Managing for resilience: a landscape framework for food and livelihood security and ecosystem services

Spatial variation in livelihood security among livestock-based agricultural farming systems in climatically vulnerable Indian Sundarbans

Farm households in the UNESCO World Heritage site Sundarbans face serious problems, including increased soil salinity, frequent extreme weather events, seawater intrusion and flood damage, all of which cause distress to the livelihoods of the farm families. Policymakers commonly acknowledge livestock as a crucial resource for mitigating economic losses caused by crop failures due to extreme weather events. Despite Sundarbans' vulnerability to extreme weather events, smallholder farmers' livelihoods vary across the region. Identifying spatial livelihood variations aids in targeted strategies to address climate extremes. We chose the highest cow- and buffalo-populated blocks among the 19 blocks in the Sundarbans to assess variations in livelihood dimensions, including nutritional, economic, social and infrastructural security. We used dummy variable regression models to examine the differences in livelihood security dimensions among households living in different locations. The study found that Namkhana had the highest livelihood security score among the blocks studied, while Gosaba had the lowest score because it's in a remote area with limited infrastructure. The study found a significant difference in the overall livelihood security score among the blocks we examined, indicating the need for a location-specific, cluster-based approach for the overall development of the Sundarbans. The study can shape a policy framework for socio-economic development in the Indian Sundarbans through its findings on location-specific livelihood security. For securing smallholder farmers' livelihoods in the vulnerable Sundarbans region, policymakers must give priority to improving infrastructure, viz., roads, marketing facilities and animal healthcare centers.

A Knowledge Review on Integrated Landscape Approaches

Holistic and multi-transdisciplinary approaches, where multiple goals are achieved in order to improve resilience in societies and ecosystems in the short, medium, and long term, are ideal, even utopian. Hence, science has come together with practical experiences that highlight the importance of working at a ‘landscape’ level. Landscapes, as socio-ecological systems, are key for sustainability and sustainable development, and they represent a realistic unit to interconnect local, national, and ultimately global scales. International efforts regarding holistic natural resources management approaches are not new; however, they are currently pointing to an Integrated Landscape Approach (ILA). Based on a documentation review and analysis, the present article review aims to promote the disambiguation of the ILA concept and provide an updated synthesis knowledge on the ILA. Especially for the forest sector, the ILA has been identified as particularly beneficial, strongly highlighted by the scientific literature, and with an infrastructure of organizations that are encouraging it. The paper presents the rationale of the science behind the concept, as well as the main principles, we identified a variety of definitions with some significant points of overlap, we highlight the inclusion of ILAs in the current international arena and the relationship of ILA’s and Jurisdictional Approaches, and we make a review of the ILA in a challenging world of rapid change. Our review recognizes ILAs socio-ecological management strategy to reconcile conservation, development, climate change, and human well-being goals. ILAs naturally have a social and idealistic construction behind it, which might be just as necessary andsignificant as the journey toward sustainability itself.

Environmental Services: A New Approach Toward Addressing Sustainable Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa

The physical environment provides resources and specific types of environmental services relevant to the maintenance of human livelihoods globally and with specific reference to sub-Saharan Africa, including soils, food, and water systems. Previous studies on the shared nexus of such resources commonly view these as self-contained systems operating independent of their physical contexts provided by landscape-scale geomorphology and its related processes. This study critically examines the viewpoints adopted by such nexus studies with specific reference to sub-Saharan Africa, arguing that these studies are reductive, considering only the shared disciplinary overlap (nexus) and not their wider contexts, and are based on only a limited understanding of the workings of physical systems. This study argues that considering the attributes of the physical landscape and its provision of environmental services provides a broader and scientifically-informed context for understanding of interlinked issues such as relationships between soil–food–water systems. Framing such “nexus” studies in this wider context can derive a better understanding of the connections between different elements such as soil, food, and water, amongst others, and with respect to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. The concept of environmental services is therefore a more powerful tool to examine both the connections between physical and human environmental processes and properties in sub-Saharan Africa, and to address overarching environmental issues such as land degradation, soil erosion loss, water scarcity, and impacts of climate change.

