Resilience and alternative stable states of tropical forest landscapes under shifting cultivation regimes

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecolgical model and implement it with literature-derived ecological parameters for six shifting cultivation landscapes from three continents. Analyzing the model with the tools of dynamical systems analysis, we show that such landscapes exhibit two stable states, one characterized by high forest cover and agricultural productivity, and another with much lower values of these traits. For some combinations of agricultural pressure and ecological parameters both of these states can potentially exist, and the actual state of the forest depends critically on its historic state. In many cases, the landscapes' 'ecological resilience', or amount of forest that could be destroyed without shifting out of the forested stability domain, declined substantially at lower levels of agricultural pressure than would lead to maximum productiviy. A measure of 'engineering resilience',- the recovery time from standardized disturbances, was independent of ecological resilience. These findings suggest that maximization of short-term agricultural output may have counterproductive impacts on the long-term productivity of shifting cultivation landscapes and the persistence of forested areas

Europe's cross-border trade, human security and financial connections: A climate risk perspective

As the impacts of climate change begin to take hold, increased attention is being paid to the consequences that might occur remotely from the location of the initial climatic impact, where impacts and responses are transmitted across one or more borders. As an economy that is highly connected to other regions and countries of the world, the European Union (EU) is potentially exposed to such cross-border impacts. Here, we undertake a macro-scale, risk-focused literature and data review to explore the potential impact transmission pathways between the EU and other world regions and countries. We do so across three distinct domains of interest - trade, human security and finance - which are part of complex socio-economic, political and cultural systems and may contribute to mediate or exacerbate risk exposure. Across these domains, we seek to understand the extent to which there has been prior consideration of aspects of climate-related risk exposure relevant to developing an understanding of cross-border impacts. We also pro-vide quantitative evidence of the extent and strength of connectivity between the EU and other world regions. Our analysis reveals that - within this nascent area of research - there is uncer-tainty about the dynamics of cross-border impact that will affect whether the EU is in a relatively secure or vulnerable position in comparison with other regions. However, we reveal that risk is likely to be focused in particular ‘hotspots’; defined geographies, for example, that produce materials for EU consumption (e.g. Latin American soybean), hold financial investments (e.g. North America), or are the foci for EU external action (e.g. the Middle East and North Africa region). Importantly, these domains will also interact, and - via the application of a conceptual example of soybean production in Argentina based on a historical drought event - we illustrate that impact and response pathways linked to EU risk exposure may be complex, further heightening the challenge of developing effective policy responses within an uncertain climatic and socioeconomic future

Agricultural Sustainability in a Simple Social-Ecological System

There is a growing consciousness of the complexity and universality of interactions between social and ecological systems. Here we investigate a simple social-ecological model of land cultivation. It is shown that even very simple rules of land-use and an ecosystem’s dynamics can generate a variety of possible stationary states. In particular, the possibility of the existence of “desirable” stationary states is examined. These desirable states are understood in the sense of sustainable development, that is, profitable for farmers and non-degrading for ecosystems. It turns out that the existence of such states can depend strongly on the parameters that are under a government’s control, e.g. subsides, and others. Although real systems can reveal much more complex and counterintuitive behaviour, such a “toy model” can at least give some insight, help to realize the range of possible scenarios and improve our intuition about what might happen in real systems. (original abstract

Conceptual Modeling for Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management in the Barycz Valley, Lower Silesia, Poland

The complexity of interactions in socio-ecological systems makes it very difficult to plan and implement policies successfully. Traditional environmental management and assessment techniques produce unsatisfactory results because they often ignore facets of system structure that underlie complexity: delays, feedbacks, and non-linearities. Assuming that causes are linked in a linear chain, they concentrate on technological developments (“hard path”) as the only solutions to environmental problems. Adaptive Management is recognized as a promising alternative approach directly addressing links between social and ecological systems and involving stakeholders in the analysis and decision process. This “soft path” requires special tools to facilitate collaboration between “experts” and stakeholders in analyzing complex situations and prioritizing policies and actions. We have applied conceptual modeling to increase communication, understanding and commitment in the project of seven NGOs “Sustainable Regional Development in the Odra Catchment”. The main goal was to help our NGO partners to facilitate their efforts related to developing sustainable policies and practices to respond to large-scale challenges (EU accession, global changes in climate and economy) to their natural, economic and socio-cultural heritages. Among the variety of sustainability issues explored by these NGOs, two (extensive agricultural practices and “green” local products) were examined by using Adaptive Management (AM) as a framework that would link analysis, discussion, research, actions and monitoring. Within the AM framework the project coordinators used tools of systems analysis (Mental Model Mapping) to facilitate discussions in which NGO professionals and local stakeholders could graphically diagram and study their understanding of what factors interacted and how they affect the region’s sustainability. These discussions produced larger-scale Regional Sustainability Models as well as more detailed sub-models of particular factors, processes, and feedback loops that appear critical to a sustainable future. The Regional Sustainability Model was used to identify a subset of key interacting factors (variables). For each variable, several sustainability indicators were suggested. The growing understanding and acceptance of the AM framework and systems analysis created a momentum both locally and within the region, which makes continued successful use of these indicators quite likely. In contrast to expert-driven projects that inject outside knowledge into a local context, this project established a broad basis for stakeholder-driven discussion that is articulated into goals, objectives, conceptual models, and indicators. The ability to learn and adapt in the AM framework increases the capacity to innovate and find policies and practices that enhance resilience and sustainability in a world in transition

