Global Agenda Blueprints for a Greener Footprint

The document advocates for transforming development planning from a project-by-project approach to landscape-scale planning (LSP). It argues that LSP allows governments and businesses to identify critical resources, manage cumulative impacts, and reduce social conflicts and costs by planning at a larger spatial and temporal scale before major investments are made. The report highlights technical advancements in remote sensing and GIS that make LSP feasible and provides examples of its application in sectors like mining and energy across various global regions.

• Project-level planning often fails to address cumulative impacts, leading to increased company-community conflicts. For example, mining project conflicts increased several-fold between 2002 and 2013, with environmental concerns being the primary cause.
• Landscape-scale planning (LSP) provides several advantages over conventional environmental impact assessments by promoting comprehensive risk management of cumulative impacts and critical dependencies, such as water resources, which increases predictability and transparency for investors and communities.
• Technological advancements in remote sensing, GIS, and spatial modeling have made LSP possible in ways that were not feasible when conventional planning processes were established in the 1970s, allowing for the use of low-cost, remotely-sensed data to inform decisions even with minimal field data.
• LSP supports the 'mitigation hierarchy' (avoid, minimize, offset) by identifying high-value areas to avoid and guiding offset actions to the most effective locations within a landscape to maximize positive outcomes.
• Case studies demonstrate that LSP can reduce permitting times and costs. In the US, a Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for a six-state region reduced project permitting time by more than half, from 18-24 months to 10 months.

APA

World Economic Forum (2016). Global Agenda Blueprints for a Greener Footprint. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Blueprint_for_a_Greener.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Global Agenda Blueprints for a Greener Footprint. 2016. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Blueprint_for_a_Greener.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Global Agenda Blueprints for a Greener Footprint |date=January 2016 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Blueprint_for_a_Greener.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2016global, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Global Agenda Blueprints for a Greener Footprint}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2016}, month = jan, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Blueprint_for_a_Greener.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }