Efectes socioeconòmics i distributius de l'expansió dels cultius bioenergètics

La revisió de la literatura sobre els cultius bioenergètics ha permès als autors d'aquest informe sistematitzar i documentar els impactes que aquests cultius estan tenint sobre la seguretat alimentària, l'economia, l'accés i els drets de propietat sobre la terra, i la salut de les famílies que els cultiven al Sud global. Els resultats qüestionen els informes que consideren que l'obtenció d'energia a partir de biomassa facilitaria l'accés a l'energia, reduiria les emissions globals i contribuiria al desenvolupament socioeconòmic.La revisión de la literatura sobre los cultivos bioenergéticos ha permitido a los autores de este informe sistematizar y documentar los impactos que estos cultivos están teniendo sobre la seguridad alimentaria, la economía, el acceso y los derechos de propiedad sobre la tierra, y la salud de las familias que los cultivan en el Sur global. Los resultados cuestionan los informes que consideran que la obtención de energía a partir de biomasa facilitaría el acceso a la energía, reduciría las emisiones globales y contribuiría al desarrollo socioeconómico

Qui ha participat en el darrer informe de mitigació de l'IPCC?

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552El Grup Intergovernamental d'Experts sobre el Canvi Climàtic (IPCC) té per objectiu proporcionar avaluacions integrals dels coneixements sobre el canvi climàtic, les seves causes, possibles repercussions i estratègies de resposta. Aquest article analitza qui són les persones que han participat en l'últim informe de mitigació de l'IPCC. Els resultats mostren una sobrerepresentació d'acadèmics formats al nord (especialment als EUA i el Regne Unit) i que una àmplia majoria ja havien participat en altres informes.El Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) tiene por objetivo proporcionar evaluaciones integrales de los conocimientos sobre el cambio climático, sus causas, posibles repercusiones y estrategias de respuesta. Este artículo analiza quiénes son las personas que han participado en el último informe de mitigación del IPCC. Los resultados muestran una sobrerrepresentación de académicos formados en el norte (especialmente en EEUU y Reino Unido) y que una amplia mayoría ya habían participado en otros informes

Framing the frontier - Tracing issues related to soybean expansion in transnational public spheres

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MAltres ajuts: Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICRapid soybean expansion in South America has been linked to numerous socio-environmental problems, including deforestation in sensitive biomes. As a major importing region of soybeans, wider public awareness has also put pressure on the European Union. Different governance initiatives involving various groups of stakeholders have sought to address these issues. However, what is identified as a relevant problem, as a region of interest or which actors are mentioned in this context are all matters of claims-making processes between different groups and mediated through various channels of communication. This study uses a text-mining approach to trace the construction of socio-ecological problems related to soybean expansion and the actors and regions linked with these issues in public discourse. The focus lies on print media from the European Union, but several additional sources are included to investigate the similarities and differences between various communication channels and regions. These include newspaper articles from producing countries and international news agencies, scientific abstracts, corporate statements, and reports from advocacy groups gathered from the mid-1990s to 2020. The results show that European mass media have shifted their focus from consumer labeling, health, and concerns over genetically modified organisms towards more distant or abstract phenomena, such as deforestation and climate change. This has been accompanied with a broader view on different stakeholders, but also with a strong regional focus on the Amazon biome. There has also been much less attention on direct concerns for communities in producing regions, such as land conflicts or disputes over intellectual property rights. We conclude that while European public spheres appear to become more receptive to issues related to impacts in sourcing regions, there remains a narrow focus on specific problems and regions, which reflects a fundamental asymmetry in different stakeholders' ability to shape transnational deliberations and resulting governance processes

Community-based conservation and traditional ecological knowledge: implications for social-ecological resilience

Our review highlights how traditional ecological knowledge influences people's adaptive capacity to social-ecological change and identifies a set of mechanisms that contribute to such capacity in the context of community-based biodiversity conservation initiatives. Twenty-three publications, including twenty-nine case studies, were reviewed with the aim of investigating how local knowledge, community-based conservation, and resilience interrelate in social-ecological systems. We highlight that such relationships have not been systematically addressed in regions where a great number of community conservation initiatives are found; and we identify a set of factors that foster people's adaptive capacity to social-ecological change and a number of social processes that, in contrast, undermine such capacity and the overall resilience of the social-ecological system. We suggest that there is a need to further investigate how climate variability and other events affect the joint evolution of conservation outcomes and traditional ecological knowledge, and there is a need to expand the current focus on social factors to explain changes in traditional ecological knowledge and adaptive capacity towards a broader approach that pays attention to ecosystem dynamics and environmental change

Justice-related impacts and social differentiation dynamics in Nepal’s REDD+ projects

Policies and projects aimed at Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and the sustainable management of forests and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+), have been regarded as an opportunity to improve forest governance while supporting rural livelihoods. However, now that REDD+ policies are being increasingly implemented, a number of justice-related challenges have emerged, including how social heterogeneity should be approached to avoid deepening the unequal access to land, resources and livelihood opportunities or even violating human rights in rural contexts. Applying an environmental justice lens, this article analyses the experience of three local communities in Nepal participating in REDD+ pilot projects, focusing on how indigenous peoples, women and Dalits have participated in and been affected by such initiatives. Our research shows that the studied REDD+ pilot activities in Nepal have been, to some extent, able to recognise, empower and benefit certain social groups, indigenous women in particular, whilst Dalits (particularly Dalit women) had a different experience. REDD+ projects have had limited impact in addressing more entrenched processes of political discrimination, male dominance in decision-making, and uneven participation driven by spatial considerations or specific social targeting approaches. While the projects examined here have been partially just, and rather sensitive to existing patterns of social differentiation, the complexity of social differentiation still makes it difficult to operationalise environmental justice in REDD+ implementation. Hence, we conclude that deficits in distributive, recognition and procedural justice cannot be resolved without first addressing wider issues of social injustices throughout Nepal, historically inherited along the dimensions of class, caste, ethnicity, gender, and spatiality

