Landscape Character Assessment: A Method to Include Community Perspectives and Ecosystem Services in Land-use Planning

Abstract

As nature-based solutions (NbS) are increasingly acknowledged as important for restoring and enhancing ecosystems, in both the urban and rural contexts, deciding on the most appropriate for the specific situation is of paramount importance. This chapter introduces the technique of landscape character assessment, an established method to combine both professional and local community views about places and the current environmental, social, and economic issues affecting them. The way in which this was introduced to colleagues in Gujarat, India, to incorporate landscape values and community views into ecosystem service assessment, is described. This process is suggested as a robust, evidence based, method to inform the decision-making process. Successful implementation of nature-based solutions depends firstly on identification of the problem and involving a variety of perspectives, as in the method described, can ensure that this takes place and provides the basis for selection of the most appropriate solution.