Managing Rather Than Avoiding “Difficulties” in Building Landscape Resilience

Building landscape resilience inspires the cultivation of the landscape’s capacity to recover from disruption and live with changes and uncertainties. However, integrating ecosystem and society within such a unified lens—that is, socio–ecological system (SES) resilience—clashes with many cornerstone concepts in social science, such as power, democracy, rights, and culture. In short, a landscape cannot provide the same values to everyone. However, can building landscape resilience be an effective and just environmental management strategy? Research on this question is limited. A scoping literature review was conducted first to synthesise and map landscape management change based on 111,653 records. Then, we used the Nuozhadu (NZD) catchment as a case study to validate our findings from the literature. We summarised current critiques and created a framework including seven normative categories, or common difficulties, namely resilience for “whom”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”, as well as “can” and “how” we apply resilience normatively. We found that these difficulties are overlooked and avoided despite their instructive roles to achieve just landscape management more transparently. Without clear targets and boundaries in building resilience, we found that some groups consume resources and services at the expense of others. The NZD case demonstrates that a strategy of building the NZD’s resilience has improved the conservation of the NZD’s forest ecosystems but overlooked trade-offs between sustaining people and the environment, and between sustainable development for people at different scales. Future researchers, managers, and decision-makers are thereby needed to think resilience more normatively and address the questions in the “seven difficulties” framework before intervening to build landscape resilience.

Conserving genetic resources for agriculture: economic implications of emerging science

New challenges have arrived for the conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. Increased pressure on the environment, including the added threat of climate change, has had adverse effects on biodiversity and agricultural systems. Emerging science and new technologies have at the same time altered the scope of possibilities for collection, conservation, and utilization of genetic resources for agriculture. Taken together, these changes imply a need for a refocusing of global strategies for the management of genetic resources for agriculture. This paper argues that simple theoretical models provide relatively little guidance for key questions about genebank management. The fundamental uncertainty of scientific possibility and global futures makes it challenging – and perhaps futile – to attempt economic valuation of gene banks. A more useful application of economic tools will be in the prioritization of collection and conservation. Economic analysis may also offer useful insights into the efficient management of genetic resources.

Inclusive Landscape Governance for Sustainable Development: Assessment Methodology and Lessons for Civil Society Organizations

Landscape governance refers to the combination of rules and decision-making processes of civic, private, and public actors with stakes in the landscape, that together shape the future of that landscape. As part of the Green Livelihoods Alliance, a program that supports civil society organizations (CSOs) to strengthen the governance of tropical forested landscapes, we developed and implemented a method that facilitates stakeholders to assess the status of governance in their own landscape and to identify options for improvement. In this article, we aim to reflect on landscape governance, based on our work within the Green Livelihoods Alliance. We present the method, summarize the results of its implementation, and draw practical lessons regarding the role of CSOs to improve landscape governance. We conducted workshops with stakeholders in 17 forested landscapes across 10 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. During each workshop, participants scored and discussed a set of governance indicators, developed a common vision for landscape governance, and identified the practical steps that would need to be taken to achieve that vision. Analyzing the results from the workshops, we found that landscape stakeholders tend to perceive that: opportunities to influence decision-making are unequal; integrated landscape planning efforts remain noncommittal; and implementation and enforcement of regulations is weak. To improve governance in the future, it is common to call for the development of multi-stakeholder processes, to allow different actors to discuss, negotiate, and develop collaborative action to address landscape-level challenges. CSOs can support such processes, by helping to develop a shared understanding of landscape governance, differences in interests, and possibilities for collaborative action. CSOs can also help stakeholders to develop multi-stakeholder procedures, and build trust and capacity among stakeholders to take an active role in such processes.

