**1. Introduction**

Many landscapes are challenged by the competing demands of resources, leaving billions of people and many economies at risk [1]. One response to this risk is the use of a landscape scale, valuable for planning and decision-making. This allows the integration of various sector plans and programs (e.g., agriculture, forestry, conservation) across one social, environmental, and spatial context [2]. Here we define a landscape as "A socio-ecological system that consists of a mosaic of natural and human-modified ecosystems, with a characteristic configuration of topography, vegetation, land use, and settlements that is influenced by the ecological, historical, economic and, cultural processes and activities of the area. A landscape may encompass areas from hundreds to tens of thousands of square kilometres" [3]. Conservation initiatives at the landscape scale became popular in the 1980s [4], when a holistic concept was needed for addressing environmental issues at a broader scale [5]. For the case of protected areas (PAs), the focus of this paper, this approach enabled conservationists to integrate these units into the wider landscape. Since then, the landscape approach has flourished as a concept from the mid-2000s [6] to the present. In this paper, we refer to these areas as PA landscapes, in the same way that one may think of the Serengeti landscape.

Often seen as sets of overlapping ecological, social, and economic networks within a specific area, landscapes are considered to be a good scale for dealing with protected area (PA) issues [7,8] and for achieving sustainability [9]. In this context, landscape approaches (LAs) became popular. LAs are participatory processes for addressing landscape-level issues (e.g., competition for natural resources or land) by bringing together stakeholders from di fferent sectors through decision-making processes or policy-practice integration [4,10]. LAs comprise numerous types, from community-based natural resource managemen<sup>t</sup> to integrated water resource managemen<sup>t</sup> [11].

Recent principles which guide implementation of LAs [10] reflect the participatory nature of landscape governance with several focusing on rights and responsibilities, justice, recognition of multiple stakeholders, equity, and the access of information. Improving governance can contribute to enhanced conservation outcomes [12,13], by addressing power, responsibility, accountability, and rights as part of a dynamic process [14]. Natural resource governance is defined as the norms, institutions, and processes that determine how power and responsibilities over natural resources are exercised, how decisions are taken, and how rights-holders and stakeholders (including women, men, youth, Indigenous peoples, and local communities) secure access to, participate in, and are impacted by the use and managemen<sup>t</sup> of natural resources [15]. At the landscape level, governance is further complicated by the values of stakeholders pursuing their interests, such as food production or biodiversity conservation [16]. Increased attention to LAs and the associated place of governance at the landscape scale allows for greater attention be given to issues around inclusive decision-making [2] and can enable a decision-making space across institutions, processes, and stakeholders (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** The structure of landscape governance, adapted from [17].

Decision-making processes and institutions are the vehicles through which stakeholders come together to discuss and resolve natural resource issues. Inclusive decision-making in these processes is central to landscape governance and ye<sup>t</sup> remains one of its challenges [18]. Inclusive decision-making is "based on the full and e ffective participation of all relevant actors, with particular attention to the voice and inclusion of rights-holders and groups at risk of marginalisation" [15:3]. Inclusive decision-making often focuses on participation, which attempts to ensure that rights-holders and stakeholders are represented and can have a say in making decisions [19]. In summarising research on the topic, Oyono and Mandondo [20] indicate that inclusive decision-making is meant to guarantee recognition and protect against marginalisation. Although it is but one aspect of governance [21], it is central to landscape governance and so the focus of this paper. In many landscapes, decisions are not made on a level playing field, with significant di fferences in the ability of stakeholders to participate and have their voice heard [22].

Landscape governance also must be understood within a landscape's historical and cultural contexts and analysed in reference to the relationships amongs<sup>t</sup> stakeholders in decision-making processes. Landscapes are shaped by inter-relationships of societies; protected area landscapes can be seen as cultural landscapes where societies and nature have evolved together over time [8]. Landscapes within which conservation projects take place are part of broader social-ecological systems where governance influences conservation [23]. Treating landscapes as ahistorical entities erases the ability of people to assert their power to govern them today [24]. Landscape approaches and their governance may reinforce colonial legacies that distorted cultural managemen<sup>t</sup> arrangements [25]. Historical legacies of particular institutions can leave marks on people and their memories within a landscape where past relations between stakeholders continue to influence present-day power dynamics [26]. Therefore, how stakeholders perceive institutions and their managemen<sup>t</sup> decisions is key to landscape governance; it may also be decisive on if and how they engage [27].

