NEW PAPER: From synergies to trade-offs in food security and biodiversity conservation

BY JAN HANSPACH

Some time ago, we had invited to participate in a survey on food security and biodiversity conservation on this blog. After some months of data analysis, write-up, rejections and revisions, we now we can announce that the main findings from this survey have been finally published. The paper went online just a few days ago on the journal website and will be published the November issue of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 

And here are the key findings shortly summarized:

(1) When comparing between landscapes we did not find a clear trade-off between food security and biodiversity.

(2) Synergies in food security and biodiversity were related to situations with equitable land access and high social and human capital. Food security was also high when market access was good and financial capital high, but that was linked to poor biodiversity outcomes.

(3) For the future, most experts expected improvements in food security, but losses of biodiversity in their landscapes.

We received responses for landscapes from a wide range of countries. The map shows the origin of the 110 cases that we used for analysis.

 

You also can directly download a pdf of the full paper and a pdf of the merged appendices here. Enjoy reading!

Finally, a big thanks to all experts that contributed to the survey!

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A PhD nightmare: how a ‘safe’ paper turned into a ‘horror’ paper

By Ine Dorresteijn

Recently the last paper from my PhD has been accepted for publication. The paper describes the impact of current and potential future land-use intensification on bird species richness in Transylvania, Romania. Although the paper is maybe not groundbreaking, I always thought that it is still a relevant contribution to the scientific literature, based on our large field efforts, its statistical soundness and because it was well written. A solid paper. But instead, getting the paper published has been a tough ride. While we thought bats were difficult to publish (see our previous blog post on a rejection journey five years ago), we have now seen that birds can be even harder to get into journals. Ironically, this paper was considered the ‘safe paper’ of my PhD work. I was one of those lucky students that was part of a well-planned research project including great supervision. The bird work of my PhD was carefully planned and designed, was based on pilot studies and was set in a region rich in (protected) bird species. Very soon, however, my ‘safe’ paper turned into my ‘horror’ paper, with high levels of frustration, a shattered confidence, and – in the end – lots of sarcasm and laughter.

Here goes the story how my ‘safe’ paper was turned into my ‘horror’ paper.

Journal 1: Submitted Dec 2013, rejected with review Feb 2014: Lacking novelty and generality, and lacking clarity and focus of the analysis.

Journal 2: Submitted Feb 2014, rejected with review Mar 2014: Too broad discussion and lacking strong conclusions/management recommendations.

After these first two rejections, we made major changes to the manuscript. We narrowed down the manuscript considerably by deleting a part on species traits, and worked on the clarity of our methods section.

Journal 3: Submitted May 2014, rejected without review: Not general enough in concept, scope and approach.

Journal 4: Submitted May 2014, rejected with review Sep 2014: Lacking novelty.

Journal 5: Submitted Oct 2014, rejected with review Dec 2014: Lacking novelty, and lacking clarity in the methodology and results. As one reviewer put it: having a more complicated and complex design than other studies should not stand for novelty in scientific research.

By the time the paper was rejected 5 times I was pretty desperate and frustrated to hear over and over that the study lacked novelty. I figured that we couldn’t change that much on the novelty of our study’s outcome. However, another frequent critique was around the clarity of the methods and results, something I thought we could improve. Therefore, to give the paper a new and fresh boost, we received help from a new co-author. We re-analysed the entire paper focusing solely on species richness (taking out a part on bird communities), rewrote the entire paper for clarity and to put into a broader context, and even put in some pretty pictures to illustrate traditional farming landscapes. Now with our paper in a new jacket I was convinced we would be luckier in the review process.

Journal 6: Submitted Jun 2015, rejected with review Aug 2015: Methodology limited the study’s conclusion and its capacity to go beyond a regional example. For example, it was critiqued that the model averaging approach used poses limitations and regression coefficients should be used instead.

Journal 7: Submitted Aug 2015, rejected with review Sep 2015: Flawed study design which was deemed uncorrectable without significant reanalysis. Although reviewer 1 had significant problems with our study design, reviewer 2 seemed to be less unhappy: The study is well introduced (I particularly liked the introduction of traditional farming landscapes), the study design is appropriate, the analyses generally robust (although please see comment below), and the results clear, and the discussion well considered.

Journal 8: Submitted Nov 2015, rejected with review Dec 2015: Methodology – given our objectives and sampling design we used the wrong analytical unit.

Journal 9: Submitted Jan 2016, rejected with review Feb 2016: Lack of novelty, trivial findings and not taking into account the rarity of species (something we had excluded from the manuscript due to other reviewer comments).

Journal 10: Submitted Feb 2016, rejected with review June 2016: Goal of the work not addressed.

Journal 11: Submitted Sep 2016, Minor revisions Jan 2017, Submitted revised manuscript Jul 2017 (after maternity leave), Accepted Jul 2017. Hurrah, the reviewers liked the paper a lot!!

