Sustainable intensification and agro-ecological resilience

Transcription

1 Sustainable intensification and agro-ecological resilience Exploring Resilience May 18, 2016 SSE Swalec,Cardiff, Wales David J. Abson:

2 Key question How do farmers seek to build, intensive, biodiverse, resilient farms in the face of ecological and socio-economic perturbations?

3 Sustainable intensification Sustainability: Balancing human well-being and environmental integrity including the maintenance of resources over time (Kuhlman and Farrington 2010). Sustainable Intensification: seeks to achieve food security through increases agricultural production, while minimizing negative environmental impacts (Godfray et al. 2010). Kuhlman T & Farrington J What is sustainability? Sustainability 2: Godfray H., Beddington J. et al Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science 327:

4 Resilience Intensive, specialized agriculture potentially lacks resilience (e.g. Döös,1994) and is volatile (e.g. Abson, et al. 2013). Abson, D., Fraser, E. and Benton, T Landscape diversity and the resilience of agricultural returns: a portfolio analysis of landuse patterns and economic returns from lowland agriculture, Agriculture & food Security, 2:2. Döös B Environmental degradation, global food-production, and risk for large-scale migrations. Ambio 23: Lagi, M. et al The food crises and political instability in North Africa and the Middle East. Available at SSRN

5 Resilience Resilience: the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and reorganize while retaining essentially the same function, structure and identity (Walker et al. 2004). Resilience: Of what? For whom? To what? Walker, B., Holling, C., et al Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2):5

6 Resilience Environmental and socio-economic perturbations are common in agro-ecological systems Short term variability is crucial in relation to both food security and farmer livelihoods. Long term changes in resource availability/use many also have serious consequences for sustainable agricultural intensification.

7 General resilience Diversity: the range of different components (structures, functions, organisms or institutions) in the system. Tightness of feedbacks: how quickly and strongly the changes in one part of the system are felt and responded to in other parts of the system. Modularity: the manner in which the components that make up the system are linked. Levin, S. A Ecosystems and the biosphere as complex adaptive systems. Ecosystems, 1, Walker, B. & Salt, D Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World, Washington, D.C., Island Press.

8 Case Study Comparing two sheep grazing systems in the Upper Lachlan River Catchment, New South Wales

9 Two sheep farming systems Conventional management: Livestock kept in paddocks for extended periods, high external inputs used to bolster farms carrying capacities Biodiversity is conserved via (subsidized) land spared from agricultural production. Holistic management: Intense bursts of grazing, followed by extended recovery time based on careful observation of native vegetation, with little or no use of external inputs. Biodiversity is conserved across the farmed landscape.

10 Two sheep farming systems Conventional management Holistic management

11 System perturbations

12 System property General resilience Diversity Feedbacks.). Modularity ( redundancies and connectivity) Conventional management Biological diversity potentially high. Isolation of biodiversity from production may be both a source of vulnerability (lack of redundancy) and resilience (lower connectivity to shocks). Uniformity and control of the environment as key management strategies. Income diversity often off-farm through secondary employment, or spousal incomes, increases resilience to on farm natural shocks (i.e. flood, fire, etc.). Compensatory/buffering management that seeks to dampen shocks by importing resources from outside the physical boundaries of the social-ecological system. Typically post event adaptation, often reliant on external institutional support. Relatively low level of redundancies in resource use (continued occupation of pastures). More reliance on imported fodder supplements and artificial fertilizers increasing connectivity to markets and price volatility. Holistic management Biological diversity intermediate but contributes to production stability. Experimentation as a key component of the management strategy. Income diversity can be on-farm (e.g. tourism; native plant sales), less resilient to some natural shocks (i.e. flood, fire, etc Less able to convert between/build buffing capital stocks. Adaptive management that is sensitive to changes in ecological condition. Management approach premised on anticipation of/adaptation to shocks, and constant monitoring. Potentially high levels of redundancy in resource use (i.e. rested pastures and the use of diverse native grasses). Less reliance on imported fodder supplements and artificial fertilizers reducing connectivity to markets.

13 General resilience Conventional management: externalized resilience, stabilizing buffers via accumulation of financial capital (on and off farm) with reliance on external inputs and institutional support. Holistic management: internalized resilience, dynamic adaptation, via working with natural capital and experimentation (little off farm buffers), biodiversity as both a social good and source of resilience.

14 System boundaries and scale Economic system Farm system Farm system boundaries Social-ecological system boundaries Material, energy and economic flows Where you draw the boundaries of the system (in both space and time) influences assessments of resilience.

15 Conclusions Diversity: Biodiversity as integral to farm resilience (holistic), or as a separate entity to be protected (conventional). Tightness of feedbacks: Conventional farming lengthens (and potentially weakens) feedbacks between resource use and environmental impacts. Modularity/connectivity: High connectivity is potentially beneficial at fine scales and over the short-term, may be problematic at broader scales and in the long-term.

16 Scale and system boundaries Thank you The research presented here is based on: Abson, D.J., 1 Sherren, K. 2 and Fischer, J. 3 (in press) The resilience of agricultural landscapes characterized by land sparing versus land sharing, IN: Gardner, S. Hails, R. and Ramsden S. (eds), Agriculture Resilience: perspectives from ecology and economics, CUP. 1. Faculty of Sustianabity Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany. abson@uni-leuphana.de 2. School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University, Canada. kate.sherren@dal.ca 3. Faculty of Sustainability, Leuphana University Lueneburg, Lueneburg, Germany. joern.fischer@leuphana.de