Although landscape approaches and governance are promoted internationally including by agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity [28], landscapes may have several institutions managing portions of them from customary and elected authorities to park managers and private stakeholders, with potentially no landscape-level authority to bring decision-making together. Given the diversity of institutions and stakeholders in a landscape, and the di fficulties in ensuring inclusive decision-making, evaluating landscape governance can help surface and address underlying issues such as problems with inclusive decision-making. However, resolving governance issues remains a challenge for many landscape practitioners [29]. In places where LAs are being used, how can governance be improved? One way is through understanding stakeholder perceptions and applying them to learn with stakeholders on how to e ffectuate change in landscape governance [30].

PA managemen<sup>t</sup> and governance should include the opinion and perception of the di fferent stakeholders [31], with perceptions forming an important basis of understanding how people view conservation [30]. Stakeholders hold di fferent perceptions, given their socioeconomic and cultural di fferences [32], and the actions pursued by these stakeholders are often based on their experiences, culture, knowledge, and perceptions [33]. These perceptions can be used to support inclusive decision-making and promote action [32]. When perceptions are presented back to landscape stakeholders, a space for dialogue can be created where stakeholders can share experiences, learn about issues, identify problems and solutions, and potentially enact change.

In the context of two PA landscapes in Uganda where LAs are being implemented through a wider project on landscape governance, we sought to analyse stakeholder perceptions of inclusive decision-making and then use this to stimulate dialogue amongs<sup>t</sup> stakeholder groups in each landscape. We ask, how can capturing, analysing and collaboratively applying people's perceptions foster inclusive decision-making at the landscape level?

Due to the confluence of diverse climates and altitudinal ranges in its territory, creating a variety of habitats, relative to its area, Uganda is a biodiverse country, with 1742 terrestrial vertebrate species [34] 4816 plant species [35,36], 1300 species of butterflies, and 260 dragonfly species [34]. However, the country lost half of its overall biodiversity value from 1975 to 1995 [37] due to habitat loss, agricultural encroachment, and expansion, climate change e ffects, and over-harvesting of resources, among others.

Protected areas (PAs) in the country, which shelter an estimated 95 per cent of the animal and plant species [38], fall under two main types in Uganda: forest reserves (24 per cent) and wildlife conservation areas (10 per cent) [39]. Most game and forest reserves were established for colonial interests (hunting, timber, and forest products) during the early 1900s, under the British colonial rule [40]. Nature conservation was not the original objective of PAs [41], and communities were excluded from the resource use and decision-making [42]. Approaches to nature conservation [43] and community inclusion in the conservation policy process [44,45] appeared only later in the 1980s and '90s; this is mirrored in Uganda's policy history (Figure 2). Forest policy in Uganda has followed a similar trend, with a participatory approach occurring in the last two decades [46]. Despite Uganda's PAs not being designed for conservation in the past, they still provide a basis for conservation, if the power relations embedded in their managemen<sup>t</sup> can be balanced to avoid their use by political elites at the expense of conservation [47].

**Figure 2.** Timeline showing Wildlife and Forest Reserves' main events and policy.

In Uganda, two main categories of forests exist—those within PAs and those on private and communal land. Within PAs, protected forests fall under Central Forest Reserves (CFRs), managed, under the Public Trust Doctrine, for and on behalf of the people, by the National Forestry Authority (NFA), Local Forest Reserves (LFRs), managed by the District Local Governments (DLG) [48], and Private and Community Forests, managed by communities and individuals on the basis of owning the land on which the forests are located (as per the Land Act). In 1996, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) was established from the Uganda National Parks and Game Department. A semi-autonomous governmen<sup>t</sup> agency, UWA is mandated to ensure sustainable managemen<sup>t</sup> of wildlife resources and supervise wildlife activities in Uganda both within and outside the PAs. Currently, UWA manages 10 national parks, 12 wildlife reserves, five Community Wildlife Management Areas, and 13 Wildlife Sanctuaries, in addition to all wildlife outside wildlife protected areas [49].

