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1.
Drylands (41 and 35% of global land and population, respectively) have the lowest biological productivity of any ecosystem,
contain populations with the highest growth rates on earth, and share a significant fraction of global poverty for which desertification
is implicated. A global assessment of the available information indicates that the inherent low productivity of drylands,
when combined with other adverse factors, can generate poverty. It additionally indicates that while the drylands may exist
in a locally stable and sustainable state, this is readily destabilized by non-linear, threshold-crossing transitions to an
alternative steady-state leading to desertification, poverty and conflicts. The “desertification paradigm” (human and climatological
pressures driving overexploitation of land resources, leading to desertification, poverty and reduced security) is challenged
by its “counter-paradigm” (adversity elicits innovation, leading to ingenuous solutions for avoiding desertification). But
the latter does not account for the inevitability of continued and increasing pressure on the finite dryland resources, expected
to be further exacerbated by a globally increasing need for agricultural land. A companion paper points out that this situation
can be avoided by reducing dependence on land productivity, through adoption of “alternative livelihoods.” These livelihoods,
while economically advantageous, reduce pressure on land resources. 相似文献
2.
Sustainability science: an ecohealth perspective 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
David J. Rapport 《Sustainability Science》2007,2(1):77-84
Sustainability science is emerging as a transdisciplinary effort to come to grips with the much-needed symbiosis between human
activity and the environment. While there is recognition that conventional economic growth must yield to policies that foster
sustainable development, this has not yet occurred on any broad scale. Rather, there is clear evidence that the Earth’s ecosystems
and landscapes continue to degrade as a consequence of the cumulative impact of human activities. Taking an ecohealth approach
to sustainability science provides a unique perspective on both the goals and the means to achieve sustainability. The goals
should be the restoration of full functionality to the Earth’s ecosystems and landscapes, as measured by the key indicators
of health: resilience, organization, vitality (productivity), and the absence of ecosystem distress syndrome. The means should
be the coordinated (spatially and temporally) efforts to modify human behaviors to reduce cumulative stress impacts. Achieving
ecosystem health should become the cornerstone of sustainability policy—for healthy ecosystems are the essential precondition
for achieving sustainable livelihoods, human health, and many other societal objectives, as reflected in the Millennium Development
Goals. 相似文献
3.
Pablo Torres-Lima Luis Rodríguez-Sánchez 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2008,10(2):193-208
Urban development has important implications for farmland preservation and natural resource management in local peri-urban
communities. Social science research on recent changes in rural landscape of mega-cities tends to be limited to case studies
in Latin-American nations. This study analyses the socioecomic dynamics of farming land use and the interactions between multiple
cultural variables and the environment. Fieldwork was carried out during the 2002–2003 period in rural livelihoods of the
five high mountain towns of south Mexico City. Data obtained from participatory survey and ethnographic techniques were integrated
to assess changes in rural landscape and resource management and how urbanization, deforestation and market oriented agricultural
production result in different livelihoods within a similar urban fringe context. The dynamic of mixture of urban and rural
landscapes is based on farm productivity and social capital factors. The study concludes that policy support for regional
agricultural production systems through enhancing ecosystems services, environmental protection and economic development is
needed for sustainable development of local communities.
Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue 相似文献
4.
Christopher Kuzdas Benjamin P. Warner Arnim Wiek Raffaele Vignola Mariel Yglesias Daniel L. Childers 《Sustainability Science》2016,11(2):231-247
Many new forms of water governance are emerging in response to economic and social needs and wants, as well as water-related problems such as scarcity, injustice, and conflict. However, there is little evidence on how sustainable these governance regimes are, which would be critical for making progress toward sustainable and just water governance. In this article, we present the results of a transdisciplinary multi-criteria sustainability assessment of alternative governance regimes for Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica. The assessment specifies differences between sustainable and unsustainable governance regimes, while also pinpointing how the current water governance regime performs in comparison to those alternatives. The findings indicate that those governance regimes with just and deliberative stakeholder involvement, secure groundwater reserves, and healthy dry tropical ecosystems were considered sustainable and just. In contrast, the current state of water governance was found to be at high risk of digressing toward unsustainable systems where rural communities lack rights and influence, where economies favor agro-industry and high impact tourism at the expense of rural livelihoods, and where water scarcity overwhelms weak governance. This assessment study clarifies water sustainability goals, asserts the need for transformational change, and offers a pragmatic foundation for actions toward sustainable water governance. 相似文献
5.
