Landscape Governance

This course is a part of Sustainable & Inclusive Landscapes, a 4-course Professional Certificate series from edX.

Increasing global complexities and interconnectedness offer both opportunities and challenges to our collective ability to deal with climate change, food insecurity, resource depletion and degradation and the many conflicts that arise due to scarcity. The solutions to many of these issues need both global attention, but also local action.

Join this MOOC, to kick-start your efforts to unite stakeholders and design governance structures, processes and partnerships embedded in place that capitalize on strengths and balance and mitigate threats.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and building healthy and productive landscapes can only happen with effective stakeholder engagement. Landscape governance is therefore key to balance and manage the many trade-offs and interdependencies that happen across sectors and scales in and around landscapes.

Taking this online course requires you to look at a landscape and its governance from a new perspective. With the landscape as the place, you will think spatially and explore transboundary governance that flows from the natural landscape and overcomes static, traditional administrative levels and barriers.

Once you sign up, you'll be whisked away to exciting real-world landscapes to learn from global experiences and see how even in the most challenging circumstances, effective governance leads to innovation and sustainable development in landscapes.

You'll also be challenged to assess the roles of formal and informal institutions in a highly interactive fashion. By the end of this course, you have analysed the multi-actor, multi-sector and multi-scale character of a landscape which is necessary to create sustainable and innovative landscape governance arrangements.

Professional Certificate Programme: Sustainable and Inclusive Landscapes

This course is also part of the Sustainable and Inclusive Landscapes Professional Certificate Programme. Following the complete programme lets you harness the power of place and advance your career as a landscape leader. The programme consists of the following courses, which can be taken in any given order:

Landscape Leadership: Catalyse Sustainable Development in Landscapes

Landscape Finance: Investing in Innovation for Sustainable Landscapes

Climate Action in Biodiverse Landscapes

Landscape Governance: Collaborating Across Sectors and Scales (this course)

Collaboration

This course has been designed by Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, with contributions from the Horn of Africa Regional Centre (HOAREC) in Ethiopia, and South Rift Association of Land Owners (SORALO) in Kenya. It has been financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality.

What you'll learn

• How to apply an integrated and spatial approach and to think beyond traditional governance arrangements
• Understand and manage landscape and stakeholder dynamics for successful landscape interventions
• Learn why formal and informal institutions are key to landscape governance
• Explore opportunities for achieving policy integration within your own landscape
• Analyse the strengths and weaknesses within your landscape and create innovative governance arrangements at landscape level