Rebuilding Resilience in the Sahel: Regreening in the Maradi and Zinder Regions of Niger

The societies and ecosystems of the Nigerien Sahel appeared increasingly vulnerable to climatic and economic uncertainty in the late twentieth century. Severe episodes of drought and famine drove massive livestock losses and human migration and mortality. Soil erosion and tree loss reduced a woodland to a scrub steppe and fed a myth of the Sahara desert relentlessly advancing southward. Over the past two decades this myth has been shattered by the dramatic reforestation of more than 5 million hectares in the Maradi and Zinder Regions of Niger. No single actor, policy, or practice appears behind this successful regreening of the Sahel. Multiple actors, institutions and processes operated at different levels, times, and scales to initiate and sustain this reforestation trend. We used systems analysis to examine the patterns of interaction as biophysical, livelihood, and governance indicators changed relative to one another during forest decline and rebound. It appears that forest decline was reversed when critical interventions helped to shift the direction of reinforcing feedbacks, e.g., vicious cycles changed to virtuous ones. Reversals toward de-forestation or reforestation were preceded by institutional changes in governance, then livelihoods and eventually in the biophysical environment. Biophysical change sustained change in the other two domains until interventions introduced new ideas and institutions that slowed and then reversed the pattern of feedbacks. However, while society seems better at coping with economic or climatic shock or stress, the resilience of society and nature in the Maradi/Zinder region to global sources of uncertainty remains a pressing question in a society with one of the highest population growth rates on Earth

Integrating economic and psychological insights in binary choice models with social interactions

We investigate a class of binary choice models with social interactions. We propose a unifying perspective that integrates economic models using a utility function and psychological models using an impact function. A general approach for analyzing the equilibrium structure of these models within mean-field approximation is developed. It is shown that within a mean-field approach both the utility function and the impact function models are equivalent to threshold models. The interplay between heterogeneity and randomness in model formulation is discussed. A general framework is applied in a number of examples leading to some well-known models but also showing the possibility of more complex dynamics related to multiple equilibria. Our synthesis can provide a basis for many practical applications extending the scope of binary choice models.

Collaborative Design of Pathways to Sustainability. Guidebook for designing and running in-person workshops

The guidebook is meant as a practical introduction and step-by-step instruction on how to design and apply the Collaborative Systems Mapping of Sustainable Pathways (CoSMoS) method. The process has been developed to bridge the gap between science, policy, and society. Scientific knowledge about sustainability challenges was used to develop multiple global scenarios. However, stakeholder engagement in scenario planning is often misunderstood as a way to give expert input to scientists and provide feedback on research results. If scenario efforts are to be useful for policy development, they need to clearly indicate the sphere of control where stakeholders representing specific decision unit(s) can develop robust strategies. The CoSMoS process allows them to develop strategic insights by building on selected representations of real-world structures and processes. The guidebook provides a necessary basis to understand the process so that readers can use it, adapt it to specific circumstances, and successfully execute it. The guide is an updated version of the ISWEL guidebook on Policy Simulations and is designed as a manual for organisations interested in using Collaborative Systems Mapping of Sustainable Pathways for face-to-face workshops. This includes organisations directly or indirectly involved in the process of policy development, especially in the context of various crises, such as climate emergency, biodiversity loss, rise in populism, and many others. The methodology strongly emphasises the positive, active, and inclusive approaches to co-creating sustainability pathways to desired futures. The guidebook will: 1. explain the assumptions underlying the co-creation of scenarios and pathways, 2. compare and contrast them with other, similar tools, and 3. instruct how to adapt, design, and run new CoSMoS workshop sessions

A graphical representation of the forest-landscape model used in this paper.

<p>See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0137497#pone.0137497.t001" target="_blank">table 1</a> for additional explanation of symbols. Note that under the model, land used for agriculture becomes unproductive and must be left fallow during the next time step, so both of these values are indicated with the same symbol.</p