Search

This study investigates how Maya farmers in Mexico respond to agri-environmental subsidies aimed at promoting sustainable land use decisions. We do so through a serious games approach, using a tailor-designed board game to identify the land use behaviors of Maya farmers. The game simulated three different subsidy programs promoting mechanized agriculture, forest conservation, and agroforestry. We find that farmers tend to clear forested areas in response to agroforestry subsidies. Also, we observe that land use decisions are path-dependent, with farmers adhering to traditional and mechanized agriculture and hesitant to engage in conservation and agroforestry. These findings highlight the potential of serious games as a tool to improve understandings of how farmers make land use decisions and the resulting land use change patterns. Specifically, our findings show that serious games are well suited to understand how path dependency in decision-making can influence the effect of subsidies – and whether subsidies thereby achieve the intended goals, such as reduced deforestation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th assessment report affirms that actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have great potential to enhance peacebuilding outcomes. Yet, there is no agreed theoretical framework to assess how sustainable land-use systems, such as cocoa agroforestry systems, might influence peacebuilding and climate-change mitigation. To fill this research gap, this paper proposes an assessment framework that incorporates climate action and peacebuilding agendas to evaluate the contributions of cocoa production systems in concrete case studies. We surveyed a sample of 922 smallholder cocoa producers located in territories affected by armed conflict in Colombia. By using principal components analysis (PCA) and a hierarchical clustering of principle components (HCPC), we categorized them on typologies based on their socioeconomic characteristics and agricultural management strategies. We operationalized the framework using indicators from the survey to analyze the variations among typologies. Our results suggest that sustainable cocoa production systems, i.e., agroforestry implemented with organic fertilization, along with prescribed post-harvest practices and irrigation, positively influence (1) agricultural production through increased yields and (2) peacebuilding through reduced conflict over the use of natural resources and the creation of spaces for cooperation and dialogue, which is consistent with public policies promoted in Colombia.

South Africa is a global hotspot of land degradation. In areas where degradation is rendering agricultural production impossible, other ways of utilizing the land must be analyzed to avoid increasing competition for land. This project investigated land degradation in South Africa and the suitability of utilizing degraded lands for carbon sequestration, using bamboo as a case. Land degradation causes production losses outweighing the costs of restoring via land management, so in order to understand why degradation is not avoided or reverted, land use economics were investigated. Based on this, five criteria which a solution to the loss of land productivity should meet were identified: 1) biological viability on degraded lands, 2) no interference with natural land cover, 3) monetary payoff to landowners, 4) short timeframe from investment to first payoff, and 5) a relatively small initial investment. Next, the extent and location of land degradation in South Africa from 2001 to 2021 was analyzed using Trends.Earth on MODIS NDVI-data to calculate productivity indicators, finding that 22% of South African soil is degraded, primarily in the arid and semi-arid areas. After isolating the criteria for a solution and the degraded area for analysis, bamboo was proposed because it meets all five criteria. A suitability analysis was carried out using Multi-Criteria Evaluation for three species of bamboo, Balcooa Bambos, Phyllostachis edulis (Moso bamboo), and Dendrocalamus Asper. Relevant characteristics of soil, topography, and climate for suitability scoring were identified by carrying out three interviews with local agents and researchers in the field and through a study of literature on bamboo cultivation. The Analytical Hierarchy Process was used to qualify the weighting of factors. 3.83% of the degraded was found to be suitable for at least one species of bamboo, with the highest suitability score found in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. Moso bamboo was found to be suitab

Naturen har brug for plads, både i form af øget areal og øget mulighed for at lade naturen gå sin gang. Det kan to redskaber, naturzone og naturpligt, være med til at sikre, skriver medlemmer af forskernetværk ved Københavns Universitet.

Vådlægning af lavbundsjorde er udset til at spille en vigtig rolle i at rette op på klimaregnskabet. Men det kan tage mellem 15 og 100 år at opnå en klimaeffekt, og den vil være lille og måske negativ de første mange år. Der mangler viden om, hvad der sker., Vådlægning af lavbundsjorde er udset til at spille en vigtig rolle i at rette op på klimaregnskabet. Men det kan tage mellem 15 og 100 år at opnå en klimaeffekt, og den vil være lille og måske negativ de første mange år. Der mangler viden om, hvad der sker.

