Richer histories for more relevant policies: 42 years of tree cover loss and gain in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Changes in food access by mestizo communities associated with deforestation and agrobiodiversity loss in Ucayali, Peruvian Amazon

Few longitudinal studies link agricultural biodiversity, land use and food access in rural landscapes. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that, in a context of economic change, cash crop expansion is associated with deforestation, reduced agrobiodiversity and changes in food access. For this purpose, we analysed data collected from the same 53 upland and floodplain mestizo households in Ucayali, Peru, in 2000 and 2015. We found an emerging transition towards less diversified food access coupled with loss of forest cover and reduced agricultural biodiversity. In 2015, diets appeared to rely on fewer food groups, fewer food items, and on products increasingly purchased in the market compared to 2000. Wild fruits and plants were mentioned, but rarely consumed. Agricultural production systems became more specialised with a shift towards commercial crops. Peak deforestation years in the 15-year period appeared linked with incentives for agricultural expansion. Our results suggest an overall trend from diversified productive and “extractive” systems and more diverse food access, towards specialized productive systems, with less diverse food access and stronger market orientation (both in production and consumption). The assumption in the food and agricultural sciences that increased income and market-orientation is linked to improved food security, is challenged by our integrated analyses of food access, agrobiodiversity, land use and forest cover. Our results highlight the importance of longitudinal, multidimensional, systemic analyses, with major implications for land use, food and health policies. The potential risks of parallel homogenisation of diets and agricultural production systems require interdisciplinary research and policies that promote integrated landscape approaches for sustainable and inclusive food systems.

Flooding and Land Use Change in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Flooding is a routine occurrence throughout much of the monsoonal tropics. Despite well-developed repertoires of response, agrarian societies have been ‘double exposed’ to intensifying climate change and agro-industrialization over the past several decades, often in ways that alter both the regularity of flood events and individual and community capacity for response. This paper engages these tensions by exploring everyday experiences of and responses to extreme flood events in a case study village in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, which has also been the site of corporate oil palm development since 2010. We first reconstruct histories of extreme flood events along the Konawe’eha River using oral histories and satellite imagery, describing the role of these events in straining the terms of daily production and reproduction. We then outline the ways smallholder agriculturalists are responding to flood events through alterations in their land use strategies, including through the sale or leasing of flood-prone lands, the relocation of riverine vegetable production to hillside locations, and adoption of new cropping choices and management practices. We highlight the role of such responses as a driver of ongoing land use change, potentially in ways that increase systemic vulnerability to floods moving forward.