Making differences legible: Incommensurability as a vehicle for sustainable landscape management

Abstract

Landscape management involves tackling both systemic and social complexity: the former due to multiple interacting entities, the latter due to incommensurable knowledge and value systems of stakeholders. Current practice in landscape management makes wide use of participatory methods, which helps increase the breadth of our understanding of sustainability problems, e.g. biodiversity loss, agricultural pest damages or water penury. However, this practice also often offers a flat, harmonized picture of the landscape, which precludes observing ambiguities and out-of-the-box arguments and ideas for overcoming problems. In this article, we analyzed two research settings that tended to surface and formalize incommensurability between stakeholders regarding the sustainable management of landscapes -one focused on quantitative water management, the other on agroecological pest control. The objective was to investigate if and to which extent these 'opening-up' exercises, based on a deliberative rationale, were beneficial to landscape sustainability. The results indicated that in both cases, participants strove to position their knowledge and values relative to others: this way, they delineated a negotiation and learning space to invest in, and enhanced the quality of their arguments, allowing new insights on the focus issues. These findings offer an operational counterpoint to the prevalence of 'closingdown' approaches in landscape approaches. In the general context of ecological crisis, these examples promote methodological options that offer space to disruptive narratives, as well as tools that allow a reflexive use of the scientific knowledge, models and indicators traditionally used in sustainability appraisals, without discarding them.

Use of the term “landscape” in sustainable agriculture research: A literature review

“…A common definition in such form will allow addressing systemic and social complexity of human-nature systems (as defined by Allain & Salliou [ 83 ]), such as in the interest of research on sustainable agriculture. This definition echoes the concept of integrated landscape management, as a tool for promoting sustainable agriculture in practice.…”

“…Lack of actual integration between the disciplinary findings has been one of long-existing issues of many interdisciplinary projects in landscape research. This can be partly attributed to project design and coordination issues but is largely explained by the lack of common ground, including the understanding of terminology and the common goal [ [83] , [84] , [85] ]. In transdisciplinary research, the use of participatory methods allows to broaden our understanding of sustainability problems, but may result in a simplified and homogenized view of the landscape, hindering the recognition of ambiguities and innovative solutions to overcome challenges [ 83 ].…”

“…This can be partly attributed to project design and coordination issues but is largely explained by the lack of common ground, including the understanding of terminology and the common goal [ [83] , [84] , [85] ]. In transdisciplinary research, the use of participatory methods allows to broaden our understanding of sustainability problems, but may result in a simplified and homogenized view of the landscape, hindering the recognition of ambiguities and innovative solutions to overcome challenges [ 83 ]. Responding to Palang's [ 86 ] comparison of landscape interpretations to the Indian story about blind men describing an elephant, we believe that our definition will allow to not only identify the “body parts”, but conclude with the full-body picture of an “elephant in motion”.…”

“…Especially in transdisciplinary projects, it can be useful to include open conversations with relevant actors as the first step, to get a higher-level idea in respect to practical goals and problem views. An example reflecting the importance of this step has been reported by Allain & Salliou [ 83 ], who used a Bayesian model constructed with local stakeholders to understand the disparity between landscape ecologists' recommendations and farmers' practices in pest control. The study demonstrated the divergence in understanding of relationships within the landscape system (referred as “technical incommensurability”) and supported the establishment of priorities of priorities in research for pest control.…”

Science-design loop for the design of resilient urban landscapes

“…For complex problems involving different stakeholder perspectives, participatory visioning (Robinson, 2003) can help to establish a common vision (i.e., a common set of key variables, functions and performance criteria set in time). Several sets of variables, performance criteria, and functions can be established in case of incompatible perspectives (Campo et al, 2010;Allain & Salliou, 2022).…”