Diversitas/CCAFS/CRP6Meeting Chiapas, Mexico

December 2010

Agrobiodiversity research challenges: Sustainable Intensification, Buffers,

Filters and Land Sharing Meine van Noordwijk

Dominant DIVERGENT model of Territorial configuration

Luis García-Barrios et. al. 2009. Bioscience and 2010 La Jornada del Campo.

Rural-urban

migraton

Low QualityFood provi-sioning

Control of erosion & Water excess and scarcity

Fortress typeconservation

against masses

Rural poor

Cheap massive(highly profitable)

industrialagribussiness

Cheap massive(highly profitable)urban housing

EliteOrganic

food

Wage laborers

Control of Water excess andscarcity

EliteSuburban residence

EliteEcotourism

Eco-servants

Rural-urbanmigrants

UrLand

AgLandNatLand

Land sparing

QualityRural MatrixLandscapes

and livelihoods

UrLand

NatLand

Ag Land

Marginalized CONVERGENT

modelLand sharing

Vulnerability

range

Resiliency

rangeTolerated range

Variability of climate

Variability of water flows

Human vulnerability to floods & droughts

Landscape filter & buffer functions

Currently increasing

Currently decreasing

Focus of ‘adapta-tion stragegies’?

Preventable increase in exposure

Adaptation: change in sys-tem properties, reducing vulner.

Exter-nal influen-ces

& their

Pat-terns of va-riability

Filters: reducing lateral flows and conse-quent external impacts

Buffers: reducing varia-bility by tempo-rary storage

E x

p

o s

u r

e

Resistance/ tolerance: absorbing external shocks

Resilience: bouncing back from temporary disturbance

System of primary interest

AdaptiveCapacity

Immediate response

medium/long term

Vulnera-bility to external change & varia-bility

Sustainagility: resource base for further change

Landscape as Socio-Agro-Eco-System

Trans-mis-sion

+I

MPACT

Persistence

Change sustainagility

Social stressors originating within and among community/ies

Economic stressors due to market

fluctuations & policy shifts

Climatic stressors: means, variability and

change

Access to under-utilized resources for

innovative use

Access to new markets, satisfying new types of

demand

Landscape buffers &

filters Pover-ty?

Resource accessibility

Innovation support

Shielding networks

Market access & insurance

65

4

321

Field-levelintensification

Landscape-levelintensification

Where would you like to see more trees?

Compositional heterogeneity

Configurational heterogeneity

Participatory resource mapping followed by simulation board game with agents of change: seeking contracts for logging or oilpalm conversion, or agreements on forest protection and ecolabelling

(Pho

togr

aphs

: Gra

ce V

illam

or)

Paddy - (semi)perma-nent rice fields in wet places ~ irrigation/ drainage systems

Swidden – rotational temporary food crops +

fallow

Forest edge – source of timber & NTFP’s for local

use and trade

CoreForest

Expand paddy domain Fallow AgroforestShort (semi)domesticated fallows forest products

Market-driven logging by concessionairs

Use of fertilizer, pes-ticides, short-cycle, short-straw, HYV rice + vegetables/ palawija

Permanent Intensifiedopen-field agroforest,crops Pas- tree crops ture

Industrial Industrial tree crop timber plantation plantation

Permanently cropped, technical irrigation agriculture //urbanizing

‘Transmi- Smallholdergration’ Pas- tree crops / towns ture homegarden

Large-scale tree (crop) plantations

Protec-tedarea

Fully intensified landscape components

Extensively used landscape

Physical terrainHuman use

Flat, lowland version

Arche-typical Rugged ,mountain

Forest/agroforest/ crop mosaic

Tree-crop dominated

Rice-dominated

Urbanized

Terrain

Malaria control

<20 km-2

~50 km-2

~200 km-2

1000 km-2

Gene

Product value chains

Patch/field

Organism

Population

Farm

Land-scape

Desakota network

GlobeNational economy

Community

Water-shed

Nation

Global institutions

National institutions

time

space

in

stitu

tions

Farms are decision points across spatial, temporal and institutional scales

Jackson, L.E., van Noordwijk, M., Bengtsson, J., Foster, W., Lipper, L., Pulleman, M., Said, M., Snaddon, J. and Vodouhe, R., 2010. Biodiversity and agricultural sustainagility: from assessment to adaptive management. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2:80–87

But a major challenge remains in reconciling 3 time scales relevant to various decision makers:

Relative agricultural function (RAF) - provisioning

Rela

tive

ecol

ogic

al fu

nctio

n (R

EF) A

Initial use

BDegra-

dationC

Rehabilitation

EUCritical loss of

ecological functions

D

Trade-off REF/RAF: convex, concave, win-win after lose-lose

LowLow

High

Core wilderness/ natural forest

Polyculture

attractors

High

Intensive agroecosys-tem domain

Agroforest domain

Degraded, aban-doned land

Current dominant trend

Biodiversity-ba-sed alternative pathway

Landscape position

Natural capital -NMDS2

Hoeksche Waard, NL

Sacramento Valley California

Koubri, Burkina Faso

Zona de Mata, Brasil

Pacaja, E. Amazone, BrasilW. Ghats,

India

Jambi, Indonesia

La Sepultura, Chiapas, Mexico

Ag reliance on ecological processes (-NMDS1)

Degrading agricultural landscapes

Sustainable Weighting of Economy-Ecology Tradeoffs: Organized

Reduction or Stretching Our Use of Resources? (SWEETorSOUR?)

Production Possibility Frontier

This may be societal optimum,

but requires SWEET

Getting here may turn SOUR

We need empirical data, comparative analysis of how SWEET could be made to work and how SOUR can be avoided.

Comparison of 8 sites in a global

network starts to give insights… Jackson et al under

review

Old-growthforest

Relia

nce

on n

atur

al c

apita

l & e

colo

-gi

cal p

roce

sses

for

prod

uctio

n

Agrotechnical intensification

Jackson et al., under review

Field-scale actions Landscape-scale actions

Jackson et al., under review

Key research challenges

• Quantify buffer & filter functions at patch/ field/landscape scales under influence of ‘intensification’ (or alternative intensification pathways)

• Quantify need for increase in buffer/filter functions in response to increased climate variability

• Social & economic institutions to support SWEET and avoid SOUR