The ‘landscape’ view has risen in importance within discussions on sustainability, resilience, improved agriculture and climate change. This is particularly evident in large parts of the developing world where landscapes are heterogenic in character and the sectorial divisions of agricultural, pastoral and forestry land use are less evident. The landscape lens is a tool to help us work with geographical areas in a state of flux.
Recently at the Rio+20 the focus on agriculture and rural development was superseded in discussions by a need to focus on landscapes as a more inclusive and dynamic measure in which to situate both research and policy. Within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) two policy processes are relevant in terms of a move towards a landscape approach for carbon accounting. Within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) there is an ongoing discussion on expanding the land use, land use change and forestry activities (LULUCF) from the present possibilities narrowed down to only afforestation and reforestation or pure agricultural projects to a more inclusive variety of projects. Within the discussions on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) a move has evolved from pure deforestation as it was in the beginning to a more complex interactive approach including also drivers of deforestation and degradation, such as agricultural expansion.