The Convention on Biological Diversity, an international treaty, and its Ecosystem Approach.
The treaty's main tool for managing landscapes, presented as a friendly way to help nature.
The Ecosystem Approach is described as integrated landscape management, which means top-down land planning. Its public face is a feelgood title. The same approach is linked to the Landscape Approach, a high-level concept versus practical implementation, and to UN-Habitat, which reorganises land settlements through it. The Malawi Principles and UNESCO's Biosphere Reserves are also named. A cited document from the Clinton White House archive calls it 'Ecosystem Approach to Management and Biodiversity' and notes the material is frozen in time. A CBD page lists 12 complementary principles.
It shows how a warm-sounding label can be used to justify control over land and settlements.