Having had 10 rejections on this paper, mostly after review, means that approximately 25 (!) reviewers were involved in getting this paper published. Importantly, of those reviewers probably half of them could have been satisfied with major revisions. Like in the example under journal 7, usually one of the reviewers did not dislike our paper that much, but I guess one more negative review is enough for a rejection. Even more interesting, we published two similar papers on butterflies and plants from the same region, based on the same study design and using similar analysis. While this paper on birds got continuous critique that our methodology was not clear, flawed, or limited, these other two papers on plants and butterflies received positive constructive reviews without much complaints about its novelty and/or study design. I am still not sure why this paper had such a hard time, is it just birds or something else, but I am happy it is finally out there! Enjoy the reading and you can always contact me for further clarifications on its methods or novelty J.

 

 

Reflections on the role of environmental psychology in transitions towards sustainability

Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation

Author: Kathleen Klaniecki

 Earlier this month, I attended a wonderful conference on environmental psychology (ICEP 2017) in A Coruña, Spain.  This year’s theme was Theories of Change in Sustainability Transitions and Social Innovation.  As someone who straddles multiple disciplines in her research (as many of us do), this conference left me reflecting on current interactions between environmental psychology and sustainability science and how researchers in these disciplines can further collaborative for sustainability transformation.

Katie

In the Leverage Points project, we’ve had many conversations about shallow vs. deep leverage points: interventions at shallow leverage points often lead to little systemic change whereas interventions at deep leverage points have more transformational potential. But when talking about the role of environmental psychology in sustainability transformation, should we acknowledge and encourage further research on seemingly shallow leverage points?

At first glance, environmental psychology interventions are primarily focused on understanding and describing…

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Resilience 2017: Rising interest for a leverage points narrative?

Some nice observations by Maraja Riechers on the idea of leverage points and its possible importance in the future

Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation

By Maraja Riechers

At a big conference like Resilience 2017 in Stockholm last month, there are bound to be many emerging topics and interesting links to one’s own work. However, I was positively surprised by the generally warm response to our Leverage Points for Sustainability project. My colleagues and I left the conference with the feeling that the concept of leverage points is likely to become more important over the next couple of years. From dinner table talks to explicit Leverage Point-themed sessions such as: Pathways and leverage points for transformative change chaired by Ryan Plummer, Donella Meadows’ concept of leverage points seemed to generate deep interest and genuine fascination. Those discussions showed me that diverse research on leverage points is already underway, with varying focus. The themes of finding leverage points for transformational change covered biodiversity, the Water-Energy-Food-Nexus, food systems and many more. Discussions ranged from personal inner transformation…

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Empathy: The cutting edge of sustainability science?

Some nice impressions on Resilience 2017 by Rebecca Freeth, also at our Faculty at Leuphana

Leverage Points for Sustainability Transformation

By Rebecca Freeth

I’ve been interested in the Resilience Alliance for many years. I’ve been impressed by the coherence of their conceptual work. This has been a luminous example of natural and social scientists meaningfully bringing their work together. When I travelled from South Africa to Germany in late 2015 to take up my PhD post at Leuphana, my suitcase proved to be many kilograms overweight. I reluctantly extracted one book after the next. But Panarchy stayed in my suitcase.

Since arriving here, and taking up my role as a formative accompanying (FAR) researcher in the team , I’ve stumbled across the work of John Parker and Ed Hackett. They have done a fascinating job of tracking the Resilience Alliance, particularly during the ‘island time’ years. In fact Parker and Hackett’s work is not dissimilar to mine here with Leverage Points, although they are outsiders whereas I am in the…

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Livestream, Wed 9 AM Stockholm time: Food security & biodiversity conservation

By Joern Fischer

Tomorrow morning at 9 AM, we’ll be live streaming a session from Resilience 2017. The live stream will be on youtube, namely here. After the event, the session should still be there as a video. We hope we’ll get the technology to cooperate with us!

Reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation in farming landscapes

C1/C2 (250), 09:00 – 10:30, Chair/s: Jan Hanspach, Joern Fischer

Providing food security and safeguarding biodiversity are two of the most prominent challenges facing humanity in the 21st century and it unclear how they possibly could be reconciled in the future. As the topic is complex and the discussion around it is often biased by disciplinary backgrounds, we propose a session where we bring together researchers from different disciplines and with different perspectives in order to transcend conceptual barriers. The presenters will be asked to address specifically how to transcend these barriers in order to reconcile food security and biodiversity conservation in farming landscapes.