Application of Landscape Approach Principles Motivates Forest Fringe Farmers to Reforest Ghana’s Degraded Reserves

Research Highlights: Landscape approach principles were developed to address competing claims on resources at local scales. We used the principles to address agricultural expansion in Ghana’s forest reserves. Background and Objectives: Agricultural expansion is a major cause of Ghana’s forest-cover loss. Cultivation has totally deforested some forest reserves. The situation in Ghana illustrates the trade-off between attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 1—reduction of poverty, and 2—achieving food security, are in conflict with SDG 15—protecting and restoring forests. We examined how farmers in forest fringe communities could be engaged in restoring degraded forests using the landscape approach and whether their livelihoods were improved through the use of this approach. Materials and Methods: The Ongwam II Forest Reserve in the Ashanti region of Ghana is encroached by farmers from two communities adjacent to the reserve. We employed the 10 principles of the landscape approach to engage farmers in restoring the degraded reserve. The flexibility of the landscape approach provided a framework against which to assess farmer behaviour. We encouraged farmers to plant trees on 10 ha of the degraded reserve and to benefit through the cultivation of food crops amongst the trees. Results: Access to fertile forest soils for cultivation was the main motivation for the farmers to participate in the reforestation project. The farmers’ access to natural and financial capital increased and they became food secure in the first year of the project’s operation. Conclusions: Effective implementation of several small-scale reforestation projects using the landscape approach could together lead to a forest transition, more trees in agricultural systems and better protection of residual natural forests while improving farmers’ livelihoods, all combining to achieve the SDGs.

Evolutionary Characteristics and Trade-Offs' Development of Social-Ecological Production Landscapes in the Loess Plateau Region from a Resilience Point of View: A Case Study in Mizhi County, China

Social-ecological production landscape resilience (SELPR) is a significant representation of the continuous supply capacity of landscape services. It is a quantitative assessment of the spatial-temporal evolution of SELPR under internal and external disturbances that provides a scientific basis for regional ecological environments and socio-economic development. Taking Mizhi County for the study of the Loess Plateau region, a three-dimensional (social system, ecosystem, and production system) SELPR evaluation framework was constructed. Data integration was performed using the watershed as the evaluation unit. This study quantitatively evaluated the spatial-temporal differentiation of the social-ecological production landscape (SELPs) subsystem's resilience and the total SELPR in the study area and classified the areas from the three-system resilience combination level to achieve regional development trade-offs. The results were as follows: (1) In 2009-2018, the change in the social-ecological production landscapes pattern in Mizhi County showed a significant reduction in agricultural production landscapes, relatively stable social living landscapes, and an increase in ecological landscapes; (2) in 2009-2018, the SELPR increased by 12.38%. The spatial distribution of resilience was significantly different, showing a distribution pattern of high central and low surrounding areas; (3) the county's watershed development zones were divided into five partitions: synergistic promotion areas, ecological restoration areas, social development areas, production optimization areas, and comprehensive remediation areas. The five types of zones have a certain agglomeration effect. In addition, the main obstacle factors affecting the SELPR of each zone are quite different. The key issues and development directions of different types of watersheds are also proposed in this paper.

Are We Doing ‘Systems’ Research? An Assessment of Methods for Climate Change Adaptation to Hydrohazards in a Complex World

Climate change is a product of the Anthropocene, and the human–nature system in which we live. Effective climate change adaptation requires that we acknowledge this complexity. Theoretical literature on sustainability transitions has highlighted this and called for deeper acknowledgment of systems complexity in our research practices. Are we heeding these calls for ‘systems’ research? We used hydrohazards (floods and droughts) as an example research area to explore this question. We first distilled existing challenges for complex human–nature systems into six central concepts: Uncertainty, multiple spatial scales, multiple time scales, multimethod approaches, human–nature dimensions, and interactions. We then performed a systematic assessment of 737 articles to examine patterns in what methods are used and how these cover the complexity concepts. In general, results showed that many papers do not reference any of the complexity concepts, and no existing approach addresses all six. We used the detailed results to guide advancement from theoretical calls for action to specific next steps. Future research priorities include the development of methods for consideration of multiple hazards; for the study of interactions, particularly in linking the short- to medium-term time scales; to reduce data-intensivity; and to better integrate bottom–up and top–down approaches in a way that connects local context with higher-level decision-making. Overall this paper serves to build a shared conceptualisation of human–nature system complexity, map current practice, and navigate a complexity-smart trajectory for future research.

