Putting 2030 Agenda into practice, how the landscape perspective can contribute?

It has been over a year since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the historic signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. Both of these events put forward a new agenda for development, and those who work in this field have been looking into the ways to navigate in this new context. So what is happening in Sweden in this respect and how can Swedish actors contribute to the realization of the ambitious development agenda on a global level? A group of Swedish actors who work with international development and environmental issues gathered in Stockholm to share opinions and exchange experience about their work on the 2030 Agenda.

Why taking a landscape perspective?

Let us start with a quote from the workshop by Mia Crawford, Deputy Director at Swedish Ministry for Enterprise and Innovation: “This is a scale where people work and live – a level that engages people in a meaningful way. It is also an interesting scale where different interests come together. Thus, finding solutions at this level can really make a difference.”

Anders Malmer, Director at SLU Global, provided some background for the discussion by sharing an interpretation of the landscape perspective and explained that over the recent years the landscape approach has been gaining scientific weight and public attention. This is reflected in the growing popularity of the Global Landscape Forum which has become the largest side event at the COP.

Creating holistic understanding of SDGs

Ingrid Petersson, Director General at Formas and member of the Swedish 2030 Agenda Delegation told about her work. The delegation was inaugurated by the government as a temporary authority to support and stimulate implementation of the 2030 Agenda. “Sweden has an ambition to be a frontrunner in the implementation of the SDGs. Compared to many other countries, Sweden is advanced in sustainability, but has its own challenges related to gender inequality, education and offset ecological footprints. A key strategy of the delegation is to work in participatory dialogues, with all sectors of the Swedish society.” Petersson also commended that working with integrated perspectives in mind, such as the landscape approach, can help to fill gaps and help to understand synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs.

Flyer from the workshop “Putting Agenda 2030 into practice – how the landscape perspective can contribute”Flyer from the workshop “Putting Agenda 2030 into practice – how the landscape perspective can contribute”

Multifunctional landscapes deliver on the SDGs

Mia Crawford, Deputy Director at the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, who was involved in negotiations of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, told that there is no landscape strategy in Swedish policies as such. “And maybe there is no need for one”, she said, adding that the international community sees landscape approach as a working method, which should not be institutionalized. “For example, there is no reference to it in the Paris Climate Agreement, but the approach is still very relevant for its implementation.” Crawford exemplified that it is well known that most of deforestation originates from outside the forest sector: “A challenge in addressing this”, she stressed, “is in the fact that cross-sector approaches can often interfere with national sovereignty. Hopefully, the SDGs and the Climate Agreement can help overcoming this through influencing discussions on a national level.”

Fulfilment of SDGs depends on natural resources

Representing Sweden’s work abroad Maria Berlekom, Lead Policy Specialist for Environment and Climate Change at Sida, continued by saying that Sweden is well-positioned to work with the landscape approach in the international context. Berlekom shared that the 2030 Agenda is now a reference point for the new policy framework on Swedish development cooperation. Sida is now going back to a more multidimensional understanding of poverty, looking at it through the prism of conflicts, climate change and human rights. This perspective integrates the vision of the 2030 Agenda with the landscape approach, said Berlekom.

Berlekom used the “SDG cake” image developed by J. Rockström and P. Sukhtev, to visualize how Sida interprets the landscape approach “We are dependent on the natural resources, the planet, and we can’t move out of this”. She believes that the landscape perspective provides a good entry point to understand ecosystem services we depend on. She also expressed hope that Sida could become better at including these perspectives in dialogues with partners: “when working in real contexts it´s clear that this is the reality people live in.”