Editorial: integrating local landscape management in a globalised world – practices and pathways

Urbanisation, population growth, limited land and environmental concerns are putting the world’s farmers under growing pressure to increase productivity in sustainable ways (Lambin & Meyfroidt, 2011). Policy responses include seeking greater efficiency of production and distribution through globalisation of technologies (Coleman, Grant, & Josling, 2004), intensification of farming systems (Reenberg & Fenger, 2011; Rudel et al., 2009), integration of global food networks (Dickson-Hoyle & Reenberg, 2009; Ericksen, 2008) and creation of more open markets (Anderson & Josling, 2005). At the same time, sustainability scientists warn of the environmental risks and consequences of agricultural intensification (Tilman, Cassman, Matson, Naylor, & Polasky, 2002); urban consumers demand higher moral and environmental standards in their food supply (Morgan, Marsden, & Murdoch, 2007); and society requires a growing range of material and non-material ecosystem services from production landscapes (Wratten, Sandhu, Cullen, & Costanza, 2013). At the local landscape level, farmers manage land as producers, owners and citizens (Primdahl & Kristensen, 2011; Primdahl, Kristensen, & Busck, 2013b). The way they do this and how they combine the three roles depends on the nature and locality of the biophysical landscape, the farmer’s own situation (full-time farmer, tenant farmer, lifestyle farmer and employed farm workers), the local community (or lack of it), the impacts of urbanisation upon peri-urban and rural landscapes (Orsini, 2013; Primdahl, Kristensen, & Swaffield, 2013a; Zasada, Fertner, Piorr, & Nielsen, 2011) and the farmers’ relationships with the wider market trends and policy agenda (Plieninger & Beiling, 2012; Primdahl & Swaffield, 2010). Thus, the ways that agricultural landscapes are structured and function vary enormously, even within the developed world, and these diverse processes and relationships raise significant policy design and implementation questions about how to effectively integrate efficient global food supply systems with sustainable management of local landscapes as settings for living, working and service provision (Primdahl & Swaffield, 2010; Primdahl et al 2013b; Swaffield & Primdahl, 2014; Termorshuizen & Opdam, 2009).

One common feature, however, is that the links between local landscapes and the rest of the world are becoming increasingly complex and interrelated (Birch-Thomsen & Kristensen, 2005; Mertz, Wadley, & Christensen, 2005). Globalisation means that decisions and practices in particular landscapes become relatively less related to local and regional contexts, and increasingly linked to (affecting and affected by) decisions and practices in other distal landscapes (Reenberg & Primdahl, 2009). Land use in an urbanised world is becoming telecoupled (Seto & Reenberg, 2014), and local landscapes increasingly become linked to multi-dimensional networks organised as non-nested hierarchies (Swaffield & Primdahl, 2006). As a consequence of this, the relationships between local landscape management practices and market processes, public policies and business decisions occurring at other scales become disjointed and asymmetrical. This in turn means that policy problems associated with local agricultural landscapes become harder to define, with neither straightforward nor ‘optimal’ solutions. In short, they become ‘wicked’ problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973).

Integration in practice – experiences and emerging pathways

Aspects of this complexity and asymmetry are well illustrated in the four articles in this special section, which are based on presentations to a symposium at the 2013 European Congress of the International Association for Landscape Ecology, held in Manchester, UK, in September 2013. The aim of the symposium was to identify and evaluate potential pathways to improved integration of public policies within local landscapes in which food production is a significant function. This special section presents four case study examples, from different OECD countries, which illustrate different emerging pathways.

In the first article, Robert Corry analyses the strategic benefits of targeting policy action to specific landscape contexts. Focusing on the perennial and annual vegetation proportion of intensive agricultural landscapes in North America, he shows how targeting becomes both more critical and more effective in situations where the most valuable cover is under greatest threat. Hence, as agriculture intensifies, policy for landscape sustainability must become better grounded in evidence, become more precise, and avoid – directly or indirectly – supporting undesirable developments. The importance of a systematic approach to landscape action is also highlighted in the second article in which Simon Swaffield and Henry Winchester use judge’s evaluations in a prominent New Zealand farm award programme to identify the best practice in sustainable landscape management. Whole of farm planning systems emerge as a prime indicator of best practice, and provide a framework for more specific actions. The findings suggest that farm-based environmental management systems offer a potential organisational bridge between individual property management, local landscape management and global supply chain management.

