Investment and Integrated Landscape Management

Read the landscape before deciding what to invest in.

What does this place need? What can it support, and what will it tolerate? Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) starts here – allowing the answers to shape the investment and the wider package around it.

See what changes

The territory comes first

A living system, not an empty site.

Land, water, livelihoods and institutions are already connected. Power shapes whose needs count.

NeedsLimitsRelationshipsPower

Glimpse · The central proposition

A sound asset is not enough. It needs to fit the place.

Investment performance depends on the landscape the asset or activity enters. ILM brings those dependencies into view early enough to shape what is invested in, where, in what sequence and alongside what else.

Start before the choice is fixed

Read what the territory needs and can bear. Use that reading to shape the intervention, not only to manage its effects.

Connect the evidence

Bring specialist findings into one account of the landscape. Make visible the relationships that no single study owns.

Design the whole package

Identify the governance, livelihood, environmental and institutional measures that performance depends on, and the partners able to carry them.

This is not only about infrastructure or financial returns. Conservation, restoration, livelihood support and other public-purpose investments also depend on conditions beyond their immediate boundary.

Grasp · A different entry point

Change the starting point, not just the boundary.

Good appraisal already considers impacts, safeguards and stakeholder engagement. ILM adds an earlier territorial reading, while there is still room to change the choice itself.

Landscape-first design

What should be invested in here?

Begin with the territory: what it needs, what it can bear and how power operates within it. Let that reading shape the investment, its location, scale, sequence and complementary measures.

The asset is one possible response, not the starting assumption.

Read the territoryNeeds · ecological limits · rights · power

Consider the optionsWhat fits, where, with whom and in what sequence?

Shape the funded packageOr redesign, defer or stop the proposal

Asset-first appraisal

Can this proposed investment work?

A defined asset or activity is the starting point. Engineering, feasibility, impact assessment and due diligence examine how it can be built and operated, its effects and its risks.

These remain essential functions. But when the choice is already fixed, the space to consider a different intervention is smaller.

Start with the proposed assetThe core investment is already defined

Appraise itFeasibility · impacts · risks · safeguards

Address delivery conditionsWhat does this asset need to succeed?

These diagrams distinguish entry points, not every appraisal process. If an asset has already been chosen, ILM can still strengthen the conditions and complementary measures on which its performance depends.

One territorial reading. Connected specialist findings.

ILM does not replace engineering, feasibility studies, environmental and social impact assessment, due diligence or safeguards. It supplies a common system context within which their findings can speak to one another and inform design.

Make the funded package specific.

The core investment

The asset or activity that the landscape reading indicates is needed.

Conditions it depends on

Governance, rights protections, livelihoods, ecosystems, maintenance, capability and continuing finance, as the landscape requires.

Some necessary conditions cannot be financed from an asset’s own revenue. Public and concessional finance can support these enabling measures.

Where does bankability fit?

Bankability is a lender’s test: can future revenues be expected with sufficient confidence to service the financing? Many conditions that make those revenues possible sit outside the asset boundary.

It is a benefit of reading the landscape, not the reason to do so. The landscape itself does not become a financial asset. Its relevant conditions are understood, strengthened and, where appropriate, financed as part of the package.

Grasp · Follow the effects

One road, many effects.

A road’s direct footprint is narrow. The changes it makes possible can spread across a whole landscape.

Access can alter settlement, extraction, land values and resource use. Those changes can return as maintenance pressures, conflict or changes in demand.

The point is not that roads should not be built. It is that indirect and cumulative effects need to be read at the scale at which they occur.

Illustrative sequence, not a prediction. The order, pace and effects depend on the landscape.

Read the chain of effects

Access. The road changes who and what can move through the landscape.
Secondary routes. Feeder and informal routes can extend its effective reach.
Land use. Access can change where settlement, farming and extraction become viable.
Power. Land values and resource access can redistribute opportunity, control and exposure to costs.
Feedback. Maintenance pressure, contestation, ecological change or shifts in demand can affect the original investment.

Effects reach beyond the road

Follow possible changes in access, land use and power, and how they can return to the investment.

Explore · From reading to action

Read before design is fixed. Keep reading afterwards.

The eight steps below are adapted for investment decisions from the Playbook’s Design and implementation pathway.

Eight connected steps, not a rigid template. Sensing continues throughout, and later learning can send a team back to earlier questions.

Open any step. The depth of the reading should be proportionate to the decision, especially where effects cross boundaries or commitments are difficult to reverse.

01Scope the landscape

Establish the provisional system boundary, the mosaic of sub-landscapes, the main social, economic, environmental and governance conditions, and the key uncertainties.

This first reading can already change the proposal: continue unchanged, reframe it or pause for deeper inquiry.

02Compose the team

Ensure the team has the capabilities the landscape requires: technical and financial expertise alongside governance analysis, facilitation, local knowledge, language, relational skills and the ability to read power and practice.

03Enter and engage

Build relationships with rights-holders, authorities, communities, private actors and other stakeholders. Bilateral engagement before convening can surface interests and power differences that formal consultation may conceal.

04Deepen the diagnostic

Map the actual regulatory architecture, power relations, practices, livelihoods, ecological conditions and interaction spaces that will determine how the landscape responds to investment.

