Integrated landscape initiatives have shown promising potential to mobilize and support diverse stakeholders across sectors to work jointly toward shared objectives. However, few integrated landscape initiatives have had access to the finance needed to achieve their goals. There is a clear mismatch between the supply side of private “impact investors” and the demand side of sustainable land-use investments on the ground.
One of the major barriers to investments in integrated landscape initiatives is the risk that investors associate with such investments. At the same time, there are cases where investments are available, but do not support shared landscape objectives (social, economic and environmental). Pilot applications of a methodology to analyze financial flows at the landscape level showed that, in some landscapes, private finance was readily available, but only a small proportion of it was geared to objectives that aligned with integrated landscape management.
Tropenbos International together with World Agroforestry (ICRAF) developed a methodology that helps identify the key stakeholders linked to financial flows for integrated landscape management, their perspectives and motivations, and the mechanisms used to channel funding from investors through brokers or intermediaries to individual or recipient groups that support integrated landscape initiatives. The methodology emphasizes identifying and assessing the risks and barriers perceived by various stakeholder groups; the range of strategies they employ to reduce or overcome these barriers; and the extent to which these strategies have succeeded.
The methodology comprises three phases during which base information is gathered from key informants through interviews and focus group discussions. From this information base lessons can be drawn to be used in the design of processes that support inclusive financing for integrated landscape initiatives.
This methodology forms the basis for a series of case studies implemented by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) and associated partners. The findings of those case studies are expected to inform the design of mechanisms for financing integrated landscape initiatives and, ultimately, to facilitate the flow of finance to support shared landscape objectives in tropical countries.
