The Emergence of a Governance Landscape for Saline Agriculture in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

Salinization is one of the main challenges of contemporary agriculture affecting food security and sustainability. Climate change with more persistent droughts, floods and sea-level rise is expected to increase this challenge, making it one of the most common land degradation processes. At the same time, an increasingly complex institutional landscape has emerged across multiple issue areas of global environmental governance related to salinization. This can be seen in a myriad of public, private, and hybrid actors coming together by creating initiatives to address the issue of growing salinization through saline agriculture. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterize the development of a governance landscape of cooperative initiatives for saline agriculture in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and to discuss how to harness their potential and orchestrate their efforts. The preliminary findings suggest that the fragmented landscape of initiatives is predominated by public actors and research institutions. This potentially hampers benefit sharing and upscaling efforts. Operational activities are most frequently the governance function, followed by information and networking efforts thereafter. Thematically, initiatives focus on the development of new crop varieties and water and soil management practices. Linkages to the Sustainable Development Goals suggest saline agriculture is connected to policy debates on sustainable food systems, climate change, water security, and land degradation

Stakeholder Mapping for the Dutch Potato Industry

Climate change is expected to lead to increased occurrences of droughts, floods, and rising sea levels, which may result in soil and water salinisation, thereby affecting agricultural productivity and food and water security. To address this challenge, it will be necessary to adapt food systems by incorporating saline agricultural practices. One potential solution is the cultivation of salt-tolerant potato varieties, which have the potential to sustain global food security in areas affected by increasing salinisation. This report proposes a methodology for the process of stakeholder mapping for case studies of the (saline) food systems and applies it to the Dutch potato sector. This methodology can be transferred to other contexts and on other crops. This report employs a stakeholder analysis approach to identify and classify key actors in the Dutch potato industry, in order to understand the relationships and power dynamics between them. This study provides new insights into the barriers and opportunities facilitating change in farming practices related to saline agriculture. The applied methodology was adapted from existing methodologies (Lelea et al., 2014; Raum, 2018) and tailored to the specific context of the national potato industry in the Netherlands. The Dutch potato industry holds a strong global position, but stakeholders show less concern about salinisation than researchers outside of the industry. There is a lack of internal consensus about leadership and a feeling of lack of agency amongst stakeholders, making industry change difficult. According to the findings, a significant portion of stakeholders participate in various segments of the value chain, but there is a gap between the interest and influence of different stakeholder groups in the industry. Government institutions are seen as having high influence but low interest, while civil society actors are considered to have high interest but low influence. Additionally, farmers are perceived to have frictious relationships with retail, because of pricing power, and national government institutions due to opposing goals. Multiple stakeholder types have stated that at this point in time, innovations regarding salt-tolerant potato varieties are primarily interesting for export to countries with arid climates. Salinity is not a high priority on the agendas of farmers, as the current nitrogen crisis in the Netherlands is threatening the farmers' existence. To address and overcome some of these challenges, stakeholders need to engage in open and honest dialogue, build trust and respect, and commit to working together. Creating an inclusive and transparent process will enable all stakeholders to have a voice and contribute to the industry's evolution, which is crucial for sustainable development. The study suggests that awareness raising should increase the perceived severity of the salinisation issue to identify salinisation as a parallel problem that is also a threat to the viability of the food systems including potatoes. Challenges are exacerbated by a general feeling of lack of agency among stakeholders. Without clear leadership it is difficult to know who to target to facilitate change. Mutual understanding needs to increase in order to innovate the industry and henceforth move the industry forward to ensure its resilience and adaptive capacities to climate change

The Emergence of a Governance Landscape for Saline Agriculture in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa

Salinization is one of the main challenges of contemporary agriculture affecting food security and sustainability. Climate change with more persistent droughts, floods and sea-level rise is expected to increase this challenge, making it one of the most common land degradation processes. At the same time, an increasingly complex institutional landscape has emerged across multiple issue areas of global environmental governance related to salinization. This can be seen in a myriad of public, private, and hybrid actors coming together by creating initiatives to address the issue of growing salinization through saline agriculture. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterize the development of a governance landscape of cooperative initiatives for saline agriculture in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and to discuss how to harness their potential and orchestrate their efforts. The preliminary findings suggest that the fragmented landscape of initiatives is predominated by public actors and research institutions. This potentially hampers benefit sharing and upscaling efforts. Operational activities are most frequently the governance function, followed by information and networking efforts thereafter. Thematically, initiatives focus on the development of new crop varieties and water and soil management practices. Linkages to the Sustainable Development Goals suggest saline agriculture is connected to policy debates on sustainable food systems, climate change, water security, and land degradation

Saline Agriculture Initiatives in Mediterranean and North Sea Region

Salinisation is one of the main challenges of contemporary agriculture threatening food and water security. Climate change with more persistent droughts, floods and sea-level rise is expected to increase this challenge making it one of the most common land degradation processes. At the same time, an increasingly complex institutional landscape has emerged across multiple areas of global environmental governance related to salinisation. This can be seen in a myriad of public, private, and hybrid international institutions coming together by creating transnational initiatives to address the issue of growing salinisation through saline agriculture. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterise the status quo and development of a governance landscape of cooperative initiatives for saline agriculture in Mediterranean and North Sea regions. The results show a few overarching trends in the sample of 99 initiatives selected for the analysis. We suggest that initiatives can play an important role in the governance landscape of saline agriculture and can contribute to the upscaling of saline agriculture by advancing the scientific research and participating in the policy debate. However, findings suggest that the fragmented landscape of initiatives is predominated by public actors and research institutions. This potentially hampers benefit sharing and upscaling opportunities. There is an increase in the number of cooperative initiatives focusing on saline agriculture over time, particularly in years 2019-2020, suggesting increased interest or need for these initiatives. Their main governance functions are operational activities followed by information sharing and networking. However, for upscaling more ICIs are needed that commit to funding & standards and commitments’ activities. Thematically, most of the initiatives focus on the development of new crop varieties and water and soil management practices. The key SDGs addressed by them are SDG2 “Zero hunger”, SDG13 “Climate action”, SDG6 “Clean water and sanitation” and SDG8 “Decent work and economic growth”. Our results indicate that most of the initiatives do not report publicly, but those with reports exhibit high verification rates. Implementation of these accountability mechanisms is crucial for tracking the performance of the initiatives in terms of output, outcome and impact. The lack of employment of these mechanisms might obstruct effectiveness. Furthermore, the short duration and research focus of the international and transnational cooperative initiatives indicate a discrepancy between science and practice, which could hamper upscaling opportunities. More focus should be put on mobilising and transferring knowledge in order to make it accessible to a wider audience, thus increasing uptake, implementation and impact. Interdependencies among the policies of other governance areas such as climate change or biodiversity allow for mutual learning. This exchange should not be limited to academic and public institutions, but include, inspire and empower all those who are affected by salinized lands in order to ensure community food security