Resilient Landscapes: Sustaining people and nature in rural areas

1
Resilient Landscapes Sustaining people and
nature in rural areas

• Lecture 19

2
Rural Decline is a Wicked Problem- a Knot of
Ecological and Socio-economic factors

• Problems that are complex all the way down from
  top to bottom.
• They dont successfully decompose at any one
  level into units that can be added back up to the
  whole picture.
• Things are entangled within levels and across
  levels (up and down).

3
Processes Work at Different Levels to Shape the
Landscape Hierarchy
1 cm
1000 km
1 km
10 km
100 m
1 m
Atmospheric processes occur faster than
vegetative processes occurring at the same
spatial scale.
10 000 yrs
4
region
1 000 yrs
3
forest
century
2
climate change
stand
patch
1
decade
LOG TIME - years
crown
El Niño
year
0
needle
month
-1
long waves
Vegetative Structures
-2
day
Atmospheric Processes
fronts
-3
hour
thunderstorms
-4
4
2
0
- 2
- 4
- 6
LOG SPACE- km
4
Rural Decline is a Wicked Problem

• One Possible Cause Development processes ignore
  complexity within and between levels to maximize
  one objective function.
• Prostitution Imperative for maximum productivity
  everyone reduced to their maximum utility
• Farmers food producers
• Non-farmers cheap labor
• Wildlife pests or aesthetic amenities

5
Presentation Overview

• Analyze Causes
• How do rural ecosystems and society disintegrate?
• Achieving Rural Sustainability
• How to stop disintegration and re-integrate the
  elements into a functioning whole?

6
Outline

• Resilience Theory
• to describe rural life and how it changes
• Assessing Modern Agriculture
• The Green Revolution
• Poland
• Implementation for Rural Resilience
• Certification
• Sustainable Methods
• Integrating Theory and Practice
• Summary

7
The Adaptive Cycle - A Map of System Dynamics
Source Holling, 1992
8
What Promotes Resilience?

• Control of Disturbance
• Disturbance Frequency and Intensity
• Technical Restrictions
• Shellfish Fishery in Chesapeake Bay
• Herbivore grazing/browsing
• Fire or logging in forests
• Development in floodplain
• Local rain cycle

9
What Promotes Resilience?

• Control of Disturbance
• Capacity to Absorb Disturbance
• Landscape morphometry
• Floodplains and flood protection
• Habitat availability
• Ability to migrate (connectivity of landscape)
• Spatial Heterogeneity (mangroves, eel grass)
• Processing and Cycling of Resources
• Cross-scale functional reinforcement
• Within-scale functional diversity

10
What Promotes Resilience?

• Regulation of Renewal (or Regenerative potential)
• Stored Resources
• Soil depth, organic content, seed bank
• Water (aquifer, lake, river)
• Nutrients in biomass
• Facility of Response
• Recolonization distance
• Biodiversity
• Cross-scale functional diversity

11
What Promotes Resilience?

• Regulation of Renewal (or Regenerative potential)
• Availability of Information
• Viability of cultural information transfer
• Language
• Customs (education, discourse)
• Politics
• Access to Information
• Human Memory Population Age Structure
• Physical distribution - libraries, networks
• Political and economic control

12
Collapse of Resilience

• Surprise from Cross-scale Interactions
• Occasionally Natural systems develop to a stage
  of over-maturity where elements are
  over-connected.
• They become accidents waiting to happen.
• Then collective activities of small scale
  processes can cascade upward and cause the
  system to flip to another system type.

