Background
Much landscape literature focuses on landscape multifunctionality – the joint supply of several ecosystem services at the landscape scale. Understanding the synergies and trade-offs between these services is, it is argued, essential to designing land-use systems that increase provision of desired services whilst maintaining or restoring biodiversity.[1]
The trade-offs, then, focus on, for example:
- Land-use competition: agriculture vs. conservation, production vs. protection, intensive vs. extensive use.
- Ecosystem service trade-offs: provisioning services (food, timber) vs. regulating services (water quality, carbon storage) vs. cultural services.
- Spatial optimisation: where to locate which functions to maximise overall landscape benefits.
- Temporal trade-offs: short-term productivity vs. long-term sustainability.
This framing treats landscapes as portfolios where different functions compete for space and resources, and the challenge is finding the optimal allocation or configuration. The underlying logic is often technocratic: if we can map the functions, model the interactions, and identify the Pareto frontiers, we can design better landscapes.
Re-framing trade-offs
We agree that landscapes are multi-functional. As we have argued elsewhere in this Playbook, however, landscape condition depends on the people who influence and exploit it. We cannot resolve biophysical trade-offs without engaging (human) distributional and power dimensions. This raises some important considerations.
If you go back to our page on systems[GK1] , you will remember that we see landscapes as complex systems; within human systems, power dynamics serve to pattern these systems; these patterns emerge as particular sets of human practices. If we judge the system to be heading in the wrong direction, we need to focus on these (and not only biophysical or ecosystem properties), and consider the ways in which we might gain a shift by influencing its power dynamics.
Power as a commodity
Power is often treated as a commodity – in other words, if one group of people is empowered, then another another group is disempowered. This is not necessarily a bad thing – it may be exactly what we need to create a system shift. It is, however, a trade-off.
This can have important strategic implications for the implementation of your intervention, which need to be thought through – the group being disempowered will almost certainly resist, and empowering marginalised groups threatens powerful actors who benefit from current arrangements.
Traditional literature often frames this in positive terms: ‘benefit-sharing’ – in our systems thinking, this would be like Actor A only sharing those benefits that will not to disturb its predominance in the system. It seems unlikely that it would because this is contrary to its interests. Thus, the ‘benefits’ shared are superficial and symbolic. In any case, close attention should be paid to ‘cost-sharing’ – i.e. the ‘externalities’ created by Actor A that have to be shouldered by other actors in the system. For example, perhaps Actor A pollutes local streams, a cost that downstream communities have to address. At a larger scale, a country that focuses on hydropower development exports asspociated ecological problems, changes to the river’s hydrology and reductions to the river’s sediment load to downstream countries who share the same river system. The powerful are often those who have successfully externalised costs. Shifting this – making polluters pay, making extractive industries internalise environmental damage, or having their products reflect the ‘true’ costs of production – challenges existing power distributions.
Power as material
Power can also be seen as a material resource. Here, power can be seen as decision-making authority, voice in policy, enforcement, market power, information access, legal standing, or collective organisation.
For example:
- A community cannot adopt ‘sustainable land use’ if they lack tenure security (a power-material).
- A county officer cannot enforce protections if politicians override them (power distribution).
- Farmers cannot shift practices if traders control market access (power asymmetry).
References and further reading
Jay, M. and Plieninger, T. 2025. Addressing landscape multifunctionality in conservation and restoration. Nature Reviews Biodiversity 1(2025): 717-732, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00091-4.
[1] Jay and Plieninger, 2025.
[GK1]Link