These two articles emphasise the importance of systematic local decision-making frameworks and clearly focused strategies – placing policy and implementation effort where it has best effect on the sustainable management of actual landscapes. In the third article, based upon a case in New York State, USA, Thomas Oles identifies potential barriers to sustainable practices. Transaction costs, a desire to reduce regulatory risk and consumer resistance are revealed as factors that affect wine growers’ willingness to collaborate in local sustainability networks. Reducing costs or providing incentives, the political possibility of regulation and knowledge of consumer preferences are therefore important considerations in focusing efforts to enhance local action. The final article examines the potential contribution of non-traditional agents in local landscape management. Teresa Pinto Correia, Carla Gonzales and Mara Almeida show how urban–rural migrants in Portugal – ‘neo-rurals’ – are bringing much needed financial and social resources to marginal landscapes that are otherwise in decline. These resources support traditional production practices that are needed to maintain culturally valued landscape structures, and the services they provide.

These studies into best practice in policy integration for local landscape sustainability suggest two key insights. First, they highlight the complexity of the task – both in respect to the policy problems approached and in relation to processes needed to reach solutions. The diversity of circumstances, different local legacies, interweaving influences and rapidly evolving relationships across scales mean that while distinctive patterns of change can be identified at a macro scale (Primdahl & Swaffield, 2010), local contingency means that there are no universal or simple ‘one size fits all’ solutions concerning the future rural landscape. What is a workable solution for guiding change in a highly multifunctional Portuguese landscape may not make any sense in an intensively farmed New Zealand dairy landscape.

A second feature is the diversity of organisational and institutional arrangements that have the potential to ‘draw attention to the whole’ (Healey, 2009) and stimulate and coordinate action. As Hodge and Adams (2012) have pointed out, the nature of relationships between property rights, ownership, individual and collective decision-making concerning rural land management is changing, and they use the term ‘institutional blending’ to characterise the contemporary evolution of new governance frameworks that guide change processes. The cases reported here illustrate several examples of ‘blended’ organisational arrangements.

These features point to several practical and research challenges. Collaborative learning involves both experience and experimentation. This requires institutions that can mobilise common interest in landscape sustainability through processes that draw upon both local ideas and resources and wider repertoires of solutions. They also require governance arrangements that encourage and support experimentation. These may be expressed differently for local agents and for participating experts, and be expressed differently in different cultures and societies.

Building trust and dealing with rights are key dimensions in the meeting between the primary landscape agent – the farmer, the forester and other land managers – and the institutions of the public domain (Skytt & Winther, 2011). The former possess territorial competences (Hagarstrand, 2001) – defined in the developed world primarily by property rights and associated practices. Institutions represent a higher order of competence to regulate landscape management, based upon statutory powers and regulations, and vary from local administration to global political institutions. These are described as spatial competences in Hagarstrand’s (2001) conceptualisation. A deeper understanding of how spatial and territorial competences are interacting in a globalised world represents a major challenge for landscape researchers. Some spatial competences are becoming extremely centralised (land market policies, for example), and some primary agents with territorial competency are becoming economically very powerful, and frequently remote from the local landscape (large corporate land owners for example). The local community – here understood broadly as local networks (formal as well as informal) – may offer potential to bring the two types of competences constructively together within local landscapes.

Trust also requires results. A feature of the cases reported has been the need for clarity of focus upon the most effective actions/solutions in any particular situation. Experiments in landscape governance, therefore, need to be progressive – in the sense that learnings are drawn from other successful examples; pragmatic – in the sense of setting achievable targets that gain maximum leverage from existing resources; strategic – building confidence and coalitions that can stimulate and sustain further cycles of productive collaboration.

Agricultural landscapes are changing worldwide along different trajectories and in different local contexts. Understanding how to better manage the interaction of driving forces with local landscape sustainability is a key research area. Landscape researchers also have a role to play in identifying workable solutions; in supporting policy-making and institutional design; and in participating in the development of models for new and sustainable landscape management practices. Case studies of innovative practices as presented here are one way to identify types of solution and characteristics that may be useful exemplars for bridging between policy-makers and landscape experts on the one side, and those who manage the landscape on the other, and highlight potentially fruitful areas and questions for future inquiry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.