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

*The study sites:* This study was implemented at two Sites: the Agoro-Agu Landscape (AAL) (also known as East Acholi Landscape) (encompassing the districts of Lamwo, Pader, Kitgum, and Agago and 16 Central Forest Reserves covering 65,548 ha under one Forest Management Planning Area) and the Mount Elgon Landscape (MEL) (the Bududa and Namisindwa Districts and Mount Elgon National Park) (Figure 3). These two sites were selected because both participated in a landscape governance project and are places where the International Union for Conservation of Nature had been engaging with communities for several years. It was realised that both landscapes did not address governance in the whole landscape. In addition, the two landscapes are trans-boundary biodiversity hotspots in Uganda (Mount Elgon being a UNSECO Man and Biosphere Transboundary Reserve between Uganda and Kenya and Agoro-Agu, a Transboundary Forest Reserve between Uganda and South Sudan).

**Figure 3.** The Agoro-Agu and Mount Elgon Landscapes/study sites. The red square identifies Agoro-Agu, and the blue Mount Elgon.

The work reported here was intended to foster improved landscape governance in each landscape as part of a wider conservation project. It was not meant to compare the landscapes to each other. Notably, these landscapes are managed by different conservation authorities, with different styles of engagemen<sup>t</sup> with local communities. Furthermore, the northern Agoro-Agu landscape endured a civil war, while the Mount Elgon landscape did not. Finally, the colonial history with the north focused on combining customary authorities under a single, invented ethnicity and then marginalised these populations vis-à-vis their engagemen<sup>t</sup> with southern Ugandan populations, such as those in the Mount Elgon area. These differences are further detailed in the following section.

*The Agoro-Agu Landscape (AAL):* AAL is part of the Acholi subregion, in northern Uganda. The study site includes the Agoro-Agu CFR, Lalak CFR and vicinities. The Agoro-Agu Forest Reserve (264 sq. kms), was established in 1937, and gazetted as a CFR in 1948, and is part of a transboundary PA complex with South Sudan's Imatong Forest Reserve [50,51]. This area is found in the Lamwo district, which has a population density of 25.43 people per sq. km (2019 projected). The region's population doubled between 1991 and 2019 [52]. The AAL's main ethnic group is the Acholi. The Acholi are a Luo people, who migrated into northern Uganda from South Sudan. Prior to colonisation by the British, there were approximately 60 chiefdoms, each governed by a *Rwot*, the hereditary leader. In pre-colonial times, important decisions that would impact a community could only be dealt with through consensus of clan representatives. The British grouped these chiefdoms together under a single ethnicity and administrative area, and systematically marginalised the Acholi from schooling to labour [53]. Despite this, the Acholi nationality has been adopted and used to challenge state authority [54]. Customary authority continues today, but the legitimacy of the *Rwot* is sometimes challenged by community members, including youth [55].

The AAL su ffered from persistent conflict in the mid-1980s, including the Lord's Resistance Army civil war against Uganda's Government and conflicts in neighbouring South Sudan. Northern Uganda features hybrid governance, where formal state authority simultaneously competes and cooperates with traditional forms of customary authority [56].

The prevalent form of land tenure in the region is customary tenure (93 per cent of lands in Acholiland) [57,58]. The Agoro-Agu CFR is the geographical extension of the Imatong Mountains into the Northern region of Uganda from South Sudan [59]. This mountain region is rich in biodiversity and holds many endemic and endangered species [60]. The vegetation includes Afromontane forests, shrublands, woody grasslands, and bamboos [59]. The Lalak CFR was gazetted in 1948 and covers 2,212 hectares, comprising mainly woodlands and to a lesser extent, grasslands and small-scale cultivation [51]. Although there is no documented evidence that displacement happened when the CFRs were created, they did result in changes in ownership, access and use, a type of displacement [47].