Sachida Jha 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(6):1215-1223
Deforestation studies have attracted considerable attention over the past two decades. Analyses of local deforestation examine
the significance of numerous explanatory variables for the extraction of forest products. This study distinguishes among the
explanatory variables as household-specific and site-specific, and argues for in-depth analysis of household-specific variables.
It examines the role of household size, income, and education on firewood extraction and beedi-making in the Western Ghats
of India, a hotspot of biodiversity. The study documents the incidence of these livelihoods, investigates the interaction
among the three variables, and uses logistic regression models to determine the exact probability for the livelihoods. Two
novel features of the study include analysis of wood and non-wood extraction through a single dataset and determination of
model by the data. The results show high dependency of households on forest-based livelihoods, situations when the probability
of livelihoods changes substantially, and non-parallel trends for household dependency. The study suggests the role of household-specific
variables as the agents of motivation and persistence for forest-based livelihoods and presents a hypothesis about the critical
size of household in forest dependency. The study recommends four measures—harvest of ecosystem services, rise in income,
migration and mobility, and environmental education—to promote sustainable livelihoods. 相似文献
6.
Zhen Lin Zhou Hailin & Xie Gaodi Institute of Geographic Sciences Natural Resources Research Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China The Administrative Center for China''''s Agenda Beijing China 《中国人口.资源与环境(英文版)》2005,3(3)
1 INTRODUCTION Growing pressure on the land of North China Plain (NCP - a food bowl of the country, has made many of th traditional farming practices increasingly difficult to sustain such as manuring, composting, mulching, legume-based rotations, field levelling and fertilizing with mud from rivers and canals. The pressure on the farmlands has also led to a decrease in farm sizes and shortened fallow periods To cope with this pressure on the land and to maintain its fertility, farmers … 相似文献
7.
Abstract The current pressure on production resources of North China Plain, such as land and water to feed the growing population, necessitates the assessment of the sustainability of farming practices. This study focuses on the sustainability of farming practices related to groundwater and soil fertility management. The assessment is based on selected site-specific key indicators and their established threshold limits. The current farming practices in the study area are clearly unsustainable. Only about 6% of the surveyed farm households practice sustainable farming. The study stresses that farming practice, which is economically sustainable, should not be promoted at the cost of environment. Holistic strategies need to be developed and implemented that aim at balanced use of inputs, which satisfy both productivity and environmental concerns. 相似文献
8.
Laura A. German Berhane Kidane Riziki Shemdoe 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2006,8(4):535-552
Natural resource degradation in highland regions is of increasing concern to the global community due to its role in aggravating poverty and the loss of environmental services to local and downstream users. The integration of trees into smallholder farming systems has been promoted as a means to enhance rural livelihoods while reversing the degradation of soil, water, biodiversity and related environmental services. Yet in addition to these benefits, negative impacts of trees on certain stakeholders or system components have also accompanied such efforts—suggesting that important trade-offs accompany afforestation. This paper presents a methodology for diagnosing problems stemming from cultivation of certain tree species in specific landscape niches. Data derived from the application of this methodology in two sites in the eastern African highlands are presented. Participatory diagnoses of landscape-level problems suggest that the negative impact of trees on water resource availability and crop yield are of critical concern to smallholder farmers. Ethnoecological data highlight the properties of different tree species that determine their suitability to specific farm and landscape niches. These data point to important opportunities for more socially- and environmentally-optimal integration of indigenous and exotic tree species into agricultural landscapes, and highlight the critical importance of local knowledge in forging solutions appropriate to contemporary realities. 相似文献
9.
