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The European Union’s Landscapes for Our Future programme supports 22 integrated landscape management projects across 19 countries and 3 sub-regions across the Global South.

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South America and the Caribbean

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Observing how iterative learning and adaptation contribute to Integrated Landscape Management

Progress might require a meandering route in politically sensitive, ecologically important, and operationally challenging settings. Recent experiences from our landscapes in Latin America and the Caribbean illustrate how adaptive learning offers a way forward.

Over recent months, the LFF Central Component in Latin America has been collaborating with EU-funded Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) initiatives to gain a deeper understanding of how different dimensions of ILM function in practice, particularly iterative and adaptive learning.

Iterative and adaptive learning are key characteristics of effective ILM initiatives. This is because landscapes are highly complex and dynamic socio-ecological systems with multiple and dynamic interacting elements and a high degree of uncertainty about how they will evolve.

“A socio-ecological system is an integrated system of people and nature, where ecological and social components are interdependent and co-evolve through feedbacks.”

— Elinor Ostrom, 2009

As we described in our Landscapes in Practice guideline, iterative learning is a continuous, cyclical process of learning through action, reflection, and adjustment. It involves testing ideas or strategies, observing the results, gathering feedback, and then refining approaches based on what was learned. Rather than following a fixed plan, iterative learning enables adaptation over time, particularly in complex or dynamic environments. Without iterative learning processes, initiatives can fall into a trap of static planning and top-down technocratic fixes. This process of identifying best practices and improving over time is often described as a ‘learning by doing’ approach.

To encourage ILM proponents to reflect on the role of iterative and adaptive learning in their work, the LFF team has been facilitating reflective activities with these ILM practitioners, supporting them as they learn from their own experiences.

Facilitation has included group exchanges, workshops, bilateral discussions, and peer exchanges across regions.

In November 2024, the Central Component organized an Iterative Learning Webinar, which brought together colleagues from multiple ILM projects, including Paisajes Andinos (Ecuador), Mi Biósfera (Honduras), the OECS-ILM Project (Organization of Eastern Caribbean States), and Paisajes Sostenibles (Colombia).

This gathering focused on knowledge sharing and dialogue among ILM practitioners in the region to highlight practical solutions and approaches for iterative learning and encouraging reflection on governance, institutionalization, and stakeholder engagement for adaptive management.

LFF partners emphasized the critical role of cross-sector partnerships in advancing sustainable landscape outcomes. Speakers stressed that building and maintaining these partnerships – especially across governments, communities, and NGOs – is not always easy, especially amid changing political and financial contexts. Yet, it is precisely this collaborative spirit that enables long-term impact, and landscape approaches are, by nature, long-term investments.

Khalil Walji, representing the LFF Central Component, noted: “Through our Joint Reflection and Learning Missions, we’ve seen firsthand how collaborative learning can lead to significant improvements in land restoration efforts.”

Participants exchanged fresh ideas on innovative strategies to bolster these alliances, such as participatory governance models and capacity-building initiatives, ultimately highlighting the essential role of cooperation in driving sustainable outcomes in landscape management.

The webinar highlighted LFF’s strategy of fostering collaboration among projects to improve practices and outcomes by learning from one another.

A common thread among the experiences was the value of integrating local knowledge into landscape management strategies and giving voice and ownership of the process to local resource managers.  We believe the integration of local knowledge into our practices is essential for achieving sustainability in landscape management.

Lessons from the field: How has adaptation manifested across LFF landscapes?

Ecuador – Paisajes Andinos

During our March (2025) visit to Ecuador, the Paisajes Andinos team recounted the approach they had used to support community conservation of a threatened páramo landscape in the Simiátug parish. Rather than imposing a predefined conservation model, the project supported local stakeholders in exploring governance mechanisms through exchange visits and dialogues. They had initiated a process where communities visited others to learn from their experiences, which helped target communities surrounding the paramo learn from their experiences. This, in turn, enabled the communities surrounding the targeted páramos to identify potential governance mechanisms that conserved resources and secured rights. The project had also invested time in building trust between the communities and Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment. As a result, the communities had decided that a mechanism known as a Hydrological Protection Area was best suited to their needs and had joined local and national government, NGOs and FAO in a collaborative effort to demarcate and develop it.

Colombia – Paisajes Sostenibles

During an April 2025 learning mission to Santa Marta, Colombia, staff from the Paisajes Sostenibles partner INVEMAR recounted their experience working with fisherfolk in the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta (CGSM). In response to observed declines in the blue crab stock due to overfishing, technicians introduced innovative traps that included openings allowing juvenile crabs to escape. During monitoring visits, the technicians noticed that many fishers had blocked the openings and continued harvesting crabs regardless of the stage of growth. As a result, the INVEMAR technicians changed their strategy and implemented a participatory experiment with fishers to monitor harvests using these innovative traps. Through this process, fishers realized that concentrating only on larger crabs would not diminish their harvest but would ensure more crabs for the future.  Acceptance of the modified traps expanded because fishers not only now saw how they worked but also felt ownership, as this was a solution they had validated.

Brazil-Paraguay – Cerrado Resiliente

During our May 2025 visit to Paraguay, technicians for the CERES (Cerrado Resiliente) project used a flexible planning approach that allowed them to facilitate iterative learning cycles with stakeholders in the Agua Dulce zone around the Monumento Natural Cerro Chovoreca. The project’s initial proposals (e.g., formal biological corridors) had proven unviable due to conflicting interests among stakeholders. Rather than insisting on these original ideas, the project shifted focus to socializing the idea of connectivity through maps and dialogue, gaining legitimacy without resistance. Through this process, they were able to aggregate local interest around a strategy to demarcate the Cerro Chovoreca conservation area, which would allow local landowners to also clarify their property boundaries. This reframing helped shift attention from a potentially divisive intervention to a collaborative vision of landscape governance. Collaboration among government agencies, local communities, the private sector and NGOs resulted in the institutionalization of landscape governance in the frontier area. In short, adaptive learning ensured progress in a politically sensitive, ecologically important, and operationally challenging setting.

