitimate spaces for dialogue and adaptation over time.
Valentina Robiglio
I think that ILM is not about great project design. What generates a good ILM performance is probably something we do not talk about explicitly: the relational aspects. So those projects that built trust and were present in the landscape before the project began had a head start through their social capital – their understanding and knowledge.
Also, we must look at participation and negotiation. But how do you invest in the ‘soft skills,’ which are generally undervalued? On the one hand, we have facilitation, staff continuity, and learning in teams. And on the other we have flexibility and adaptability in the management. So I think that is interesting. Or, to frame it differently: what is important is not only what you do but how you do that. So how do you create conditions and capacities for adaptation and learning that pay off in the long-term?
And then another thing that has been noticeable is that success factors cluster. So you do not just target or fix one thing – like lack of capacity, alignment of policies, institutionalisation… ILM projects that have really succeeded have been the ones with multiple enablers working together.
Again, we go back to this relational structure across processes that allows for flexibility and continuity. This relates very much to systems thinking.
Summary: the lessons we’ll carry forward
Across all these reflections runs a common thread: ILM is fundamentally relational.
Whether seen through the lens of peace-building potential, multistakeholder processes, or restoration efforts rooted in trust, the message is clear. Lasting impact does not come from rolling out innovations in isolation. It comes from investing in people, building shared ownership, navigating tensions, and creating space for learning and adaptation over time.
The Central Component team’s observations reinforce that ILM works best when its dimensions are understood not as static components, but as interconnected strands that strengthen each other.
Success clusters. Social capital matters. Leadership and continuity matter. Legitimate spaces for dialogue matter. And so do the often-undervalued “soft skills” that enable flexibility, participation, and long-term resilience.
Perhaps most importantly, these insights affirm why co-learning sits at the heart of ILM. By showing up with curiosity – and staying open to being surprised – we deepen not only our understanding of landscapes, but also our understanding of ourselves as practitioners.
As we close this chapter of the programme, these are the lessons we carry forward: start with listening, centre relationships, align incentives and power, and let technical solutions follow.
ILM, in the end, succeeds when it is human-led.