‘This is my garden’: justice claims and struggles over forests in Vietnam’s REDD+

This paper explores dynamics of conflict over forests in Vietnam, as the country lays the groundwork for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). Drawing on a case study in Lam Dong province and applying an environmental justice lens, we examine how various social actors assert claims over forests and how these claims invoke different notions of justice, authority and identity. Our analysis highlights that the development and implementation of the project has generated renewed competing claims and conflicts over forests among social actors. Underlying these conflicts there are incompatible notions of justice and associated rights, which lead different actors to accord legitimacy variously to the global norms brought about by REDD+, the customary resource practices of indigenous people, or to the state’s laws. We show that the negotiations over forests in REDD+ reflect the influence of the specific historical and political-economic settings in which REDD+ activities take place, including pre-existing conflicts over forests and power relations underpinning forest management. From a policy perspective, our research suggests that any attempts to introduce simplified and uniform regulations for forest governance in REDD+ should be avoided, since local institutions and conceptions of justice will significantly influence what is regarded as legitimate policy and can thus be endorsed as inspiration for sustainable forest governance. Key policy insights REDD+ in Vietnam has spurred contestations over who is legitimately entitled to govern and manage forests. Claims and conflicts over forests can be explained by incompatible and distinct notions of justice, authority and identity. Contestations over justice pose radical challenges to any global and national efforts that attempt to implement simplified rules and ideas for forest based-climate change mitigation. Attention to justice, especially to compatibility and differences in ideas about justice, is crucial for sustainable forest governance

Large-scale Irrigation Impacts Socio-cultural Values : An Example from Rural Navarre, Spain

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Large-scale irrigation is a form of agricultural intensification aimed at increasing productivity and adapting to climate change. However, we know little about how large-scale irrigation affects socio-cultural values over nature's contributions to people (NCP) in agrarian systems. In this article, we fill this gap by investigating how a large-scale irrigation project in Navarre, Spain, has affected farmers' values in relation to their farming systems and the local environment. We find that large-scale farmers who participate in the irrigation project value more highly regulating NCP than small-scale farmers who have not adopted such technology, while the latter hold higher values for non-material NCP related to cultural identity and traditional knowledge and experience. These findings suggest that the adoption of large-scale irrigation technology is associated with a set of values that underestimate the long-term ecological effects of agricultural intensification and neglect the relevance of traditional farming in sustaining more ecologically and culturally diverse landscapes

Farmers' vulnerability to global change in Navarre, Spain : large-scale irrigation as maladaptation

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Agricultural landscapes are dynamic environments which change in response to cropping and trade opportunities, available technologies and climatic conditions. In this article, we investigate farmers' vulnerability to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility in rural Navarre, Spain. Specifically, we analyse the extent to which livelihood differences and vulnerability can be partly explained by the development of a large-scale irrigation project promoted by the Spanish and regional governments. Grounded on qualitative and quantitative data gathered across 22 villages, we demonstrate that small-scale diversified farmers appear the most vulnerable and least able to adapt to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility. In contrast, more market-driven, large-scale intensive farmers, who participate in the irrigation project, are the least vulnerable to these stressors. We argue that the irrigation project has increased the short-term adaptive capacity of irrigation adopters while establishing the institutional conditions for the displacement of small-scale farming. Therefore, we suggest that farmers' vulnerability in Navarre can be explained by maladaptive irrigation policies designed to favour large-scale and market-driven agriculture

Payments for ecosystem services and motivational crowding in Colombia's Amazon Piedmont

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Globally, there is an increasing level of funding targeted to pay farmers and rural communities for the provision of ecosystem services, for example through Payments for Ecosystem or Environmental Services (PES) schemes and pilots for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and maintaining or enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD +). Therefore, there is growing interest in understanding the effects of economic incentives on participants' behavior and motivations. We adopt here an innovative research design to test for motivational crowding effects through a forest conservation game in Colombia's Amazon Piedmont, using individual, collective and crop-price premium economic incentives. We implement a post-experiment survey on different types of motivations based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to test for changes in motivations. Our findings show that all types of PES, except for the crop-price premium payment, increased conservation behavior in the experiment. However, not all types of payments affected motivations equally: collective payments enhanced social motivations to protect forests and the crop-price premium reduced intrinsic and guilt/regret related motivations. These findings contribute to disentangling the interaction between incentives, motivations and behaviors in a context of agricultural expansion and growing concern for forest conservation

REDD+ Crossroads Post Paris: Politics, Lessons and Interplays

This article introduces the special issue “REDD+ crossroads post Paris: politics, lessons and interplays”. The contributions to the special issue demonstrate, first, that REDD+ design in the studied countries has generally lacked social legitimacy and sidelined key actors that have an important role in shaping land-use sector dynamics. Second, they show that REDD+ early actions have tended to oversimplify local realities and have been misaligned with other policy goals and local needs. Third, REDD+ efforts have remained constrained to the forestry or climate mitigation policy sectors and have thus suffered from a lack of harmonization across local, national and international concerns, specifically of contradictory policy. As REDD+ moves from its preparedness to its implementation phase, more research efforts should be aimed at analysing the power relations that underpin and determine the design and implementation of REDD+ policies and actions, the potential for and limits to the vertical and horizontal harmonization of land-use policies and management, and the processes of resistance to or accommodation of REDD+ practices on the ground. In doing so, we advocate for multi-and transdisciplinary research that does not take for granted the benefits of REDD+ and which critically scrutinizes the multiple goals of this ambitious international policy framework, and where it sits within the broader Paris Agreement implementation agenda