13
Outline

• Resilience Theory
• to describe rural life and how it changes
• Assessing Modern Agriculture
• The Green Revolution
• Poland
• Implementation for Rural Resilience
• Certification
• Sustainable Methods
• Integrating Theory and Practice
• Summary

14
Modern Agricultures Promise

• Apparent Success - More food for less
• Food Trends since 1961
• Food supplies per person 24 higher
• Food prices per person 40 lower
• Long-term productivity threatened
• Increased water scarcity and land degradation
• Ignores
• Regional effects can be more pronounced
• Especially in Tropics (Africa and Central
  America)
• Non-linear responses - system flips
• Social injustice - food and land distribution,
  rural collapse

15
Green Revolutions Effectson Agroecosystem
Indicators

• Productivity Index General Increases
• Cereal yields, calorie supply, and production in
  most regions except Sub-Saharan Africa
• Food, especially livestock, in most regions
• Farm incomes in Green Revolution lands
• Except - Not in most lower potential lands
• More employment and higher real wages
• Except - Not where mechanization coincides with
  growing labor supply

Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
16
Cereal Production inDeveloping Countries
(1961-1986)
Calories per Person per Day
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
17
Declining World Food Price Index
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
300 200 100 50
Food Price Index
Year
18
Modern Agriculture -Control of Disturbance

• Disturbance Frequency and Intensity are
  increasing
• Technical Restrictions
• Rising size and impact intensity of equipment
• Herbivore grazing/browsing
• Constant grazing with no rest for fields
• Fire or logging in forests
• Fire suppression and larger harvest patterns
• Development in floodplain
• Little original floodplain remains

19
Modern Agriculture -Control of Disturbance

• Capacity to Absorb Disturbance declines
• Landscape morphometry
• Engineering continues to modify river channels
  and floodplains for irrigation and flood
  protection
• Habitat availability
• Ability to migrate (connectivity of landscape)
• Spatial Heterogeneity
• Rural landscapes are increasingly converted to
  larger farms with larger fields shaped for large
  machines such that natural habitats are
  increasingly smaller, fragmented and
  disconnected.

20
Global Pollution caused by Agriculture
Global Disturbances Will Increase as
Agriculture Modifies the Climate.
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
21
Modern Agriculture - Regulation of Renewal

• Stored Resources - declining
• Soil depth, organic content, seed bank
• Water (aquifer, lake, river)
• Nutrients in biomass
• Facility of Response - declining
• Re-colonization distance - increasing
• Biodiversity - declining
• Cross-scale functional diversity- declining

22
World-wide Patterns of Degradation of
Agricultural Lands
Heavy No Recovery
Degraded 23
18 of Forest
Moderate
21 of Perm.Pasture
Not Degraded 77
38 of Cropland
Light
Source Wood et al. 2000 Pilot Analysis of Global
Ecosystems Agroecosystems. World Resources
Institute, Washington, D.C.
23
Soil Losses from ErosionJava
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
Tons Of Top Soil Per Hectare
24
Cumulative Productivity Losses on Agricultural
Lands

• Losses due to soil degradation
• 17 in total
• 13 on croplands, 4 on pastures
• Losses due to Salinization
• 20 of irrigated land (45 million ha) damaged
  result 11 Billion annually lost
• Spreading rate 1 to 1.5 million ha per year
  (half the rate at which new land is being brought
  into irrigation).

25
Arable Land in Developing CountriesThe Potential
Appears Large
Area In Millions Of Hectares
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
26
Constraints on Potential Cropland in Developing
Nations
Percent Of Land Affected
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
27
Irrigation and Groundwater

• Over-pumping
• Pumping water faster than the rate of recharge by
  rain and groundwater movement.
• Trends in Over-pumping (Postel 1997)
• USA - 20 of all irrigated land (4 mil. ha)is
  over-pumped
• Texas - lost 25 of groundwater in 50 years,
  farms close as irrigated area has fallen by 28
• China - groundwater levels fall 1- 2 meters per
  year in Northern China
• India - Tamil Nadu state - groundwater has fallen
  25 - 30 meters in 10 years

