Living without buffers—illustrating climate vulnerability in the Lake Victoria basin

Exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are essential, albeit theoretically vague, components of climate vulnerability. This has triggered debate surrounding how these factors can be translated into, and understood in, an empirical context subject to present and future harm. In this article, which draws on extensive fieldwork in the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya and Tanzania, we illustrate how exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity play out in the context of climate vulnerability and discuss how they interact in situ. Using a mixed methods approach including survey data, rainfall data and a suite of participatory methods, such as focus groups and interactive mapping of seasonal calendars, we identify how climate-induced stressors affect smallholder farmers' well-being and natural resources. Drawing on the seasonal calendar as a heuristic, and climate vulnerability terminology, we illustrate when, where and how these climate-induced stressors converge to constrain farmers' livelihoods. Our analysis indicates that farmers in the basin face a highly uncertain future with discernible, but differentiated, adaptation deficits due to recurring, and potentially worsening, patterns of hardship

Ground-truths or Ground-lies? : environmental sampling for remote sensing application exemplified by vegetation cover data

During time of fast development of computer and sensor technology, ground data sampling strategies have achieved diminished attention in many remote sensing studies. This paper discusses the importance of designing an appropriate sampling scheme of ground data collection for remote sensing applications. The difficulties of achieving a balance between the size and the error of the samples are identified. Different techniques of vegetation cover estimations are evaluated to illustrate parts of the proposed sampling design. The study indicates that traditional methods of ground data collection for remote sensing applications do not have to result in "ground lies". Determination of a reliable and appropriate sampling scheme for the ground data collection should be given a more attention when assuring accurate results in remote sensing studies

Regulating a global value chain with the European Union's sustainability criteria – experiences from the Swedish liquid transport biofuel sector

AbstractDespite promises that they can contribute toward more environmentally beneficial transportation there are many sustainability concerns about liquid transport biofuels. In response to pressure from civil society, the European Union (EU) has introduced sustainability criteria for biofuels. A hybrid regulatory system involving state and non-state actors stipulates that retailers and producers must comply to be eligible for fiscal support such as tax exemptions. Flexibility in the system allows choice between different means of compliance, including a range of voluntary schemes. We present an analysis of views within the Swedish liquid transport biofuel sector in 2012 – a year after the introduction of EU sustainability criteria. Using document analysis, official statistics, and a survey, we use four key structures of global value chains — input–output structure, territorial configuration, institutional framework, and firm-level chain governance structure — to structure an analysis of biofuel value chain coordination. This yields three main findings regarding how the Swedish liquid transport biofuel system operates within, and views, the new regulatory framework. Firstly that it uses a broad portfolio of feedstock mainly from within Europe, seemingly avoiding countries where any supply conditions may be in doubt; second, larger retailers and producers achieve compliance without the need to provide additional social sustainability information; third, that actors exhibit predominantly Eurocentric perspectives on sustainability, express confidence that their supply chains have strong ‘sustainability performance’ and desire long-term policy stability. We conclude that despite a deep critique of the sustainability of biofuels amongst civil society and academia, EU regulation allows for production systems that reflect a European- and climate change mitigation-centred view on biofuel ‘sustainability’

Training materials for different categories of users

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Future Contingents and the Logic of Temporal Omniscience

At least since Aristotle’s famous 'sea-battle' passages in On Interpretation 9, some substantial minority of philosophers has been attracted to the doctrine of the open future--the doctrine that future contingent statements are not true. But, prima facie, such views seem inconsistent with the following intuition: if something has happened, then (looking back) it was the case that it would happen. How can it be that, looking forwards, it isn’t true that there will be a sea battle, while also being true that, looking backwards, it was the case that there would be a sea battle? This tension forms, in large part, what might be called the problem of future contingents. A dominant trend in temporal logic and semantic theorizing about future contingents seeks to validate both intuitions. Theorists in this tradition--including some interpretations of Aristotle, but paradigmatically, Thomason (1970), as well as more recent developments in Belnap, et. al (2001) and MacFarlane (2003, 2014)--have argued that the apparent tension between the intuitions is in fact merely apparent. In short, such theorists seek to maintain both of the following two theses: (i) the open future: Future contingents are not true, and (ii) retro-closure: From the fact that something is true, it follows that it was the case that it would be true. It is well-known that reflection on the problem of future contingents has in many ways been inspired by importantly parallel issues regarding divine foreknowledge and indeterminism. In this paper, we take up this perspective, and ask what accepting both the open future and retro-closure predicts about omniscience. When we theorize about a perfect knower, we are theorizing about what an ideal agent ought to believe. Our contention is that there isn’t an acceptable view of ideally rational belief given the assumptions of the open future and retro-closure, and thus this casts doubt on the conjunction of those assumptions

