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There is no congruence in diversity of the three groups of organisms studied. It is inferred that their differences in biological and ecological characteristics as well as their ranges of dispersal are responsible for the distinct patterns of distribution in the landscape. It is proposed that the strategy for biodiversity conservation should consider landscape-level conservation in order to capture the range of biodiversity that exists outside the formal reserve network in Kodagu. While maintaining the integrity of the strictly protected forest reserve; of traditionally conserved sacred forests; and of privately owned coffee plantations is essential, conservation practice should emphasise the involvement of local communities in management of landscape rather than imposing biodiversity conservation by force.

This inductive study explores what criteria could be used to identify conservation organisations more likely to achieve their goals. In addition to information gathered from the academic and grey literature, primary data was obtained from three main sources: semi-structured interviews with 74 conservation practitioners; an online survey completed by 154 conservation practitioners; and review of 35 non-profit organisational effectiveness frameworks. Interviews identified barriers to conservation success, allowing a typology of barriers to be developed. Risks to success can be internal (arising inside an organisation), external (completely outside of an organisation's control) or operational (outside of individual organisational control, but within the control of the conservation community). Because the list was long, statistical procedures were applied to the survey data to reduce the number of barriers needed to understand operating context. The framework review and survey explored organisational deficiencies that might present internal barriers to effectiveness. I found four dimensions to an effective organisation: governance; finance; leadership; and management. There was less agreement as to which criteria are present in effective organisations. Differences between frameworks used to guide effectiveness and those used to judge it were noted and discussed. Finally, survey results were compared to framework review results to compare viewpoints on effectiveness criteria. Ranked lists were not significantly different, but correlation between them was weak. This study provides the first empirically based conceptual model of barriers to conservation as perceived by conservation practitioners, and a first attempt to identify which barriers, internal and external, may be most important in identifying more effective conservation organisations. My findings also suggest that current criteria applied in funding decisions might be counter-productive: insisting on the presence of unproven effectiveness criteria stretches already pressurised conservation organisations even further and hampers their effectiveness. Instead, the donors could collaborate more and work towards less onerous and untested methods of decision- making.

This thesis addresses multi-scale approaches for improving food security with nutritional health. It argues that four key themes: scale, nutrition, trade, and governance are not given adequate attention in food security and nutrition studies. A multi-scale framework links the overriding thematic structure, bridges gaps, and enriches analysis. It facilitates a blended approach of analysis for food security and nutrition studies, public policy, and critical geography. Nutrition is at the centre of the inquiry and addresses the triple burden of malnutrition: hunger, micronutrient malnutrition, and obesity. Nutrition is hampered by an incomplete understanding of dietary diversity. Trade and governance are complimentary and cover dynamic commodity exchanges which might develop along with improved programme delivery. At the structural core of the work are four research papers which interact with established and emergent food security indicators and data for: the international system, nations, Indian states, and districts within Karnataka. Each paper uses specific methodological tools which are most compatible with the unique characteristics of the relevant scale. The first paper applies benchmarking and compares international FAO food security indictors with the EIU and other best practice sources to argue for improved data. In order to inform malnutrition beyond hunger, the second paper inputs FAOSTAT national food balance sheet data into a dietary food supply model of key nutritional food groups for medium activity individuals. The third paper employs Indiastat data to construct a food potential model representative of major components of the Indian food system, and compares it with production information for pulse varieties for inclusion in the NFSA. The fourth paper creates a nutritional HDI, compares it against the production of cereals and pulses, and considers weather conditions. Results illustrate that the FAO does not give proper attention to including governance indicators or capturing dietary diversity beyond hunger. Food balance sheet data shows that the majority of the world lacks the proper supply of key food groups to sustain a medium activity lifestyle, with fruit & vegetable deficits equally present in developed and developing nations. In India, states with the lowest food potential are located in the north and east of the country while some neighbouring states contain pulse production advantages. Further opportunities exist to use digital technologies to improve the administration of the programme. Similarly, northern districts of Karnataka require more direct NFSA intervention while the southern and coastal districts have the potential for increased production and trade of pulses. Implications for this study are centred on the development of future food security and nutritional health studies, policy, and administration. When possible, food security and nutrition studies can broaden their conclusions by expanding their base of indicators and data to take into account multi-disciplinary information. Possibilities for richer studies are evident through the development of more robust governance and dietary diversity indicators. These could focus on measurable programme results and take into account the impact of food groups and nutritional supply on various types of malnutrition. Multi-scale analysis might inspire cross-boundary policy formulation and assist in the development and trade of food system resources. The administration of food security programmes might improve with further study and the use of technology as a tool for delivery. This thesis clarifies how multi-scale approaches to food security and nutrition can be advanced through conceptual, methodological, and empirical work combining critical engagement, data analysis, and public policy.