28
Green Revolutions Effectson Agroecosystem
Indicators

• Sustainability Index
• Greater pest and disease resistance
• But severe new outbreaks on some new crops
• Increased morbidity and mortality from pesticides
• Greater reliance on inorganic nitrogen
  fertilizers with risk of restrictions
• Greater loss of soil structure and
  micro-nutrients
• Increased soil toxicity, waterlogging and
  salinity
• Increased risk of damage and disruption due to
  acid rain, ozone depletion, Ultraviolet light
  penetration, climate variability

Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
29
Green Revolutions Effectson Agroecosystem
Indicators

• Stability Index
• Greater variance in yields and production in some
  regions
• Due to pest and pathogen attack
• Global-warming induced climate variability

Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
30
Per Capita Productionby Region
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
West Asia/ North Africa
Asia
Latin America
Sub-Saharan Africa
Building or even sustaining society is impossible
when variable (unreliable) resources prevent
planning and implementation.
31
Green Revolutions Effectson Agroecosystem
Indicators

• Equitability Index
• Benefits go disproportionately to landowners and
  input providers (fertilizers, pesticides, seeds)
• Declining real wages, increased unemployment and
  increased landlessness in some regions
• Persistence of high levels of under- and
  malnutrition

Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
32
Irrigation

• Concentration of production power
• 30 - 40 of crop output comes from the 17 of
  cropland that is irrigated (264 million ha)
• Food Security - rising dependence on fossil fuel,
  canals and pumps for half the Global Population
• Many countries rely on irrigation for more than
  half their domestic consumption
• China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Japan,
  Koreas, Peru

33
Rising Trend of Irrigation in Developing Countries
Percent Of Arable Land that is Irrigated
Million Hectares
Year
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
34
Irrigation Historical Trends

• Irrigation appears to increase
• Hectares - 500 increase since 1900
• But is actually declining because of rising costs
  and declining resilience
• Hectares per person - Peaked at 48 in 1978 and
  has declined 6 percent since.
• Construction slowing lt-- Costs more than doubling
  for canals, dikes, pumping stations
• Loss of land
• Waterlogging and salinization
• Operation costs rise as groundwater tables fall

35
Irrigation Intensity and Food Security

• Annual Global Supply of Fresh Water (Km3)
• Total 9000 to 12 500
• Extracted for human use 3700
• Extracted for irrigation 2700 (70 of all human
  use)
• Crop water demands (kg water/kg crop)
• 500 - potatoes
• 900 - wheat
• 1400 - maize
• 2000 - rice
• gt2000 - sugar cane and bananas

Source Wood et al. 2000 Pilot Analysis of Global
Ecosystems Agroecosystems. World Resources
Institute, Washington, D.C.
36
Rising Trend of Fertilizer Use in Developing
Countries
Million Tons
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
37
Global Fertilizer Use Trends Since 1960
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green
Revolution
38
Hunger in the Developing World
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
39
Access to Services inDeveloping Countries
Percentage Of Population With Access
Service
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
40
Poverty and Land Holdingin Bangladesh
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
41
Resilience - Regulation of Renewal

• Availability of Information (equal access to all)
• Viability of cultural information transfer
• Language
• Each month at least 10 languages lost
• Customs (education, discourse)
• Politics
• Access to Information and Power
• Human Memory Population Age Structure
• Youth culture ignores elders
• Physical distribution - libraries, networks
• Political and economic control
• Control of influence and funding

42
Intensification of Agricultural
SystemsConcentration of Control of Information
and Power

• Funding - Public influence declines
• Public investment declines and is overtaken by
  new research networks of multi-nationals.
• Research Budget of a large multi-national seed
  company
• 350 million 5 of the total global
  investment in Agricultural research Most of
  public funded research world-wide (CIGAR).
• Public Subsidies for Agricultural Production
• Trend Decline from 45 to 35 of value of
  production (1986 1988)
• Spread New Zealand 1, EU average 45,
  Norway, Switzerland 70

