Diversitas/CCAFS/CRP6Meeting Chiapas, Mexico
December 2010
Agrobiodiversity research challenges: Sustainable Intensification, Buffers,
Filters and Land Sharing Meine van Noordwijk
Dominant DIVERGENT model of Territorial configuration
Luis García-Barrios et. al. 2009. Bioscience and 2010 La Jornada del Campo.
Rural-urban
migraton
Low QualityFood provi-sioning
Control of erosion & Water excess and scarcity
Fortress typeconservation
against masses
Rural poor
Cheap massive(highly profitable)
industrialagribussiness
Cheap massive(highly profitable)urban housing
EliteOrganic
food
Wage laborers
Control of Water excess andscarcity
EliteSuburban residence
EliteEcotourism
Eco-servants
Rural-urbanmigrants
UrLand
AgLandNatLand
Land sparing
QualityRural MatrixLandscapes
and livelihoods
UrLand
NatLand
Ag Land
Marginalized CONVERGENT
modelLand sharing
Vulnerability
range
Resiliency
rangeTolerated range
Variability of climate
Variability of water flows
Human vulnerability to floods & droughts
Landscape filter & buffer functions
Currently increasing
Currently decreasing
Focus of ‘adapta-tion stragegies’?
Preventable increase in exposure
Adaptation: change in sys-tem properties, reducing vulner.
Exter-nal influen-ces
& their
Pat-terns of va-riability
Filters: reducing lateral flows and conse-quent external impacts
Buffers: reducing varia-bility by tempo-rary storage
E x
p
o s
u r
e
Resistance/ tolerance: absorbing external shocks
Resilience: bouncing back from temporary disturbance
System of primary interest
AdaptiveCapacity
Immediate response
medium/long term
Vulnera-bility to external change & varia-bility
Sustainagility: resource base for further change
Landscape as Socio-Agro-Eco-System
Trans-mis-sion
+I
MPACT
Persistence
Change sustainagility
Social stressors originating within and among community/ies
Economic stressors due to market
fluctuations & policy shifts
Climatic stressors: means, variability and
change
Access to under-utilized resources for
innovative use
Access to new markets, satisfying new types of
demand
Landscape buffers &
filters Pover-ty?
Resource accessibility
Innovation support
Shielding networks
Market access & insurance
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4
321
Field-levelintensification
Landscape-levelintensification
Where would you like to see more trees?
Compositional heterogeneity
Configurational heterogeneity
Participatory resource mapping followed by simulation board game with agents of change: seeking contracts for logging or oilpalm conversion, or agreements on forest protection and ecolabelling
(Pho
togr
aphs
: Gra
ce V
illam
or)
Paddy - (semi)perma-nent rice fields in wet places ~ irrigation/ drainage systems
Swidden – rotational temporary food crops +
fallow
Forest edge – source of timber & NTFP’s for local
use and trade
CoreForest
Expand paddy domain Fallow AgroforestShort (semi)domesticated fallows forest products
Market-driven logging by concessionairs
Use of fertilizer, pes-ticides, short-cycle, short-straw, HYV rice + vegetables/ palawija
Permanent Intensifiedopen-field agroforest,crops Pas- tree crops ture
Industrial Industrial tree crop timber plantation plantation
Permanently cropped, technical irrigation agriculture //urbanizing
‘Transmi- Smallholdergration’ Pas- tree crops / towns ture homegarden
Large-scale tree (crop) plantations
Protec-tedarea
Fully intensified landscape components
Extensively used landscape
Physical terrainHuman use
Flat, lowland version
Arche-typical Rugged ,mountain
Forest/agroforest/ crop mosaic
Tree-crop dominated
Rice-dominated
Urbanized
Terrain
Malaria control
<20 km-2
~50 km-2
~200 km-2
1000 km-2
Gene
Product value chains
Patch/field
Organism
Population
Farm
Land-scape
Desakota network
GlobeNational economy
Community
Water-shed
Nation
Global institutions
National institutions
time
space
in
stitu
tions
Farms are decision points across spatial, temporal and institutional scales
Jackson, L.E., van Noordwijk, M., Bengtsson, J., Foster, W., Lipper, L., Pulleman, M., Said, M., Snaddon, J. and Vodouhe, R., 2010. Biodiversity and agricultural sustainagility: from assessment to adaptive management. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2:80–87
But a major challenge remains in reconciling 3 time scales relevant to various decision makers:
Relative agricultural function (RAF) - provisioning
Rela
tive
ecol
ogic
al fu
nctio
n (R
EF) A
Initial use
BDegra-
dationC
Rehabilitation
EUCritical loss of
ecological functions
D
Trade-off REF/RAF: convex, concave, win-win after lose-lose
LowLow
High
Core wilderness/ natural forest
Polyculture
attractors
High
Intensive agroecosys-tem domain
Agroforest domain
Degraded, aban-doned land
Current dominant trend
Biodiversity-ba-sed alternative pathway
Landscape position
Natural capital -NMDS2
Hoeksche Waard, NL
Sacramento Valley California
Koubri, Burkina Faso
Zona de Mata, Brasil
Pacaja, E. Amazone, BrasilW. Ghats,
India
Jambi, Indonesia
La Sepultura, Chiapas, Mexico
Ag reliance on ecological processes (-NMDS1)
Degrading agricultural landscapes
Sustainable Weighting of Economy-Ecology Tradeoffs: Organized
Reduction or Stretching Our Use of Resources? (SWEETorSOUR?)
Production Possibility Frontier
This may be societal optimum,
but requires SWEET
Getting here may turn SOUR
We need empirical data, comparative analysis of how SWEET could be made to work and how SOUR can be avoided.
Comparison of 8 sites in a global
network starts to give insights… Jackson et al under
review
Old-growthforest
Relia
nce
on n
atur
al c
apita
l & e
colo
-gi
cal p
roce
sses
for
prod
uctio
n
Agrotechnical intensification
Jackson et al., under review
Field-scale actions Landscape-scale actions
Jackson et al., under review
Key research challenges
• Quantify buffer & filter functions at patch/ field/landscape scales under influence of ‘intensification’ (or alternative intensification pathways)
• Quantify need for increase in buffer/filter functions in response to increased climate variability
• Social & economic institutions to support SWEET and avoid SOUR