October 29, 2026
by Tom Derr and Juan Ramos
In his recent publication, A brief history of everything (having to do with integrated landscape management), our colleague Seth Shames describes landscapes as “relational systems of responsibilities among humans, plants, animals, waters, spirits and place.” This idea is not new, but it is gaining mainstream attention. Practitioners, policymakers and funders increasingly recognize that environmental and social outcomes depend on the strength of a landscape’s relationships, both human and ecological.
Most sustainable development and conservation projects focus on the relationship between people and nature. Their funding goes toward practices that change how people interact with ecological systems, such as regenerative agriculture, water conservation and protected area management. This is often within the context of a specific project and what we usually call implementation funding. Integrated landscape approaches (ILAs) have the potential to coordinate these funding sources and projects so they complement one another and build thriving, interconnected systems.
But ILAs must also consider relationships and coordination across sectors and groups of people with different interests, whether they are aligned or not. The co-creation, management and evaluation of multi-actor partnerships are the cornerstone of every landscape initiative. They function as systems of governance, bringing together formal and informal institutions to facilitate and coordinate action across sectors, negotiate tradeoffs, and make collective decisions about land and water use, resource access, management and equity.
Governance underpins successful project implementation and is the connective tissue between projects, yet it is rarely funded. Landscape initiatives often rely instead on institutional goodwill, volunteer time and unpaid effort to keep a minimum viable governance system afloat. Practitioners know this problem well, but establishing governance as a legitimate and visible function deserving of its own funding has remained a struggle.
To elevate the importance of this long-recognized but rarely acted on challenge, Persimmon Co-Lab together with EcoAgriculture Partners, UNU-Institute for Advanced Study of Sustainability and the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People initiative are pleased to present a new policy report on The True Cost of Governance in Integrated Landscape Approaches.
Landscape governance is messy, and that’s a good thing
Ask ten landscape practitioners to define governance and you may get ten different answers. Governance is specific to its context and shaped by each landscape’s history and culture. Practitioners must spend significant time and resources building relationships and navigating the nested, hybrid mix of formal and informal systems that have to work together. As a result, almost every landscape governance system is unique.
Like the landscapes they serve, good governance systems resist simplification. They work best when they grapple fully with the complexities of socio-ecological systems. An oversimplified system risks avoiding discrepancies between actors that most need to be raised. Left unaddressed, those discrepancies can entrench existing inequalities and status quo management, eroding trust along the way.
When partners have time to engage meaningfully in the relationship-building side of governance, implementation outcomes are more likely to last, meet everyone’s needs and foster innovation. Governance creates space to work through difficult dynamics through regular, facilitated dialogue and foster trust. It is the connective tissue that makes coordinated action possible.
From a funding perspective this may feel counterintuitive, but de-risking and supporting effective governance means embracing its messiness rather than avoiding it. It also means thinking about creating linked governance and resourcing infrastructure that embraces a systems approach. This is where making sure the true cost of landscape governance is visible and accounted for comes into play.
Learning from practitioners
The report draws on 30 landscape initiatives from around the world. Their experience shows that governance should be treated as a recurring operating requirement and implementation investment. Without it, participation, coordination, evidence systems and institutional continuity weaken, and the broader investment in socio-ecological resilience becomes less coherent, less effective and less adept at managing risk.
Based on practitioners’ accounts, this report outlines rough annual cost ranges for minimum viable governance. Most reported major funding gaps, which suggests that most landscape initiatives are operating without adequately funded governance systems. The functions most often left underfunded are those most critical for effective governance, including:
Core coordination and secretariat support
Meaningful participation support
Facilitation and trust-building
Monitoring and adaptive management
Data and information systems
Communication and continuity
Communities, local leaders, customary institutions, civil society organizations, technical partners and individual practitioners try to fill these gaps. They contribute unpaid labor, local knowledge, monitoring, translation, convening support, conflict management and time. These contributions are rarely costed, reported or recognized as operating requirements, undermining sustained resilience in the long-term.
Funding governance has transformative potential
The vast majority of landscape funding goes to project implementation. Governance funding, when it arrives at all, is usually buried in indirect costs. Making governance its own funding category will help landscape initiatives, and the funders that support this work, build and sustain the relationships between people on which implementation depends.
Deepening connections between people is a critical pathway to deepening our connection with nature. Good governance fosters a sense of place and belonging that inspires genuine collective action. Funding it adequately means supporting the difficult, deeply rewarding work of reconciling differences among landscape actors. Without that work, collaboration struggles.
To make governance a centerpiece of landscape action, we recommend the following:
Recognize ILAs as a delivery mechanism for policy convergence.
Treat landscape governance infrastructure as part of implementation packages.
Fund legitimate and inclusive governance systems.
Connect governance funding to mission-oriented landscape finance.
Require costed governance functions in landscape programme and investment design.
Shift toward predictable, multi-year resourcing and applied learning.
The findings in this report are just the beginning. The importance of funding landscape governance has been under-recognized for far too long. Our hope is that this report will kickstart further research and dialogue that raises awareness and strengthens funding for landscape governance.
We look forward to continued collaboration with the dozens of landscapes that contributed to this report and towards forging new relationships as we move this conversation forward.