43
Intensification of Agricultural Systems
Concentration of Control of Information and
Power

• Production Power is concentrating
• Independence (financial, intellectual, political)
  of agribusiness companies declines as the food
  chain is vertically integrated.
• The same company controls food from the field to
  the table.
• Food Self-Sufficiency- falling in developing
  nations
• Capacity to feed themselves falls from 96 to 91
  as cereal imports from developed world increases
  300 (1969 - 1985)

44
Intensification of Agricultural Systems
Concentration of Control of Information and
Power

• Biological Resource Base loses diversity
• 95 of global calories and proteins come from 30
  plant species
• 75 of food consumed come from 12 plant 5
  animal species
• New varieties dominate fields, displace ancient
  species
• In Asian farms- 90wheat, 67 rice varieties are
  new
• In USA farms - 90 changed to the new GMO soy
  varieties in the last 5 years.
• Genetic erosion 10 domesticated animals lost
  and a further 15 at risk.

45
Future ChallengeRising Population and Sinking
Resources

• Rising Demand for Food - depends on trends in
  food quality and population.
• If Fertility Rate stabilized at 2.1 kids per
  mother
• Latinos (maize) and Asia (rice) must double
  their plant derived energy.
• - Africans (plantains, cassava) must drastically
  increase productivity by five fold.

Source Isabel Alvarez, Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, Regional
Office, Rome, Italy IN Boekstein et al. eds.
2000, Towards an Agenda for Agricultural Research
in Europe. Conference Proceedings 13-15 April
1999. Wageningen Pers, Wageningen, the Netherlands
46
World Population Increase
Source G. Conway 1997 The Doubly Green Revolution
47
Outline

• Resilience Theory
• to describe rural life and how it changes
• Assessing Modern Agriculture
• The Green Revolution
• Poland
• Implementation for Rural Resilience
• Certification
• Sustainable Methods
• Integrating Theory and Practice
• Summary

48
Environmental Challengesto Polish Agriculture

• Percent of all Polish Agricultural Lands
• 20 - suffer from Water Wind Erosion
• Especially where shelter belt tree lines removed
• 30 - suffer from Soil acidification
• 19 - need to restore - very poor condition
• This number will rise to 30 in 2015
• Groundwater levels dropping due to excessive
  drainage.
• Lack of facilities to control farmyard pollution.

49
Socio-Economic ChallengesIncreasing Isolation of
Rural Society

• No Viable Urban-Rural Links
• Declining share of Economy -gt No respect
• 4.8 of GDP comes from Agriculture (including
  hunting forestry), down from 11.8 in 1988
• No Cultural Exchanges
• Urbanites see rural society as Polska B - an
  embarrassing backwater that they ignore
• Culture moves in from the West (New York, Paris)
• Economic Sink
• 48 of unemployed are rural, cant afford to
  migrate.
• Imports now exceed exports as Eastern markets
  decline and more Poles buy Western food

50
Challenges to Polish AgricultureOfficial View
of EU and Polish Ministry of Agriculture

• Fragmented, oddly-shaped, farm plots
• No experience transfer to the next generation
• Youth flees collapsing agricultural economy
• Large portion of farmers are older
• Production doesnt meet market needs both in
  quantity and quality
• Weak farmers organizations
• Insufficient on-farm investment
• Lack of skills in production, technology,
  marketing and management

51
Sizes of Polish Farms(2 048 000 farms in June
1995)
- Numbers of farms (000s)
690
545
429
220
164
UAA Useable Agricultural Area
52
Challenges to Polish AgriculturePerspective of
the EU

• Trade Skills and Institutions are very poorly
  developed gt Poland cant withstand EU market
  competition
• fragmented production structure
• poor vocational qualifications
• lack of marketing skills
• absence of strong, organized producer groups
• most producers cant ensure steady product flows
  of sufficient size
• no homogenous quality standards

53
Percent of Workforce in Agriculture (in 1995)
Source Ribbe, L. 1998 Land of the Storks
-Agriculture in Poland Report to Rockefeller
Brothers Fund. EuroNatur. Bonn, Germany.
54
Socio-Economic Challengesto Rural Life in Poland

• Financial
• Lack of money to finance innovations
• No excess resources with which to take new
  initiatives
• Many farms operate at a subsistence level (15 )
• Only 48 produce mainly for the market
• Market Innovation
• Local (even national) economies not strong enough
  to drive niche markets that ecological products
  might require to sustain the risk of going
  organic.