The potential for sand dams to increase the adaptive capacity of East African drylands to climate change 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Drylands are home to more than two billion people and are characterised by frequent, severe droughts. Such extreme events are expected to be exacerbated in the near future by climate change. A potentially simple and cost-effective mitigation measure against drought periods is sand dams. This little-known technology aims to promote subsoil rainwater storage to support dryland agro-ecosystems. To date, there is little long-term empirical analysis that tests the effectiveness of this approach during droughts. This study addresses this shortcoming by utilising multi-year satellite imagery to monitor the effect of droughts at sand dam locations. A time series of satellite images was analysed to compare vegetation at sand dam sites and control sites over selected periods of drought, using the normalised difference vegetation index. The results show that vegetation biomass was consistently and significantly higher at sand dam sites during periods of extended droughts. It is also shown that vegetation at sand dam sites recovers more quickly from drought. The observed findings corroborate modelling-based research which identified related impacts on ground water, land cover, and socio-economic indicators. Using past periods of drought as an analogue to future climate change conditions, this study indicates that sand dams have potential to increase adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change in drylands. It therefore can be concluded that sand dams enhance the resilience of marginal environments and increase the adaptive capacity of drylands. Sand dams can therefore be a promising adaptation response to the impacts of future climate change on drylands. 相似文献
10.
关于我国北方沙化农牧混合区的可持续发展问题 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
东起柯尔沁草地南缘,西至鄂尔多斯台地南缘的北方沙化农牧混和地带,正在面临着草地沙漠化的严峻挑战。本文从如下角度分析了影响该地区可持续发展的因素:农—林—牧的资源配置,农民对沙地草地改良技术的消极态度及背后隐藏的理性原因,经济政策和市场机制,土地的制度安排,农民在治理沙化草地中的潜在作用等。然后,得出了基本的结论和建议。 相似文献
11.
In order to improve the livelihoods of communities and make them more sustainable, study of the vulnerability of livelihoods seems necessary. In this paper, participatory vulnerability analysis was used within a sustainable rural livelihoods framework to assess the sustainability of livelihoods in the agroecosystem of Abesard, Iran. In addition, this paper explored vulnerability contexts that affect livelihood assets. Findings revealed that land use change, climate variability, market fluctuations and higher mechanisation were the main reasons of vulnerability. To overcome these problems and to adapt to changes, households have followed livelihood strategies such as agricultural intensification, livelihood diversification, and agricultural biodiversity. The government has also provided some services such as extension programmes, fertilizers, and subsidies to compensate for asset limitations. Overall, implementation of the following development policies are recommended: (1) support of agricultural production by government institutions; (2) moving towards the development of sustainable agricultural practises that integrate a variety of methods in a sustainable manner; (3) development of agricultural intensification in a sustainable way that compensates for any inadequacy of assets; and (4) providing adult vocational training programmes for both men and women related to on-farm and off-farm activities. In the end, results highlighted the need for more emphasis on overcoming the challenges of sustainable agriculture using a participatory approach in assessment of the vulnerability of community livelihoods. 相似文献
12.
生态系统评价对于生态系统的可持续经营以及社会可持续发展具有重要意义。本文简要介绍了在生态区域评价的发展过程中具有重要意义的一系列事件,阐述了生态系统评价在北美和全球的发展过程、生态系统评价的有关概念、内容及其对于生态系统可持续经营的重要意义,同时还介绍了我国参与新千年生态系统评估的一些行动,并对中国的生态系统评价提出看法。 相似文献
13.
Mohamed Rafik N. Qureshi Ram Karan Singh Mohd. Abul Hasan 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2018,20(2):641-659
The crop pattern has a significant impact on the feasibility of sustainable agricultural practices. Selected crop pattern influences environmental and economic condition and affects sustainability profoundly in agricultural practices. Hence, a careful intervention is required in the selection of an optimal crop pattern for sustainable agricultural practices. Selection of a particular set of crop pattern depends on many criteria that may vary from place to place thus pose challenges in deciding an optimum crop pattern. The present research focuses on the crop selection pattern in Indian environment that considers comprehensive criteria related to sustainable farming practices. Based on the in-depth review of the literature and experts opinion, comprehensive criteria related to sustainable farming practices for Ravi season crop are identified. Total twelve criteria covering socioeconomic conditions, soil and water conditions, environmental and climatic conditions are earmarked and taken into account for eight most commonly grown crops in Ravi season and later on modeled to determine the crop pattern for most needed sustainability. A fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision-making model has been developed considering the Indian farming system. The scarce resources availability to Indian farmers poses many challenges to practice farming with most needed sustainability. The present research will be useful in the area of Indian farming practices in particular and global farming practices in general. It will also help stakeholders in their cost effective decision making for better crop productivity leading to sustainable farming practices. Additionally, the state policy makers will be able to formulate effective state driven sustainable farming policy to enhance its stake in gross domestic product to become self-reliance. 相似文献
14.