Iterative learning is emerging as a powerful driver of action across LFF landscapes by enabling projects to remain responsive, adaptive, and grounded in local realities. Rather than relying on rigid plans, project teams embrace flexible, feedback-driven approaches that allow them to learn alongside communities, adjust strategies based on real-time insights, and co-create solutions that are both effective and locally legitimate. Whether through peer exchanges in Ecuador, participatory experiments in Colombia, or adaptive planning in Paraguay, this continuous learning process is helping overcome political, ecological, and social challenges, translating reflection into tangible progress on the ground.

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Landscapes in Practice: Iterative learning and adaptation

Landscapes in Practice: Stakeholder Identification and Analysis

Landscape condition and sustainability depends on what its stakeholders are doing. ILM practitioners cannot, therefore, avoid considering stakeholder activities. This Landscapes in Practice paper provides an overview of the key concepts and the tools and resources available for learning more.
LIP Stakeholder identification 241114 interactiveDownload

Landscape condition and sustainability depends on what its stakeholders are doing. ILM practitioners cannot, therefore, avoid considering stakeholder activities. The problems exhibited in landscapes emerge out of these activities, so implementing processes that change stakeholder behaviours and practices is central to ILM considerations. It is generally accepted that the higher the level of stakeholder engagement, the more likely an intervention is to succeed, and the more likely its effects will be sustainable.

Landscapes, it should be noted, are complex –and stakeholders are a source of much of this complexity because of their multiple, and often divergent, needs and interests (i.e., to exploit or conserve resources), rights (formal and customary) and levels of legitimacy, dependence on resources, power and influence (economic and political), knowledge, preferences and values. Stakeholders often have competing goals that require mediation to balance trade-offs (if an initiative is promoting changed behaviour) and are embedded within social networks, interactions and responses. If landscapes are to be managed in integrated ways, stakeholders and their various interests must be a major consideration in the design of ILM interventions.

Key messages

  • Stakeholder engagement is a precondition to Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) success. The higher the level of engagement, the greater the likelihood of success and sustainability.
  • Stakeholder identification and analysis is complicated by diversity amongst stakeholders, which emerges from variable interests, different types of knowledge, and contexts. Most stakeholder engagement, identification and analysis approaches try to reveal and understand this complexity.
  • Stakeholder analysis is strategic. It allows interventions to determine who they should engage with to succeed and which inter-stakeholder relations should be targeted for attention.
  • The ‘strategic relevance’ of stakeholders is determined by the degree to which they are judged to influence a project’s success.
  • There are usually competing or contradictory interests among stakeholders, often expressed as conflict. The presence of conflict amongst stakeholders should be assumed from the outset and can represent a significant risk to intervention success.
  • The strategies used to engage with (and between) stakeholders will reflect their strategic relevance and can be brainstormed and deliberated through the development of a Theory of Change.
  • Engaging with stakeholders calls for the deployment of ‘soft-skills’ such as mediation, facilitation, convening and negotiation.
  • Stakeholder relevance and relations will change over the course of a project intervention. As such, stakeholder analysis is not restricted to the beginning of an initiative, but is necessary throughout its duration.
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Landscapes in Practice: Iterative learning and adaptation

Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) entails dealing with complexity and uncertainty, of which the interests of diverse stakeholders are an important part. Management strategies such as Adaptive Management and Collaborative Management have emerged to address these challenges and have been operationalized as an approach called Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM).
LIP Iterative Learning & Adaptation 240905Download

This Landscapes in Practice edition aims to offer an overview of the common themes and concepts across these approaches, identifying lessons and proposing ways in which they can contribute to an ILM process. It will also synthesize steps to incorporate iterative learning processes and adaptation into ILM-focused programmes and projects. Ultimately, our goal is to explain key concepts and identify essential steps for practitioners who employ an ILM approach to develop the critical pillars of iterative learning and adaptation within their project cycle.

Key messages

  • Iterative and adaptive learning are seen as key characteristics of effective Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) initiatives, yet ILM implementers may need support to operationalize iterative learning and adaptation in their programmes.
  • Given that landscapes are highly complex and dynamic socio-ecological systems fraught with uncertainty over how they function, interact and react, stakeholders involved in management should adopt a ‘learning by doing’ approach to identify best practices and improve over time.
  • Adaptive management is an approach that treats management as an experiment that tests interventions based on available information, and evaluates outcomes to adjust future management decisions and actions.
  • By convening stakeholders to work together towards a common goal (to collaborate), and by promoting social learning (developing a shared understanding within groups), ILM facilitators can encourage an iterative approach to planning and decision-making to better manage complexity in a changing world with many unknowns.
  • There are four steps that can assist in operationalizing this concept in ILM: stakeholder engagement, problem/objective definition, action planning, and monitoring/reflection (then back to action).
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Ten principles for a landscape approach to reconciling agriculture, conservation, and other competing land uses

This article synthesizes the consensus on landscape approaches, highlighting their role in balancing competing land uses and achieving social, economic, and environmental objectives. The study provides 10 principles for implementation, emphasizing adaptive management, stakeholder involvement, and multiple objectives, while acknowledging institutional and governance constraints. It argues that landscape approaches are among the most effective strategies for addressing complex landscape challenges.
Published by PNAS
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