Speakers and Abstracts

Rewiring food systems to enhance human health and biosphere stewardship
Line Gordon, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm, Sweden

Integrating biodiversity in agriculture
Teja Tscharntke, Agroecology, Göttingen University, Göttingen, Germany, Göttingen, Germany

Perspectives on biodiversity in Ethiopian heterogeneous agricultural landscapes
Kristoffer Hylander, Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Indirect contributions of forests to dietary diversity in Southern Ethiopia
Roseline Remans 1, 4, Frédéric Baudron 2, Jean-Yves Duriaux 2, Terry Sunderland 3, 1 Bioversity International; Ghent University; Wageningen University & Research, Koekelberg, Belgium, 2 International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Harare, Zimbabwe, 3 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia, 4 Bioversity International, Heverlee, Belgium

Can We Successfully Be Ecological Without Being Deeply Social? (Answer: No.)
M. Jahi Chappell, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom, Washington State University, Pullman, United States

 

Resilience 2017: Care, knowledge and agency as a basic for ecosystem stewardship

Session summary

Johan Enqvist first summarized work in progress, outlining the findings of a systematic literature review. Based on a preliminary review, four themes (ethics, motivation, action, outcomes) were identified. These themes were then examined in more detail in approximately 1000 different papers.

Research on stewardship has increased over the last 27 years, especially with respect to “action” and “outcomes” – and these, in turn, were mostly published in natural science articles. In contrast, “ethics” initially took up approximately a third of the existing literature, but accounts for a substantially smaller fraction of current research on stewardship. Given such disparity in focus within the theme of stewardship, how can the different themes – outcomes, actions, motivation, ethics – be bridged?

Johan proposed to do this via care, knowledge and agency – at the intersection of care and knowledge, we find “ethics”; at the intersection of care and agency, we find “motivation”; and at the intersection of agency and knowledge, we find “outcomes”. Action sits at the intersection of all three key dimensions. These three dimensions to stewardship – care, agency and knowledge – thus appear to capture key aspects of stewardship literature, and manage to capture the different emphases that different researchers place on different components of stewardship. Interestingly, with respect to social-ecological work, “care”, in particular has not received as much attention as knowledge and agency.

Following this opening talk, Raphaël Mathevet continued with an ecological solidarity perspective. Ecological solidarity has in fact been enshrined in French law since 2016. It recognizes interdependence between humans and other species, and considers landscape units and watersheds, species area requirements, complementarity of different land covers, movements, metapopulation dynamics, and changes in species distributions. These ecological “needs”, in turn, are “connected” with human values and actions via the concept of “solidarity”. Ecological solidarity, in comprising human and ecological elements, thus seeks to provide guidelines or a vision for ecological stewardship, including considerations of political economy. Departure from traditional management can be “reformist vs. radical”, and “prosaic versus imaginative”. Crossing these two axes then results in four types of stewardship approach: sustainability stewardship, transformative stewardship, reformist stewardship, and adaptive stewardship. Each of these, in turn, exhibit different characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.

Rosemary Hill continued this session, drawing on her experience of working with indigenous Australians. She asked whether Johan’s framework could be applied to indigenous Australia, and how or to what extent. First, she showed that agency and care are very strong in Australian indigenous people. She continued with positive examples of “outcomes”. Examining the drivers of what constitutes success factors driving the success of indigenous land stewardship, Ro highlighted that motivation and ethics were often key factors. Having gleaned over some limitations of Johan’s framework, Ro concluded with a few suggestions for how the stewardship framework could be improved: (1) by improving reciprocity between earth and us, i.e. it’s not one-way; (2) economies need to come into it; and (3) legacy issues and barriers need to be more clearly included.

The final speaker in this session was Terry Chapin. Terry specifically focused on scaling the notion of “care”. The evolutionary instincts of people, in the first instance, support competition and greed. But at the same time, “care” is just as evident in many species – typically, it stops at the barriers of family or local community. The notion of stewardship then, requires us to scale up notions of care. In evolutionary terms, the notion of care is most useful at the small group level. But what about higher levels? Here, there may need to be interactions between ethical and instrumental motivations – where instrumental actions motivate short-term behaviour, while ethics motivate longer-term behaviours.

At the global scale, especially, ethical arguments become critically important. Many actors are notable at this scale – the UN, religious groups, NGOs, corporations and science-based organisations. Terry also reflected on the role of fear: will fear always stop us from action? Or can it help foster action in some instances?

In summary, Terry suggested that instrumental and care-based actions may need to be mixed. This is because people are, fundamentally, motivated by both competition and care. Local action can work, drawing on both care and selfishness. But at the global scale, competition based elements are less helpful – here, it really appears to be care that is more important in order to enact ecological stewardship.

Resilience 2017: Opening plenary

Today, “Resilience 2017” started with a joint presentation by Carl Folke and Katrina Brown. I was intrigued by the idea of a joint presentation – outlining what has been achieved in resilience science so far, and what some of the future frontiers might be.

