Implementing Integrated Land Use Planning: A step-by-step guide for rural areas
INTRODUCTORY GUIDE: CHAPTER 1. NATURE AND SCOPE
1.6. Emerging issues in land use planning
1.6.5. Mainstreaming, upscaling, and outscaling land use planning results
The outcomes of a land use plan often include valuable land management practices that could be integrated into national strategies or applied elsewhere in the country or region. To achieve this, it is essential to assess the potential for mainstreaming, upscaling, and outscaling within land use planning strategies. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have distinct meanings, which are explained below.
- Mainstreaming refers to the process of making a concept or practice widely accepted and integrated into decision-making. In land use planning, it involves transitioning from research findings and initial concerns to formal inclusion in policies and institutional frameworks.
- Example: Environmental mainstreaming—the incorporation of environmental concerns into national, sectoral, and local development policies, regulations, plans, and investments (www.environmental-mainstreaming.org). Climate change and biodiversity, once niche topics, have now been mainstreamed into global policy agendas.
- Upscaling involves elevating a practice from local implementation to influence national or even global decision-making, investment programs, or policy frameworks.
- Outscaling refers to the replication and geographic expansion of best practices, increasing the number of people and organizations applying them. In land use planning, outscaling ensures that successful strategies are spread across similar regions with comparable conditions.
Strategy and Actions for Mainstreaming and Upscaling
The process of mainstreaming and upscaling begins with implementing selected management practices at local sites, followed by awareness-raising and capacity-building efforts. A diverse range of communication tools and learning materials can facilitate this process. Establishing a knowledge management platform ensures that information is publicly available, enabling stakeholders beyond the immediate project to engage in mutual learning and evidence-based decision-making.
To achieve long-term sustainability and effective outscaling, mainstreaming efforts should begin early in the planning process. A structured approach may include the following steps (Fegan, 2019):
Identify barriers and opportunities – Conduct a rapid assessment of political, institutional, technological, and economic factors that could hinder or facilitate implementation.
Analyze decision-making processes – Examine how decisions are currently made and explore ways to improve them through policy changes, legislation, financing mechanisms, and alignment with related programs.
Set mainstreaming objectives – Define the specific activities needed to integrate key practices into relevant decision-making frameworks.
Engage key stakeholders – Identify, characterize, and prioritize national and subnational institutions and other stakeholders essential to the mainstreaming process.
Develop an action plan – Outline activities, roles, and responsibilities required to achieve mainstreaming and incorporate these into the project’s broader work plan.
Outscaling
Expanding successful land management practices to wider areas requires identifying regions with similar biophysical (soil, terrain, climate, landscape), land use, and socio-economic characteristics. GIS-based applications are particularly useful in this regard, enabling the spatial identification of outscaling domains at multiple scales.
Proven tools for outscaling include:
• Global Agro-Ecological Zones (GAEZ)
• Land-Potential Knowledge System (LandPKS)
• Quantitative Mapping (QM)
Examples of outscaling approaches include:
• Mapping extrapolation domains and assessing adoption potential for sustainable land management (Ziadat et al., 2015)
• Identifying suitable areas for conservation agriculture (FAO, 2014b)
• Introducing animal breeds in regions with compatible environmental conditions (De Pauw et al., 2011)
• Expanding Climate-Smart Agriculture strategies (Notenbaert et al., 2017)
By leveraging these tools and approaches, land use planning can ensure that successful practices are effectively adapted and implemented at larger scales.