*Mount Elgon Landscape (MEL):* The MEL is located in southern eastern Uganda along the Kenya border. The national park is 1110 sq. km., and is part of a transboundary PA complex with neighbouring Kenya [50]. The Mount Elgon PA is in the area of two ethnic groups—the Sabiny ethnic group to the north and the Bagisu ethnic group to the south. The Sabiny people were originally pastoral but shifted towards agriculture in the 1980s in light of the introduction of hybrid corn, new ploughing techniques, market expansion, and attacks by the neighbouring Karamojong people [61]. The Bagisu people have lived in Mount Elgon for centuries [62]. Due to colonial pressure on land availability, they migrated northward and are closely related to the Luhya people in Kenya [63].

Areas surrounding the park are densely populated, and the population density on the slopes in surrounding districts is high. In 2002, human population densities in the surrounding parishes ranged from 150 people per sq. km in the north and northeast to more than 1000 people per sq. km in the west [64].

Mount Elgon is an extinct volcano known for its diversity of endemic species and considered by conservation scientists to be irreplaceable [34]. The vegetation consists of four major vegetation types: (a) mixed montane forest (up to 2500 m), (b) bamboo and low canopy montane forest (2400–3000 m), (c) high montane heath (3000–3500 m), and (d) moorland (>3500 m). The high-altitude moorland and heath zones are rich in species endemic to Mount Elgon or shared with other east African mountains [65]. Despite frequent landslides, these occur independently of anthropogenic influence [66].

Mount Elgon was first gazetted in 1929 as a forest reserve, for its role as a watershed and for timber [67]. It was modified in 1993 to a national park status [47] and designated as a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve in 2005. This change in legal status to a national park resulted in increased restrictions of access by local people for their livelihoods, and also access to cultural sites [68]. The MEL has a history of displacement [69]. Endemic species and degraded land justified the evictions of the society [47,70–72]. Parts of the park were encroached due to persistent raiding by the Karimojong who forced the Sabiny people up the mountain, forcing UWA to excise an area of about 75 sq. km from the park for settlement [73]. Estimations of evictions were as many as 300,000 people [74]. Conflicts with managing authorities remain [67], due to high population density, scarce natural resources, and a largely poor population highly dependent on agriculture.

*Material:* We collected and analysed local stakeholder perceptions using SenseMaker ®, a software tool that enables quantitative analysis of micronarratives (stories) from the field [75]. Sensemaking is part of a research tradition which aims to "make sense" of complex situations, including those where power di fferences are likely in participating groups, allowing for diverse perspectives including strong points of agreemen<sup>t</sup> and disagreement [76]. People are storytellers, with narratives forming an important part of their communication [77]. SenseMaker ® uses these narratives to access multiple perspectives of complex situations through the identification of patterns around topics of interest and allows for meta-analysis of qualitative data that bridges a gap between case studies and large-sample survey data. This approach has been used by others as a monitoring tool [78] for evaluating farmer's perceptions [79], and in climate change policy [80]. One of the reasons for using SenseMaker ® was to gain rapid access to multiple perspectives of complex situations through the identification of patterns around topics of interest. It also allows the respondents to self-signify their story, and thus reduce the risk of imposing external biases during the analysis. In our study, the dataset obtained serves as a benchmark for determining current target stakeholder perceptions about how existing landscape governance approaches meet their expectations with regard to inclusive decision-making, amongs<sup>t</sup> other issues.

