Fauna and Flora International (FFI) and the Arcus Foundation have just released a new and exciting framework to put nature at the center of land use and development planning
Collaborating across the landscape to mitigate impacts of development (CALM) is designed to overcome shortcomings in the business-as-usual management of complex multi-use landscapes. CALM addresses the need for transformative change to ensure that landscapes are resilient, development is sustainable, and social and ecological values survive and thrive.
CALM addresses national and subnational governments, industry and other key actors within a given landscape. By bringing a socio-ecological lens to land use and mitigation planning CALM promotes an inclusive, integrated landscape approach to the avoidance, mitigation and management of adverse impacts from development that engages with all sectors and scales of activity. Louise Buck, EcoAgriculture Partners’ Lead for Collaborative Management and faculty member of Cornell University, played an advisory role in developing the framework, illuminating a variety of approaches and tools to help stimulate collaborative action in socio-ecological landscapes.
CALM is built on three foundational concepts and approaches:
- Integrated Landscape Management,
- the mitigation hierarchy, and
- socio-ecological systems planning.
The 59-page report and framework demonstrate how the longstanding mitigation hierarchy tool used by biodiversity conservation planners to alleviate environmental harm can become more impactful by contextualizing their activities in the complexity of the landscapes they operate. Planners can thereby more easily mobilize action and collaboration on the ground.
The framework report emphasizes the application of CALM in Africa, and specifies an iterative four-step process to build multi-sector collaboration and coordination:
- assessment to understand the landscape conservation and restoration priorities,
- assessment to identify threats and pressures,
- mitigation planning at project and landscape levels,
- applying the mitigation hierarchy across the landscape for impact.
The sequence frames decision-making within the bounds of nature. Practical and applied, the framework offers illustrative graphics and example questions and formats to guide users in facilitating collaborative landscape planning while encouraging them to adapt the approach to their contexts. Examples emphasize changing critical roles for industry and the benefits anticipated to accrue to them in doing so. Case studies elaborate on how agribusiness and mining operations have catalyzed multi-stakeholder collaborative solutions. We highly recommend a look at this exciting new publication!