Assessing uncertainties in global cropland futures using a conditional probabilistic modelling framework

We present a modelling framework to simulate probabilistic futures of global cropland areas that are conditional on the SSP (shared socio-economic pathway) scenarios. Simulations are based on the Parsimonious Land Use Model (PLUM) linked with the global dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS (Lund-Potsdam-Jena General Ecosystem Simulator) using socio-economic data from the SSPs and climate data from the RCPs (representative concentration pathways). The simulated range of global cropland is 893-2380 Mha in 2100 (± 1 standard deviation), with the main uncertainties arising from differences in the socio-economic conditions prescribed by the SSP scenarios and the assumptions that underpin the translation of qualitative SSP storylines into quantitative model input parameters. Uncertainties in the assumptions for population growth, technological change and cropland degradation were found to be the most important for global cropland, while uncertainty in food consumption had less influence on the results. The uncertainties arising from climate variability and the differences between climate change scenarios do not strongly affect the range of global cropland futures. Some overlap occurred across all of the conditional probabilistic futures, except for those based on SSP3. We conclude that completely different socio-economic and climate change futures, although sharing low to medium population development, can result in very similar cropland areas on the aggregated global scale

Mapping Europe’s institutional landscape for forest ecosystem service provision, innovations and governance

There has been a strong quest for mapping and assessing ecosystem services (ES) to support governance. Yet, the institutional landscape that governs ES provision across multiple contexts has received less attention. We fill this research gap by developing and operationalising a framework for the analysis of policy documents that address European forest ES provision. By coding and analysing references to forest ES as well as innovations and governance mechanisms addressing these ES in national strategies on forest, biodiversity and bioeconomy, we map the institutional landscape of forest ES provision in Europe. We further analyse how biophysical supply of forest ES is connected to policies paying attention to ES and identifying innovations and governance for their provision. Innovations identified in policies centre around value chains of wood and bioenergy or biodiversity conservation, while non-wood forest products, cultural heritage, and recreation receive little attention. Biophysical supply of provisioning ES is connected to policies emphasising many innovations, while little supply of regulating ES could trigger service innovations and several new governance mechanisms. As forest ecosystems have received much attention in global, European and national sustainability policies, our institutional mapping illustrates that there is room for more use of innovations in promoting ES provision

Recent changes in land use and productivity in agro-pastoral Inner Mongolia, China

This study challenges the prevailing assumption that the expansion of cultivated land areas and increasing number of livestock in the agro-pastoral regions of northern China have aggravated the process of land degradation since the start of the rural reforms in 1978. Land-use and productivity trends in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), with special attention to the Keerqin steppe region, have been analysed. A combination of methods including household surveys, analysis of agro-statistics and satellite-based productivity modelling has been applied on different spatial scales. Increase in grain yields was found, though considerable interannual variability persists, rendering livelihood insecure for farmers. Although statistics for cultivated land area are inferior the area of cultivated land seems to be increasing mainly in the pastoral counties. Farmers acknowledge the importance of the 30-year contract on cultivated land introduced in 1997 with respect to their investment in long-term management, but ranked the availability of chemical fertilizers and the economic means to buy them as more critical for crop production than soil erosion. This indicates the increase in use of and dependence on agro-chemicals, a trend confirmed by regional statistics, and concern is raised regarding the sustainability of the rapid agricultural development. The spatio-temporal dynamics of primary production for the IMAR was analysed by means of a regionally adapted light use efficiency model. The model, driven by a combination of NOAA AVHRR data and climatic data, has been used to map monthly Gross Primary Production (GPP) for the period 1982-1999. Though the high inter-annual variability in primary production undermines the identification of significant trends, it is indicated that in the western regions there has been no change in biological production, whereas a large area in central IMAR shows a marked increases for the period 1982-99. A combination of increasing crop yields, an increase in precipitation, as well as afforestation projects are probable factors explaining the pattern of regional increase in primary production