Towards inclusive and negotiated environmental governance The potential of multistakeholder platforms for landscape approaches in Southern Zambia

The global demand for land, water and other natural resources, combined with the impacts of climate change and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, is causing constant pressure on the Earth’s ability to sustainably provide ecosystem services and cope with economic and socio-ecological dynamics. To address these ‘wicked problems’, the concept of integrated landscape approaches (ILAs) and its application is being promoted to help address such interconnected global challenges. This thesis critically examines some ILA assumptions about conservation-development trade-off negotiations in a region where competing land-use interests among diverse stakeholders prevail. It seeks to understand how ‘common concerns’ and ‘negotiated change logic’ are achieved in MSPs considering power imbalances and diverse stakeholder s’ land-use interests in a contested landscape in Zambia. Anchored in landscape governance theory, this research argues that effective landscape governance requires an understanding of the various stakeholders involved and the economic and socio-political factors that influence land-use decisions. The thesis contributes to ILA debates by foregrounding the centrality of MSP as spaces of dialogue and analyses socio-political processes that must be considered when implementing ILAs in the Global South. Although a case study in Zambia’s Kalomo District, the findings reveal several dimensions that have broader application to similar tropical contexts that struggle to implement landscape approaches due to conflicting land-use interests. Conclusively, this thesis demonstrates that MSPs are potentially inclusive governance institutions that facilitate the co-designing of a socio-political process for negotiating trade-offs and leveraging synergies between conservation and development in a legally pluralistic and multi-level governance settings.