Participatory Use of a Tool to Assess Governance for Sustainable Landscapes

This journal article, the last of the series on Jurisdictional Approaches to Sustainability in the Tropics, explores the effects of stakeholder involvement in the validation process part of the assessment for jurisdictional sustainability using the Sustainable Landscapes Rating Tool (SLRT). This multi-stakeholder validation workshop complements publicly available information and interviews with stakeholders in the jurisdiction in SLRT assessment. The analysis shows that the validation workshops often led to modifications of the SLRT indicator ratings, even for indicators originally assessed using publicly available data. This highlights the gap between a policy and its implementation. The study also concluded that the composition of stakeholders influenced the results – a more diverse composition led to more changes in indicator ratings. These workshops also provide space for discussions between representatives from government agencies, CSOs, producer organisations, indigenous peoples, local communities, and research community on policy and governance.