Cyclones and other extreme events exert increasing pressure on South-East Asia’s societies and put smallholder farmers at risk. Here, we draw on participatory causal-diagramming workshops, interviews and survey data, to provide contextually grounded knowledge about rural communities’ exposure and vulnerability to climate-related hazards in western Myanmar. By tracing how the 2015 cyclone Komen led to a prolonged humanitarian disaster, we show that climate-related risks in this area arise from the complex interplay of households’ pre-existing vulnerabilities, persistent farming challenges, extensive disasters and cascading effects, which disparately affect lowland and upland communities. The different household strata’s dissimilar vulnerabilities vis-à-vis Komen’s impacts were rooted in the distinct exposure of their production systems to landslides and floods. Pre-existing land-access barriers, land-degradation processes, climatic stressors, agricultural pests and diseases, and chronic lack of assets and food insecurity further mediated households’ vulnerability. Relief interventions did not stop the disaster’s escalation, although this could have been achieved with early technical and material assistance to address the cyclone’s impacts on farmers’ land. Targeted aid for households facing imminent food insecurity or debt crisis could have lessened engagement in precarious coping strategies and distress migration. A diversification of households’ livelihood and land-use practices and increased redundancies of critical assets and infrastructure could help to mitigate future cyclone-triggered disasters. By demonstrating the strengths of local knowledge approaches in untangling the complex interplay of extreme events with households’ everyday vulnerabilities and agricultural land-use practices, we make a case for more contextually grounded disaster risk and climate adaptation research.

The quantity of water required to grow our food is largely influenced by our dietary consumption habits. The following study was a data-based assessment of the water footprint of national consumption of agricultural products in Denmark between 2009 and 2013 in relation to three diet scenarios: The EAT diet, the Insects_REF diet, and the Insects_EAT diet. The EAT diet is a diet that follows the dietary recommendations of the EAT-Lancet Commission on food, planet, and health. The Insects_REF diet is a diet identical to the Danish diet but having all meat replaced by insects. The Insects_EAT diet is a diet identical to the EAT diet but having all meat replaced by insects. The study found that the Danish consumption compared to the EAT diet of meat, sugar, and other animal products is high whereas the consumption of pulses, nuts, oil crops and cereal products needs to be increased. The three diet scenarios result in a reduction of −26% or −682 l/cap/d for the EAT diet, −4% or −112 l/cap/d for the Insects_REF diet, and −24% or −646 l/cap/d for the Insects_EAT diet of the total water footprint with respect to the Danish diet (2651 l/cap/d). The reduction in meat and sugar contribute to most of the water footprint reduction. Coffee remains a large contributor of the total water footprint of agricultural consumption.

Secure land access is vital for Myanmar’s upland households, who rely on crops and forests to meet their subsistence needs. But recent land reforms threaten to undermine customary tenure and land-use practices in Myanmar. This paper combines income accounting methods with access theory to assess how new legislation may affect four Chin communities in the country’s north-west. Our assessment of 94 households’ land-access mechanisms and economic benefits from different types of land reveals existing land-access inequalities among Chin households and demonstrates communities’ continued dependence on environmental resources, especially those from swidden fields, home gardens and forests. A majority of households would lose all of their land-derived income, if they were denied access to communities’ customarily governed land, e.g., under the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Management Law. Policy stakeholders should therefore intervene, to alleviate land-access inequalities among Chin households and to direct Myanmar’s land-system dynamics onto more just development trajectories.