An Assessment of Institutional Capacity for Integrated Landscape Management in Eastern Cameroon

Landscape approaches have become prominent in efforts to address issues of conservation and development through bringing together different actors and sectors, to reconcile diverse land uses, and promote synergies. Some have suggested that integrated landscape management approaches are consistent with the goals of REDD+ and offer a strategy to address multiple goals of climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, maintenance of ecosystem services, and socio-economic development. Institutional or governance arrangements have been shown to be a critical component in influencing outcomes in landscapes. Using diverse methodologies, this study investigated the capacity of institutions to support the planning, implementation, and resource mobilization needed to integrate climate change mitigation, conservation, and livelihood goals in a forest mosaic landscape in East Cameroon. Results showed that diverse institutions are present in the landscape, including institutions of relevant government agencies, local government, local non-government, the private sector, and hybrid institutions of conservation, development and research institutions. However, the overall institutional capacity for integrated landscape planning and management in the study area is limited, although some institutions exhibit increased capacity in some areas over others. Multiple strategies can be employed to build the necessary human, financial, and leadership capacity, and facilitate the institutional planning and coordination that is foundational to multi-stakeholder landscape governance. Given the complexity of integrating climate change mitigation, conservation and livelihood goals in a landscape, building such institutional capacity is a long term endeavour that requires sustained effort and ongoing financial, technical and human resource support.

Land Degradation Neutrality: Concept development, practical applications and assessment

The paper explores the background and scientific basis of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), a new paradigm reflecting the inter-related aspirations and demands of land-related sustainable development goals. The paper draws on academic literature, field observations, insight from development researchers and practitioners, professional meetings, and agency reports to describe the LDN concept and its relationship with sustainable land management (SLM). We discuss the potential for LDN to facilitate the adoption and assessment of SLM, and to provide a framework to achieve the "land degradation neutral world" goal of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. We present insights relevant to the implementation of LDN. These include the need to: consider quality as well as quantity of land degraded and restored; apply an ecosystem-based approach for LDN assessment; consider land degradation risks; recognize different uses of land and approaches to reach the LDN target; and define the LDN baseline and indicators. We discuss the contradictions of using two different modes for evaluating land degradation and successes in land restoration, which we name the "Anti-degradation view" and "Production-advocacy view". To harmonize these approaches we propose that LDN be considered as a phenomenon of equilibrium of the land system, in terms of the balance between deterioration and improvement of terrestrial ecosystems' qualities, functions and services. Indicators to reflect this balance can use different approaches relevant to the various countries and areas, and to the types of land use. Two examples of using this approach are described. The first shows the assessment of the state of LDN based on the homeostasis of land cover and is based on assessment of distribution of ecosystems, and the dynamics of the land cover pattern in the areas prone to land degradation. The second is based on the combination of the well-known principle of Leibig's Law of the Minimum (1843), and Shelford's Law of Tolerance (1911), and focuses on the balance of the components as the major determinant of a sustainable system. Both approaches are illustrated using schematic diagrams to represent different balanced or destabilized situations. We conclude that the comprehensive assessment of the components of land systems and their mutual equilibrium, which determine the potential for sustainable functioning, therefore can be a basis for the development and selection of the most appropriate indicators and measures of LDN at global, regional and local levels, and that LDN could serve as a target and indicator of SLM. Nevertheless, LDN as a phenomenon of equilibrium of the land system needs further scientific research, and development of effective methods to measure the balance between different terrestrial ecosystems' qualities, functions and services.