Implementing Landscape-scale Environmental Management: Landscape Enterprise Networks

Abstract This article considers the use of Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) as an innovative model for developing collaborative landscape-scale environmental management. It does so by relying on case studies to present LENs as a model that can be successfully used to create, and then manage, the market for ecosystem services provided by multi-functional landscapes. LENs can, for example, be used to address diffuse water pollution and to establish landscape-scale biodiversity and pollution ‘offsets’ through the creation of new wetlands or large-scale rewilding initiatives. The analysis presented here concludes that LENs offers an imaginative and valuable tool for landscape-level environmental management but that changes will be needed in the legal framework for property rights and development planning if it is to fulfill its considerable potential. The governance arrangements for functioning LENs will also need refinement to introduce greater transparency, strategic direction and accountability to their future development.