In this article, we operationalized a sustainability framing based on the Sustainable Rural Livelihood Resources Framework (SLF), which consists of five capitals—human, physical, social, financial, and natural. We proposed a sustainability index (SI) for two landscapes dominated by two agricultural systems: cattle ranching and small-scale family agriculture. Farm variables within each capital were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. Key variables were identified and index values were calculated for each capital. These were combined through a set of simultaneous equations to estimate farm-specific capitals and SI from the observed farm variables. Principal component and cluster analyses were used to group the farms according to their index scores and to further compare their characteristics. Furthermore, with the purpose of comparing the index scoring with an independent metric, a landscape indicator, which comes from a continuous forest, was calculated. From the results, the capitals that contributed to a higher SI score the most were financial and physical. As cattle ranching was associated with higher economic returns and infrastructure investments, this livelihood was identified as the most sustainable. Yet, cattle ranching has been a deforestation driver in the region. These results are attributed to the current conceptual framework design, which gives greater weight to material and economic variables; therefore, it generates a weak sustainability measure. Although the framework allowed us to identify land-use alternatives that could improve SI scores (i.e., silvopastoral systems), corrections to the proposed framework and methodological approach will need to include additional environmental benefits currently unaccounted for. Farmers that use their farms for conservation purposes should be recognized and compensated. An improved environmentally focused SI operational framework could help to endorse and promote sustainable livelihoods and to generate a

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSA) has seen sweeping upland land use changes in the past decades, with transition from primarily subsistence shifting cultivation to annual commodity cropping. This transition holds implications for local upland communities and ecosystems. Due to its particular political regime, Myanmar is at the tail of this development. However, with Myanmar’s official strategy of agricultural commercialization and intensification, recent liberalization of the national economy, and influx of multinational agricultural companies, the effects on upland land transitions could come fast. We analyze the current state of upland land use in Myanmar in a socio-economic and political context, identify the dynamics in three indicator commodity crops (maize, cassava, and rubber), and discuss the state driven economic, tenurial and policy reforms that have occurred in upland areas of mainland Southeast Asian countries in past decades. We draw on these insights to contextualize our study and hypothesize about possible transition pathways for Myanmar. The transition to annual commodity cropping is generally driven by a range of socio-economic and technical factors. We find that land use dynamics for the three indicator crops are associated with market demand and thus the opening of national Southeast-Asian economies, research and development of locally suitable high yielding varieties (HYVs), and subsidies for the promotion of seeds and inputs. In contrast, promotion of HYVs in marginal areas and without adequate agricultural extension services may results in agricultural contraction and yield dis-intensification. The environmental impacts of the transition depend on the transition pathway, e.g., through large-scale plantation projects or smallholder initiatives. The agricultural development in upland MSA follows a clear diffusion pattern with transition occurring first in Thailand, spreading to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. While these countries point to prospects for

MRSA CC398 is an emerging MRSA strain found in livestock, mainly in pigs. Direct occupational livestock contact is the principal risk factor for human MRSA CC398 infection. Nonetheless, in recent years, an increasing number of MRSA CC398 cases has been observed in persons without known pig contact. Such cases, referred to as MRSA CC398 of unknown origin (MUO CC398), have, like livestock-onset (LO) MRSA CC398 cases, been found concentrated in rural, livestock-producing areas. The presence of MUO CC398 cases indicates alternative and unknown MRSA CC398 transmission pathways into the community. We performed a nationwide study in Denmark of the geographic distributions of MRSA cases in general and persons with MUO CC398 or LO MRSA CC398 infections (1 January 2006-11 February 2015), with the Danish population as background population. Place of living of study persons was mapped using the ArcGIS software, and information on pig farms was retrieved from the Central Husbandry Register. The incidence of MUO CC398 infections was clearly higher in rural than in urban areas, and such cases lived on average closer to pig farms than the general population. However, within three pig-farming-dense municipalities, patients with MUO CC398 infections did not live closer to pig farms than population controls. This shows that direct environmental spread from neighbouring pig farms of MRSA CC398 is unlikely. Instead, community spread through other means of transmission than direct spread from farms may more likely explain the clustering of MUO CC398 in livestock-dense areas.

