Kim Geheb
Our forthcoming global synthesis paper is an important output from the Landscapes For Our Future (LFF) programme and one that we can be collectively proud of. It makes a genuine contribution by providing the first systematic, quantitative comparison of ILM performance across all of the various projects and landscapes within the LFF portfolio.
And don’t underestimate the challenge of doing this: we’ve had our 22 projects, enormous geographical distribution across the tropics, different teams, different institutions, and so forth. So being able to capture that diversity and then sort of constrain it, if you like, is a significant challenge and one which I think the paper has done really well to address.
What I’ve been reflecting on, though, is how the research sits within the broader body of learning emerging from our programme. The paper looks at which conditions correlate with stronger outcomes across the landscapes that were studied in a particular moment in time. What it does not seek to explain is how those conditions came into being, and the kinds of work that created them or how they might be shifted over time. For me, that is where some of the other work emerging from Landscapes For Our Future becomes important.
The challenge is that many of the things practitioners spend their time doing are inherently difficult to measure. There is a quotation I often return to: “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”11
When we visit landscapes, we encounter things that do not fit neatly into indicators and datasets: the patient cultivation of trust over years, the relationships between project teams and communities, the way conflict is navigated, the role of local knowledge, and the ability to recognize opportunities that outsiders might miss. These dimensions are often critical to how landscapes function and evolve.
In fact, I would go further. What lies outside the measurable indicators is often not simply background noise. In many landscapes, it is the signal. This is one of the reasons why the soon-to-be published ILM Playbook places so much emphasis on learning to read landscapes. When we talk about institutions, for example, we often think immediately about government. Yet many landscapes are also shaped by less visible institutions – the local rules, norms, relationships and governance arrangements that communities have developed over time.
These are often easy to overlook, particularly for outsiders.
Very often, when we arrive in a landscape, we are introduced to the official authority structure. But if we spend enough time listening and observing, we begin to notice other forms of influence and leadership. We discover people who hold no formal authority but whose opinions carry enormous weight. We begin to understand relationships, histories and power dynamics that are not immediately visible.
That process is what we mean when we talk about reading the landscape.22
For me, governance is not simply a condition that exists before an intervention begins. Governance is an outcome of power dynamics. It’s not a stable background condition.
The question is not whether a landscape possesses ideal governance conditions when we arrive. The question is how practitioners can work with the realities they encounter.
So, more than merely “what does governance look like at this moment in the landscape?” it’s about “how do we shift it in such a way that it will improve the chances of ILM success?” Practitioners who are able to do this well are often working with things that are difficult to quantify. They are building relationships, understanding incentives, recognizing local leadership and helping people work together in new ways. They begin working with the power to try to shift it in particular directions that will then establish the groundwork for successful ILM.
Ultimately, though, successful ILM is not the goal.
Landscapes matter because they are places where social, economic and environmental pressures come together. We turn to Integrated Landscape Management because we believe it offers a way to address those pressures more effectively.
As I often say, the landscape is a scale. The integration is the method. The purpose is not integration for its own sake. The purpose is to help landscapes move in more sustainable directions. And the global synthesis paper provides an important perspective on that challenge. But it is one perspective among many.
As a programme, we have also produced case studies, practitioner reflections, learning missions and the forthcoming ILM Playbook. Together, these help us understand not only the patterns we can measure, but also the relationships, processes and human realities that produce those patterns. For me, there’s a very rich picture emerging from the programme as a whole, and the paper is a key part.
You might also be interested in…
Our global synthesis: what really makes ILM work? Why do some landscape initiatives gain momentum while others struggle to endure? In this preview of a forthcoming paper, George Schoneveld reflects on lessons from 15 landscapes and the factors that seem to make the biggest difference.
- Usually attributed to Einstein, this actually comes from a 1963 book called Informal Sociology, a casual Introduction to sociological thinking, written by Bruce Cameron. ↩︎
- Khalil Walji points out that reading the landscape does not replace measurement; rather, it provides the contextual understanding needed to interpret what the indicators are telling us. ↩︎