Agricultural biodiversity, commonly referred to as agrobiodiversity, is that part of biodiversity that is geared towards agriculture and food production. Agrobiodiversity is said to contribute much to food and nutrition, but there is lack of data confirming this, particularly from Eastern Africa. To assess the extent of agrobiodiversity on smallholder farms and in local markets and to connect these to food intake and perceptions of food security among smallholder farmers in Western Kenya, the thesis asks four main research questions: (i) What is the extent of food plant diversity in smallholder farms, the bio-physical and socio-economic factors influencing it and the contribution of this diversity to the household's food needs? (ii) What is the relationship between agricultural and dietary diversity? (iii) What linkages are there between agricultural and nutritional diversity? (iv) How does access to agrobiodiversity in local markets contribute to meeting household food needs and what is the extent of smallholder farmers' integration into these markets? Through a combination of focus group discussions, farm and market surveys conducted across three time points, results indicate that: (i) higher food plant species richness is found on farms managed by wealthier and older households. However, these households are not more food secure than the rest, (ii) while there is a lack of a strong relationship between agricultural and dietary diversity, dietary diversity is instead significantly influenced by socio-economic factors including a household's wealth status, ethnicity and education level, (iii) despite a diversity of locally available on-farm and market food species meeting existing macro-and micro-nutrient needs, there is a general lack of understanding of this diversity as food shortage months coincide with a lack of maize despite high availability of a diversity of other foods not only to replace the maize but also to contribute to a diverse diet, (iv) smallholder farmers rely on multiple food sources, with markets mainly for sourcing cereals, fruits and animal source foods. There is also low integration of smallholder farmers as sellers in local markets. Together, the four case studies show interlinkages across food availability, accessibility and utilisation, which when addressed with equal weight, could unlock local agrobiodiversity's potential as a path to food and nutrition security of smallholder farming households.

In the matrix of land uses beyond protected areas, people protect nature in a myriad of ways, and have, in some cases, for millennia. With the growth of global databases of Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCAs) and registries of sacred natural sites, opportunities are emerging for conservationists to engage custodians of sacred forests beyond protected areas. As conservation expands beyond protected areas, successful engagement emerges from unities in the perspectives of conservationists and custodians of sacred forests. This thesis aims to identify unities for conservationists' engagement with custodians of sacred forests on a landscape scale. The thesis geolocates sacred forests and assesses the implications for conservation in four diverse landscapes in the Gambia, Ethiopia, Malaysia and Japan. The scale of inquiry varies across the papers, from the sub-district level to a national scale. This research indicates that while sacred forests may be overlooked by conservationists due to their small size and autonomous management, when they are considered in concert on a landscape scale, opportunities for conservation engagement become apparent. This thesis demonstrates that sacred forests can be prevalent in diverse landscapes, persist over time, and provide ecosystem services due to their spatial distribution.

This thesis addresses the methodological challenges of determining the variability of large herbivore populations through time and their impact on European vegetation. Large herbivores are at the heart of conservation policy. However, opinions widely diverge on whether we should aim for fewer herbivores and managed populations or, on the contrary as advocated by the rewilding movement, more herbivores and self-regulating populations acting as ecosystem engineers. This controversy has roots in a debate regarding the nature of ecosystems before the prevalence of human activities. Baseline ecosystems are either described as continuous forest cover with passive large herbivores, or, in contrast, as mosaics with patchy forest cover driven inter alia by bison, aurochs and horses, now rare or extinct in Europe. The main obstacle in moving this debate forward is a poor understanding of large-herbivore densities in the past. I analysed modern pollen and spore assemblages from known environmental settings to improve palaeoecological interpretation of fossil assemblages dating from the pre-human (baseline) period. The sites investigated are the rewilded grasslands of the Oostvaardersplassen (The Netherlands), the mosaic habitats of The New Forest (UK) and the old-growth closedcanopy forest of Białowieża (Poland). I demonstrate that the common practice of interpreting pollen percentages fails to estimate past forest cover in situations with natural grazing. As an explanation, I suggest that pollen productivity fluctuates with biotic factors such as herbivory and canopy shading. As a result, new insights into the baseline debate require additional lines of evidence. In this thesis, I develop an existing methodology to reconstruct past herbivore presence using fossil dung fungal spores. I synthesise current knowledge of this method with an emphasis on spore identification and, finally, I demonstrate that dung fungal spore abundance in lake sediments can be translated into large herbivore numbers. The evidence presented in this thesis contributes to the debate on re-wilding and addresses a fundamental challenge of nature conservation in the human-dominated landscapes of Europe.

Tropical forests have existed for up to one hundred million years, and today provide many ecosystem services vital for human well-being. They also harbour great biodiversity, which, in addition to its intrinsic value, plays a key role in the functioning of these ecosystems. Despite their local to global significance, there are still many knowledge gaps concerning the dynamic processes that govern the functioning of tropical forests. Rapid rates of deforestation and landscape conversion, predominantly for logging and industrial agriculture, are limiting the time and opportunity available to collect the information needed to fill these gaps. This research aims to shed light on the long-term ecological functioning of tropical forests, specifically investigating the history of disturbance in these ecosystems and the response of forest vegetation to past perturbations. The carbon-rich tropical peat swamp forests found along the coast of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, are a central focus of this study. For these forests in particular, a large deficit of knowledge surrounding their history and unique ecological functioning is coupled with some of the highest conversion rates of all tropical forest ecosystems across the world. In this thesis, palaeoecological data has been used to reconstruct temporal variability in forest vegetation coincident with external perturbations in order to identify changes in the resilience of these ecosystems through time, via indicators such as slowing rates of recovery and reduced regeneration of forest vegetation. Results suggest that tropical forest ecosystems have, for the most part, shown resilience to natural disturbances in the past, ranging from instantaneous localised tree-fall to longer-term regional climatic change; but that recent anthropogenic disturbances, of novel forms and greater intensities, are jeopardizing the potential for forest recovery and thus compromising ecosystem resilience. These findings enhance our understanding of the ecology of tropical peat swamp forests, and tropical forests more broadly. They also provide a context for contemporary tropical forest management, allowing for predictions on future responses to disturbance and enabling more ecologically sustainable landscape planning.