Whilst a range of studies address the aquaculture livelihoods in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the role of aquaculture in northern Vietnam remains less described. We, therefore, conducted interviews with 199 households in the two northern provinces Quang Ninh and Nghe An in 2014 to analyse the dependence on aquaculture in these two provinces and amongst farmers specializing in shrimp and freshwater fish production, respectively. Further, we tested the ability of different socio-economic variables to explain the observed reliance on aquaculture using an ANCOVA model. The study identifies a substantial reliance on aquaculture of farmers in the study area with at least half of their income generated by aquaculture. Our analyses highlight that the educational background of farmers explain their engagement in aquaculture better than how long they have worked as aquaculture farmers. Freshwater fish farmers were shown to rely less on aquaculture as it is only generating a supplementary income. In contrast, the shrimp farmers are not only those having the highest share of income from aquaculture but also earning their main living from aquaculture. The fact that both shrimp and fish farmers have diverse sources of income shows the unstable or risky nature of aquaculture livelihoods in the study area. Our findings suggest that policies promoting aquaculture should focus on training of farmers whilst acknowledging that a diverse income portfolio increases livelihood resilience to external shocks such as extreme weather events, diseases and fluctuating market prices.

Thousands of used vehicles are every year exported out of Denmark to countries both inside and outside EU. This paper is a case study dealing with the export of used vehicles to Ghana and examining the impacts associated with the export. Evidence to support the research is collected through the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods and includes field work in Ghana. Impacts associated with the export include both negative and positive impacts. The importation of old, used vehicles in Ghana is connected to increased local air pollution while at the same time the importation contributes to a global climate benefit in relation to CO2 emissions. Keywords: Case study, used vehicle export, environmental load displacement, Ghana., Thousands of used vehicles are every year exported out of Denmark to countries both inside and outside EU. This paper is a case study dealing with the export of used vehicles to Ghana and examining the impacts associated with the export. Evidence to support the research is collected through the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods and includes field work in Ghana. Impacts associated with the export include both negative and positive impacts. The importation of old, used vehicles in Ghana is connected to increased local air pollution while at the same time the importation contributes to a global climate benefit in relation to CO2 emissions. Keywords: Case study, used vehicle export, environmental load displacement, Ghana.

Extensive forests in Croatia represent an important biological and economic resource in Europe. They are characterised by heterogeneity in forest management practices dating back to the socialist planned economy of the pre-1991 era. In this study we investigated the difference in rates of deforestation and reforestation in private- and state-owned forests during the post-socialist period and the causal drivers of change. The selected region of Northern Croatia is characterised by a high percentage of privately owned forests with minimal national monitoring and control. We used a mixed-methods approach which combines remote sensing, statistical modelling and a household-based questionnaire survey to assess the rates of forest cover change and factors influencing those changes. The results show that predominantly privately owned forests in Northern Croatia have recorded a net forest loss of 1.8 % during the 1991–2011 period, while Croatia overall is characterised by a 10 % forest cover increase in predominantly state-owned forests. Main factors influencing forest cover changes in private forests are slope, altitude, education structure, population age and population density. The results also show that the deforestation in private forests is weakening overall, mostly due to the continuation of the de-agrarisation and de-ruralisation processes which began during socialism.

Extensive forests in Croatia represent an important biological and economic resource in Europe. They are characterised by heterogeneity in forest management practices dating back to the socialist planned economy of the pre-1991 era. In this study we investigated the difference in rates of deforestation and reforestation in private- and state-owned forests during the post-socialist period and the causal drivers of change. The selected region of Northern Croatia is characterised by a high percentage of privately owned forests with minimal national monitoring and control. We used a mixed-methods approach which combines remote sensing, statistical modelling and a household-based questionnaire survey to assess the rates of forest cover change and factors influencing those changes. The results show that predominantly privately owned forests in Northern Croatia have recorded a net forest loss of 1.8 % during the 1991–2011 period, while Croatia overall is characterised by a 10 % forest cover increase in predominantly state-owned forests. Main factors influencing forest cover changes in private forests are slope, altitude, education structure, population age and population density. The results also show that the deforestation in private forests is weakening overall, mostly due to the continuation of the de-agrarisation and de-ruralisation processes which began during socialism.

BackgroundModelling studies have been widely used to inform human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination policy decisions; however, many models exist and it is not known whether they produce consistent predictions of population-level effectiveness and herd effects. We did a systematic review and meta-analysis of model predictions of the long-term population-level effectiveness of vaccination against HPV 16, 18, 6, and 11 infection in women and men, to examine the variability in predicted herd effects, incremental benefit of vaccinating boys, and potential for HPV-vaccine-type elimination.