55
Socio-Economic Challengesto Rural Life in Poland

• Little access to health-care, banks, shops,
  cultural institutions
• High unemployment (both recorded and hidden)
• Low incomes no financial independence or
  capacity to adapt
• Endangered cultural heritage
• Disappearance of the framework of schools, shops
  and institutions that should nurture and be
  nurtured by farmers.

56
Socio-Economic Challengesto Rural Life in Poland

• Poor infrastructure discourages rural life and
  resettlement
• Transportation hard to get goods to market
• Fuel(gas) and electricity
• Frequent power failures
• Poor communication (telephone and post)
• Little sanitation or water availability
• Water supply 1.5 million local wells, 65 give
  poor quality water
• No prospect of building a better life
• Hard work for 365 days with no vacation
• Farms too small to make profit, no chance to
  build capital and get ahead

57
Opportunities for Polish Agriculture

• Good potential for broad-based organic production
• Extensive experience in self-reliance to produce
  food with few or no herbicides, pesticides or
  fertilizers.
• Many producers could qualify as organic.
• EU accession can support programs of rural
  development (SAPARD).

58
Food Securityof Polish Agriculture

• Despite small size, farms have maintained very
  stable output
• Ex. Per capita consumption 1986 1994 almost
  unchanged in potatoes, vegetables, cereals. Only
  milk declined 29 (source L. Ribbe 1998 Land of
  the Storks)
• Modest yields mean no dependence on high feed
  concentrates, pesticides and anti-bacterial
  chemicals.
• 1000 Kg Milk/cow each year Poland 3.1, Germany
  5, Denmark 6
• People each hectare must feed Germany 5,
  Netherlands 7, Poland 2.

59
Polish AgricultureTrends in Inputs and
OutputsSurprisingly good production with little
input
Source Ribbe, L. 1998 Land of the Storks
-Agriculture in Poland Report to Rockefeller
Brothers Fund. EuroNatur. Bonn, Germany.
60
Outline

• Resilience Theory
• to describe rural life and how it changes
• Assessing Modern Agriculture
• The Green Revolution
• Poland
• Implementation for Rural Resilience
• Certification
• Sustainable Methods
• Integrating Theory and Practice
• Summary

61
Outline

• Resilience Theory
• to describe rural life and how it changes
• Assessing Modern Agriculture
• The Green Revolution
• Poland
• Implementation for Rural Resilience
• Certification
• Sustainable Methods
• Integrating Theory and Practice
• Summary

62
What Promotes Resilience?

• Control of Disturbance
• Disturbance Frequency and Intensity
• Technical Restrictions
• Shellfish Fishery in Chesapeake Bay
• Herbivore grazing/browsing
• Fire or logging in forests
• Development in floodplain
• Local rain cycle

63
What Promotes Resilience?

• Control of Disturbance
• Capacity to Absorb Disturbance
• Landscape morphometry
• Re-establish Natural Floodplains for flood
  protection
• Habitat availability
• Ability to migrate (connectivity of landscape)
• Spatial Heterogeneity
• Shelter belts, landscape planning
• Processing and Cycling of Resources
• Lower demand -gt lower nutrient inputs

64
Practices to Regulate Renewal of Rural Systems

• Replenish and Sustain Stored Resources
• Soil depth, organic content, seed bank
• Water (aquifer, lake, river)
• Nutrients in biomass
• Facility of Response
• Recolonization distance
• Biodiversity
• Cross-scale functional diversity