Land change science has demonstrated that rural livelihoods around the world both drive and reflect changing environmental
regimes and political economic/structural transformations. This article explores the relationship between increasingly globalized
rural livelihoods and in-place land change, assessing results from social surveys of smallholding households in the southern
Yucatán region. We examine evidence for a transition in agricultural livelihood strategies as smallholders adjust to changing
political economic and institutional conditions, and link these transitioning strategies to land use changes. Based on household
surveys in 1997 and 2003, we comparatively assess both changes in the selection of livelihood strategies and in the land use
and cover impacts of those strategies. Our results indicate that although impacts of given strategies have changed little
over this period, there are increasing proportions of households pursuing two divergent adjustment paths—one of agricultural
withdrawal and one of agricultural intensification and commercialization. We investigate what sociodemographic characteristics
differentiate the groups of households following distinct livelihood strategies. Our findings point to the possibility of
simultaneous and contradictory land change outcomes as smallholders adjust in different ways to their intensified incorporation
into global economies. 相似文献
15.
Marcel Kok Matthias Lüdeke Paul Lucas Till Sterzel Carsten Walther Peter Janssen Diana Sietz Indra de Soysa 《Regional Environmental Change》2016,16(1):229-243
This paper presents a method for the analysis of socio-ecological patterns of vulnerability of people being at risk of losing their livelihoods as a consequence of global environmental change. This method fills a gap in methodologies for vulnerability analysis by providing generalizations of the factors that shape vulnerability in specific socio-ecological systems and showing their spatial occurrence. The proposed method consists of four steps that include both quantitative and qualitative analyses. To start, the socio-ecological system exposed to global environmental changes that will be studied needs to be determined. This could, for example, be farmers in drylands, urban populations in coastal areas and forest-dependent people in the tropics. Next, the core dimensions that shape vulnerability in the socio-ecological system of interest need to be defined. Subsequently, a set of spatially explicit indicators that reflect these core dimensions is selected. Cluster analysis is used for grouping the indicator data. The clusters found, referred to as vulnerability profiles, describe different typical groupings of conditions and processes that create vulnerability in the socio-ecological system under study, and their spatial distribution is provided. Interpretation and verification of these profiles is the last step in the analysis. We illustrate the application of this method by analysing the patterns of vulnerability of (smallholder) farmers in drylands. We identify eight distinct vulnerability profiles in drylands that together provide a global overview of different processes taking place and sub-national detail of their distribution. By overlaying the spatial distribution of these profiles with specific outcome indicators such as conflict occurrence or migration, the method can also be used to understand these phenomena better. Analysis of vulnerability profiles will in a next step be used as a basis for identifying responses to reduce vulnerability, for example, to facilitate the transfer of best practices to reduce vulnerability between different places. 相似文献
16.
Randall E. Brummett 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》1999,1(3-4):315-321
An incremental, farmer participatory approach to the development of sustainable aquaculture in integrated farming systems has been tested in Malawi. Average fish production rose from 900 to approximately 1500 kg ha-1 as farms achieved increasing levels of integration. Integrated farms produce almost six times the cash generated by the typical Malawian smallholder. The integrated pond-vegetable garden generates almost three times the annual net income from the staple maize crop and the homestead combined. The ecological footprint of integrated aquaculture is approximately 4 m2 per kg of fish produced compared to 170 m2 for more intensive systems. The incremental approach offers the possibility of fostering substantial improvement in rural livelihoods among African smallholding farmers. 相似文献
17.
Rice farming sustainability assessment in Bangladesh 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Farming sustainability is primordial to long-term socioeconomic development. This study assesses rice farming sustainability in Bangladesh by developing a composite indicator (CI) under the four pillars of sustainability and examines the main determining factors. The assemblage of top-down and bottom-up approaches were applied to generate an essential set of indicators and data were collected through a household survey from 15 villages of three major rice growing ecosystems. The results revealed that less than half of the rice growers were sustainable in terms of economical viability, ecological benefits, and quality of life. By category, Boro rice farming was found to be the most sustainable, followed by Aman and Aus rice farming. Human capital development, increasing land productivity, use of resource conserving practices and technologies, and information availability and accessibility were the main factors promoting rice farming sustainability. The findings indicated that the construction of CI by employing several methodologies such as normalisation provide straightforward and clear-cut policy inputs. The major policy implications that emerged from the findings of the study are outlined to actualise rice farming sustainability, which contributes to sustainable development in Bangladesh. 相似文献
18.