*Method:* The SenseMaker ® process comprises multiple steps from designing the framework to collecting and analysing data and then presenting this back to communities (Figure 4). The project team introduced SenseMaker ® to all the partners during a two-day workshop in Entebbe, Uganda in February 2018 and presented a draft questionnaire. Participants provided inputs to develop the SenseMaker ® Signification Framework, which includes a prompting question that encourages informants to share a compelling story about a topic of interest; after this, sub-questions were asked to enable respondents to add meaning to their story, helping to signify the importance of their story and classify it. Workshop participants decided on the following prompting question: "Reflecting on (Mount Elgon National Park OR Agoro-Agu Central Forest Reserve) can you share a positive or negative experience that you (your family or your community) had in/with this area? Please describe what happened." After the micronarrative was provided in response to the prompting question, participants were asked to "signify" the context of their own story through a series of triad questions which place the micronarrative in the relative context of three concepts, especially those that give insight to trade-o ffs (Figure A2, Appendix A). Dyads were then used to indicate the relative strength of a particular idea, between two opposing options (Figure A3, Appendix A). Stones were used to make comparisons of three or more elements along two axes to di fferentiate how groups may perceive the same issue di fferently (Figure A3, Appendix A) [81]. Multiple-choice demographic questions allowed for secondary analysis of the data. In this analysis, we only focus on a subset of the data collected to answer the research question (Figure A4, Appendix A).

**Figure 4.** The SenseMaker ® Process.

In June 2018, the project team conducted a SenseMaker ® training and data collection exercise involving 20 students from Busitema University and six DLG sta ff from Lamwo, Bududa, and Namisindwa. The criteria applied for the selection of enumerators included interest in the tool, local language skills, and knowledge of the study area. Selected candidates followed a two-day training on the tool and adapted and translated the questionnaire from English to the two local languages

(Luo for Lamwo District and Lumasaba for Mount Elgon). The enumerator teams then travelled to MEL and AAL to test, adapt, and finalise the questionnaire.

Over four days in each study area, the 20 enumerators collected 235 stories in MEL (67 in Bududa district and 168 in Namisindwa district), and 229 in AAL (158 in Lamwo district/Central Forest Reserve (CFR) Agoro-Agu and 71 in Lamwo district/Lalak CFR). Local Council Chairpersons and Chiefs personally mobilised the participants from home to home and through telephone calls to participate at a central location commonly used for meetings. Participants were then surveyed at these locations.

The stories collected were translated from the local language to English and entered into the Sensemaker ® system. Respondents were 57.5 per cent male and 42.5 per cent female, and the majority were aged between 36 and 55 years old. Fifty-two per cent had primary education. The majority of respondents sourced their income from agriculture, used their land for forestry, had lived in the area for 20 years or more, and lived close to one of the PAs.

An analysis workshop was organised in October 2018 in Gland, Switzerland. Quantitative analyses were used to identify trends in the stories. Signifier and modifier questions were also applied to the prompting question to identify characteristics of the stories and to explore governance issues related to inclusive decision-making. In November 2018, the project team conducted a three-day community participatory feedback session in each landscape to enabled respondents and stakeholders to validate and "make sense" of the patterns that emerged from the data analysis and to develop propositions on how to improve the relations between communities and PA managemen<sup>t</sup> in the two landscapes. During these workshops, participants also read some of the stories collected. After reading the stories, they were asked to interpret the stories, providing feedback based on their daily activities, and bring insights to the stories. One of the main challenges encountered during the data analysis was the possible time lag between when the stories were told and when they actually happened. As it was not possible to make that distinction during the initial data analysis process, it was, thus fundamental to have a second-level analysis planned through a human sense-making process to validate the findings. The main objectives of the participatory feedback exercise were to (a) Give the participants (all communities interviewed in June 2018, political leaders, and technical sta ff) an opportunity to discuss the patterns of practice and create a common understanding of the changes, challenges, and opportunities in the landscapes; and (b) Deliberate on the key outcomes of the survey and develop action strategies. Participants were trained to read and interpret the stories and to bring new insights to the stories and analysis. These feedback sessions provided participants with an opportunity to make proposals on how to improve working relations between the local communities and the statutory PA managemen<sup>t</sup> authorities and governance in the two landscapes. Once these discussions were concluded, presentations were made on the responses and perspectives from the NFA, UWA, and DLG representatives on participants' expectations and experiences followed by questions and answers sessions.