65
Practices to Regulate Renewal of Rural Systems

• Availability of Information
• Viability of cultural information transfer
• Language
• Customs (education, discourse)
• Politics
• Access to Information
• Human Memory Population Age Structure
• Physical distribution - libraries, networks
• Political and economic control

66
Outline

• Resilience Theory
• to describe rural life and how it changes
• Assessing Modern Agriculture
• The Green Revolution
• Poland
• Implementation for Rural Resilience
• Certification
• Sustainable Methods
• Integrating Theory and Practice
• Summary

67
Mandate to Counter-pose Theory and Practice

• Science cant address problems alone
• Control, replication and isolation of single
  causative variables are rarely possible in a
  multi-variate arena (interface of nature/society)
  at large scales.
• Problem causes and solutions are dynamic
• Basic uncertainty emerging from nature is
  compounded by societys attempts to learn and
  manage. We need adaptive means to understand and
  implement that flexibly integrate theory and
  practice as we follow changes in nature and
  society.

68
Learning That Persistently Adapts

• Truth is not constant - Social and natural
  systems continue to change
• Initial responses to crises were not as important
  as the sustained capability to learn and respond
  accordingly.

69
Adaptive Learning

• No genuine learning inside the box - your
  disciplinary shell determines how you learn.
• Even the best data and models cant deliver
  certainty
• Lake Mendota, Wisconsin.

70
AEA Processes Linked in a Cycle of Integrated
Learning
Policy as Hypothesis
Management Actions as Tests
Assessment
Evaluation
71
Objectives of Policy AnalysisConventional vs.
Adaptive Attitudes

• Conventional
• 1. Seek precise predictions
• 2. Build prediction from detailed understanding
• 3. Promote scientific consensus
• 4. Minimize conflict among actors.

• Adaptive
• 1. Uncover range of possibilities
• 2. Predict from experience with aggregate
  responses
• 3. Embrace alternatives
• 4. Highlight difficult trade-offs

72
Objectives of Policy AnalysisConventional vs.
Adaptive Attitudes

• Conventional
• 5. Emphasize short-term objectives.
• 6. Presume certainty in seeking best action.
• 7. Define best action from set of obvious
  alternatives
• 8. Seek productive equilibrium.

• Adaptive
• 5. Promote long-term objectives.
• 6. Evaluate future feedback and learning.
• 7. Seek imaginative new options.
• 8. Expect and profit from change.

73
Adaptive Science and Practice in Minnesota
Prairie Streams

• Effective Collaboration
• Scientists provide theory and supervise fieldwork
• Farmers manage cattle according to experimental
  design and help monitor results
• Local citizens help monitor stream conditions
• Mutual Benefit
• Stream conditions improve
• Erosion reduced, water quality improved
• Diversity of habitats and species increased
• Farmers increase income and keep their farm
• Local citizens learn science, ecology and farming
  and spread the knowledge informally
• Advance ecological theory on disturbances

74
Cycles of Erosion and Grazing
A.
B.
C.
75
How might AEA promote Rural Resilience?

• Provide a transparent framework with a rigorous
  scientific foundation and broader collaboration
  across society to
• Develop, execute, assess and modify programs to
  monitor biodiversity.
• Create dialogues that can evolve as nature or
  society change and which address the diversity of
  threats and benefits to biodiversity,
  synchronized with parallel research and
  monitoring programs.

76
Caution

• Nature and society will change, and no single
  index can capture this dynamic complexity.
• We need adaptive means to
• Modify how we see and measure.
• Refine our discussion to keep this full
  complexity in view as it changes.
• Flexibly link our understandings to our actions
  such that policy can evolve with changes in the
  world.

77
Summary

• Resilience is produced by the abundance and
  diversity of a variety of factors and processes
  that operate at different scales.
• Protecting resilience requires addressing the
  integrity of nature and society as expanding
  human populations threaten biodiversity.
• Adaptive Environmental Assessment offers a
  flexible framework to understand and act in the
  face of uncertainty.