In this study,we identified ecological pressures on grassland ecosystems and adaptive countermeasures in Northern China.Our research revealed that the main sources of these pressures included population growth,economic development,resources exploitation,and global climate change,with human-related activities being overriding factors.Overgrazing was an important reason for grassland imbalance,causing soil erosion and desertification,especially during the sensitive spring greening phase.In steppe zones,commercial coal mining was destructive to the ecological environment.Regarding long-term strategies,we recommend that policy-makers devote more consideration to a new conceptual approach for transforming grasslands through shifting the focus from die grassland’s traditional production functions to meir ecological functions.Applying this concept,adaptive countermeasures should be developed to reduce human impacts based on the environmental capacities of grasslands.Moreover,we recommend the development of environment-friendly industries and reduction of pressures from human activities as effective measures for maintaining the balance between sustainable economic development and grassland conservation.Lastly,we suggest that restoration of degraded grasslands should conform to the principle of natural vegetation to further improve the ecological adaptability of plants and ecosystem stability.This study is expected to provide scientific support for policy-makers engaged in grassland protection. 相似文献
19.
Wendy S. Merritt Brendan Patch V. Ratna Reddy Geoffrey J. Syme 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2016,18(2):315-346
Over the last four decades, the Indian government has been investing heavily in watershed development (WSD) programmes that are intended to improve the livelihoods of rural agrarian communities and maintain or improve natural resource condition. Given the massive investment in WSD in India, and the recent shift from micro-scale programmes (<500 ha) to meso-scale (~5000 ha) clusters, robust methodological frameworks are needed to measure and analyse impacts of interventions across landscapes as well as between and within communities. In this paper, the sustainable livelihoods framework is implemented using Bayesian networks (BNs) to develop models of drought resilience and household livelihoods. Analysis of the natural capital component model provides little evidence that watershed development has influenced household resilience to drought and indicators of natural capital, beyond an increased area of irrigation due to greater access to groundwater. BNs have proved a valuable tool for implementing the sustainable livelihoods framework in a retrospective evaluation of implemented WSD programmes. Many of the challenges of evaluating watershed interventions using BNs are the same as for other analytical approaches. These are reliance on retrospective studies, identification and measurement of relevant indicators and isolating intervention impacts from contemporaneous events. The establishment of core biophysical and socio-economic indicators measured through longitudinal household surveys and monitoring programmes will be critical to the success of BNs as an evaluation tool for meso-scale WSD. 相似文献
20.
Fathimath Ghina 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2003,5(1-2):139-165
This paper explores the status of sustainable development in small island developing states (SIDS), through the presentation of a case study on the Maldives, which is a typical small island developing state in the Central Indian Ocean. At the outset, a brief history of sustainable development as related to SIDS on the international agenda is outlined, starting from Rio to Barbados to Johannesburg. SIDS are expected to face many challenges and constraints in pursuing sustainable development due to their ecological fragility and economic vulnerability. It is the position of this paper that issues related to environmental vulnerability are of the greatest concern. A healthy environment is the basis of all life-support systems, including that of human well-being and socio-economic development. Priority environmental problems are: climate change and sea-level rise, threats to biodiversity, threats to freshwater resources, degradation of coastal environments, pollution, energy and tourism. Among these, climate change and its associated impacts are expected to pose the greatest threat to the environment and therefore to sustainable development. For small islands dependent on fragile marine ecosystems, in particular on coral reefs, for their livelihoods and living space, adverse effects of climate change such as increased frequency of extreme weather events and sea-level rise will exacerbate the challenges they already face. It is concluded that the paper path from Rio to Barbados to Johannesburg has made significant progress. However, much remains to be done at the practical level, particularly by the developed countries in terms of new and additional efforts at financial and technical assistance, to make sustainable development a reality for SIDS. 相似文献