Landscape approaches have become en vogue in the past couple of decades. Originating from nineteenth-century landscape geography, this renewed popularity since the 1980s is fueled by debates on—among others—nature conservation, landscape restoration, ecosystem services, competing claims on land and resources, sectorial land-use policies, sustainable development, and sense of place. This review illuminates the ambition and potential of these landscape approaches for interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration. To show this, we work with a T-shaped interdisciplinary model. After a short history of the landscape approaches, we dive into their key dimensions—from ecology to economics and culture to politics. Thereafter, we bring these dimensions together again and reflect on the integrative potential of landscape approaches for offering common ground to various disciplines and sectors. Two examples of applications are also dealt with: a landscape governance framework and a landscape capability framework.

Relational values reflect the qualities of the relationships between humans and nature, such as care, social bonding, place attachment and spiritual meanings. In this perspective article, we argue that understanding relational values is vital for nature conservation, and we identify how incorporation of these values may function as leverage points for achieving more effective nature policy. We discuss the distinctive features of the concept of relational values and elaborate how relational values strongly influence people’s perceptions of, engagement with and action for nature. Relational values can also provide important deep leverage points for policy interventions aiming to support citizen’s contribution to nature conservation, to strengthen biodiversity policy and the relationship between people and nature. Based on three realms of leverage (re-think, re-structure and re-connect), we distinguish six routes through which relational values can be integrated in policies and practices of nature conservation: (1) incorporation of pluralized meanings of nature; (2) the uptake of relational language in policy discourse; (3) a prioritization of landscape-based policy; (4) empowering citizens in nature conservation; (5) re-orienting nature education to stimulate people’s personal bond with nature; and (6) using digital technology to stimulate new relationships with nature.

Agrienvironmental schemes (AES) have been a predominant manifestation of environmental policy Integration in the EU. However, rather than strictly following formal AES policy, farmers across Europe have taken various other initiatives to integrate environmental and agricultural practices. Mostly, these integrative initiatives were based on dynamic actor networks at various levels, responding to local problems and challenges. Compared with situations where, from the top down, one (mostly weaker) policy domain is integrated into another, the kind of integration taking place in these examples may be called more ‘fundamental’. Here, integration is already embedded in the practical outcomes envisioned in specific places. The parts of the outcome require each other. However, this fundamental form of integration may render problems at other levels and sectors of governance. In this paper we present a case study of an initiative called Farming for Nature. The initiative aimed to integrate farming and nature more thoroughly than EU and national policies and incorporated some important other characteristics of the area, such as its water dynamics and relationships with the urban environment. However, it also involved some key differences from mainstream policy; and although it resonated with EU support for participative governance, these differences rendered a lengthy process towards implementation lasting more than half a decade. We use the concept of ‘landscape governance’—operationalized as the interplay of discourses, institutional practices, and natural–spatial conditions—to understand the politics of scale involved when mainstream government policies and local integrative initiatives meet. Particular attention is paid to how the local ideas toned down some of their integrative ingredients in order to comply with mainstream sectoral policy discourse. We find that the type of landscape governance implemented shaped the initiatives into a form that contributed to their implementation, but simultaneously displaced and contained political conflict in a way that prevented public debate.

Diniz, F. H., K. Kok, M. A. Hoogstra-Klein, and B. Arts. 2015. Mapping future changes in livelihood security and environmental sustainability based on perceptions of small farmers in the Brazilian Amazon. Ecology and Society 20(2): 26.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07286-200226