05Identify opportunity points and tolerance

Ask where investment can act productively, what the landscape can absorb, which trade-offs cannot be designed away and what remains uncertain.

Modelling may help generate propositions, rather than predictions.

06Design the package

Define the core investment together with the governance, livelihood, environmental and institutional measures required around it.

State what each component is expected to do and what evidence would indicate that the proposition needs revision.

07Implement, monitor and adapt

Track not only delivery but the landscape’s response, including surprises, ripple effects and cumulative risks. Adjust components that remain changeable through agreed review and approval processes.

08Iterate, deepen and sustain

Revisit the design at defined intervals. Plan early for the functions, capabilities, finance and institutional arrangements that need to persist after project closure.

The assessment informs a decision, not just a report.

The value of the reading lies in what it changes. Depending on the evidence, a proposal may:

ProceedContinue with the proposal.
Be redesignedChange the intervention or package.
Be relocatedConsider a different location.
Be distributedUse several connected interventions.
Be deferredResolve important uncertainties.
Be stoppedDo not proceed with a poor fit.

A negative conclusion is a legitimate result. The reading should be able to change the decision, not only the delivery plan.

Is a portfolio of smaller investments always better?

No. Large assets are not inherently wrong, and small investments are not inherently safe. Compare scale, cumulative effects, reversibility, coordination costs, benefit distribution and the landscape’s capacity to absorb change.

Distributed investments still need to be patterned as a portfolio. Individually sound projects can compete for the same water, labour or land.

Explore · Across LFF landscapes

The same investment questions look different in every landscape.

The Landscapes For Our Future (LFF) examples connect the argument to real places: the institutions, relationships and ecological conditions around an investment.

Kenya · RangER

Capability is part of the investment context

The country brief brings together team and partner capability, county institutions, community conservancies and conflict management as operating conditions for investment.

Explore the project →Action page · original project intentions

Colombia · Ciénaga Grande

Water governance and legitimacy

The chapter draws attention to water governance, community legitimacy and formal institutionalization as part of the investment-enabling system.

Explore the ILM case studies →Includes the completed Colombia case study

Paraguay · Cerro Chovoreca

Power changes what is possible

Rights, remoteness, facilitation and public administration presence altered what could be achieved and in what sequence.

Explore the ILM case studies →Includes the completed Paraguay case study

Timor-Leste · Maloa

The city depends on the catchment

The country brief shows how urban infrastructure and resilience depend on the upstream watershed and on a local institution able to connect the catchment.

Explore the project →Action page · original project intentions

These summaries draw on the chapter’s forthcoming country briefs: contextual evidence and illustrations, not independent causal evaluations. The Action pages describe early intentions; they do not substantiate later outcomes. Completed case studies are available separately.

Deep dive · Funding is part of the system

Accountability and adaptation are not alternatives.

The donor is not outside the system. Funding rules shape incentives, time horizons, reporting behaviour, team composition and the room an intervention has to learn.

Accountability

Clarity, commitments and control. Protect funds, rights, safeguards and public purpose.

Funding design connects them

Adaptation

Learning, responsiveness and room to change. Revise propositions as evidence accumulates.

Protect the obligations

Fiduciary, legal and safeguard accountability.
Rights protections and public purpose.
Clear decision records and approval authority.

Allow structured revision

Causal assumptions and the theory of change.
Activities, sequencing and indicators within agreed limits.
Implementation choices through normal review and approval processes.

Logframes can remain useful high-level accountability structures. The distinction is between fixed obligations and propositions that may need revision, not between having a framework and having none.

Make objectives and incentives point in the same direction

Calls, budgets and accountability frameworks should support the behaviour the intervention requires. Problems arise when implementers are held to one goal while being rewarded for another.

Fund an inception period, and select for capability

Applicants need not have completed a full landscape assessment before submission. A credible preliminary understanding and a capable team can be followed by a funded inception and sensing phase.

Use it to refine the causal problem, system boundary, partnership and intervention package before major commitments are locked. Where trusted relationships do not yet exist, allow time to build them.

Measure what can be measured. Be explicit about what cannot.

As the boundary widens to include indirect and cumulative effects, a living system becomes harder to reduce to defensible numbers. A wider quantitative study does not automatically resolve that problem.

Quantify what can be quantified. Reason systemically where numbers cannot reach. Structured sensing, triangulation across independent sources and openness about uncertainty help make that judgement accountable.

Fund the conditions for continuity. Do not assume the outcome.

Wider LFF learning suggests that engagement, facilitation and iterative learning can be strengthened when deliberately supported. Formal institutionalization and post-project continuity depend more heavily on political commitment, administrative capacity, legal frameworks, relationships and continuing finance.

A time-bound project cannot simply manufacture those conditions. Plan for institutional anchoring and successor finance early, and calibrate ambition to the setting.

Continue exploring

Investment brings the concepts together.

Landscape

The territory that defines needs, dependencies and limits.

Systems

Indirect effects, feedback and responses that no single asset controls.

Power

Whose needs count, who influences the choices and who bears the costs.

Practices

What actors actually do, and how investment changes those patterns.

Investment and Integrated Landscape Management

The full reading develops the argument, the assessment sequence and the evidence behind this page.

Read full chapter →

Sources and evidence are provided in the full reading.

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Part of the ILM Playbook.

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Read the landscape before deciding what to invest in.