Integrated Landscape Approaches: A Pathway Towards Just Sustainable Development?
Journal article, 2026
Landscape approaches mobilize stakeholders across sectors and scales to negotiate development-conservation trade-offs and land-use allocation. Building on the concept of earth system justice, we examine how efforts to operationalize such approaches in Ghana, Zambia and Indonesia advance landscape justice. We observed contributions to procedural, recognitional and intergenerational justice, while interspecies justice remains overlooked. Yet, power asymmetries, exclusionary practices and institutional constraints hinder progress towards intragenerational and substantive-distributive, corrective, restorative and transformative justice. In contexts lacking commitment to transformative change, trade-offs are inevitable. Pursuing incremental change rather than 'perfect' justice may represent a second-best but more realistic pathway towards just landscape governance.
Power imbalances
Integrated landscape approaches
Landscape justice
Earth system justice
Conservation-development trade-offs
Author
Mirjam A. F. Ros-Tonen
University of Amsterdam
James Reed
University of East Anglia
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Samuel Adeyanju
University of British Columbia (UBC)
Augusta M. Anandi
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
University of Amsterdam
Eric Rega Christophe Bayala
University of Amsterdam
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Minist Environm Water & Sanitat
Houria Djoudi
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Amy Ickowitz
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Yves Laumonier
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Kaala B. Moombe
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Moira Moeliono
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Alida O'connor
University of British Columbia (UBC)
Freddie Siangulube
Ministry of Green Economy and Environment
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
University of Amsterdam
Malaika Yanou
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory
Elizabeth L. Yuliani
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Mathurin Zida
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Terry Sunderland
University of British Columbia (UBC)
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF)
Progress in Development Studies
1464-9934 (ISSN) 1477-027X (eISSN)
Vol. In PressSubject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
DOI
10.1177/14649934251413867