Resilience, Calle explained, was a highly dynamic concept, capturing the ability to live with change – both gradual and rapid. Related to this then are the notions of adaptability versus transformation; where you either keep things going the way they are, or change things fundamentally.

Calle argued that transformation was increasingly necessary so that we come in tune with the Earth System and remain within planetary boundaries. While on the one hand there are many challenges – with increasing variance or “flickering” sending us warning signals that things might change in major ways in the near future – Carl emphasized that there were also important opportunities. Most of these, in turn, relate to social change; changing social norms, values, institutions and mindsets.

Kate then picked up these ideas, and reflected on how social aspects had increasingly entered resilience thinking. Kate’s presentation focused on 4 + 2 times the letter “P”.

She started with a focus on people. People, she argued were the critical, active agents in social-ecological systems. That said, poverty was one of the big barriers to people’s agency. Kate also highlighted that resilience thinking has prominently entered (and is sometimes becoming mainstream) in development arenas – providing opportunities to bring more dynamic perspectives into development scholarship and practice. Power and politics were the next issue Kate picked up. In this context, social resistance comes up as an important notion – that is, people working to disrupt status quo systems, thus representing an opportunity for social change. The fourth “P” relates to place. Indeed, place is central to understanding resilience; it relates to people’s rootedness in physical locations, with implications for their mobility and management of natural resources.

Both Calle and Kate then highlighted some of their key points. Calle’s were:

  1. Humanity is part of the biosphsere – we’re not just lined but intertwined
  2. Our situation is about global social-ecological change – not just climate change
  3. We need to think about the future of people as part of Earth – not just the environment
  4. A resilient biosphere is the basis for development, wellbeing, and health
  5. Transformation to global sustainability is necessary, possible, and desirable

Two key frontiers that Kate pointed out were first “perspective taking: empathy”. What does it mean to be human? To be part of a social-ecological system? Could empathy building with the non-human world help us live more sustainably with non-human species, and with “others” in our own species?

Kate’s final point was “practice” – the actual putting into place resilience research and its findings. This, in turn, raised a whole lot of difficult questions for how we ought to engage with the world as researchers; and how we need to question quite deeply our ways of dealing with others, reflecting on our methods, but even on our emotions. Research, Kate argued, needed to be done differently, so we can better support the transition to sustainability; but also acknowledging more fully our roles as researchers in the process.

Calle finally concluded by calling for a New Renaissance – a growing, but deep recognition that we need to wake up to the fact that we need to live differently with and on the planet that supports us. On this basis, biosphere stewardship, was a necessary approach to remain within planetary boundaries, while working to improve human wellbeing.

Our research at Resilience 2017

By Joern Fischer

Next week much of our research group will be attending “Resilience 2017” in Stockholm, a major international conference on social-ecological systems. We’ll be live-streaming a session on food security and biodiversity conservation (stay tuned here for details, and check our twitter account!), and several researchers from our group will be presenting interim findings.

If you’re interested in attending any of the talks by our group, here is an overview, including links to the Abstracts.

Monday 21 August 2017

Session on Governance and social-ecological fit; Multi-level governance and biosphere stewardship; Room 26 (50); 14:00 – 14:40
This will include: Harmonizing food security and biodiversity governance: A multi-level governance analysis with the case study in Ethiopia, Tolera Senbeto Jiren, Ine Dorresteijn, Arvid Bergsten, Neil Collier, Julia Leventon, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Session on Transformative agency Part I, Social-ecological transformations for sustainability, C1/C2 (250); 14:00 – 15:30
This will include: Inside-out sustainability: The role of inner transformation for system change. Rebecca Freeth, Christopher Ives, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Session on Ecosystem Services Mapping, Tradeoffs and Synergies: Approaches and methods for understanding social-ecological system dynamics; Room 35/36 (72); 16:00 – 16:40
This will include: From trade-offs to synergies in food security and biodiversity conservation. Jan Hanspach, David Abson, Neil Collier, Ine Dorresteijn, Jannik Schultner, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Session on Ecosystem services and stewardship: Multi-level governance and biosphere stewardship; C3 (180); 16:00 – 16:40
This will include: Local peoples’ woody plant species use, access and conservation in rural landscapes: a case study from southwest Ethiopia. Girma Shumi Dugo, Jannik Schultner, Jan Hanspach, Kristoffer Hylander, Feyera Senbeta, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Tuesday 22 August 2017

Session on Governance and social-ecological fit: Multi-level governance and biosphere stewardship; Room 24/25 (70); 11:00 – 11:40
This will include: A multilevel network model of institutional fit between an actor network and multiple cross-sector issues. Arvid Bergsten, Tolera Senbeto, Julia Leventon, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Session on Pathways and leverage points for transformative change: Social-ecological transformations for sustainability; C4 (125); 11:50 – 12:30
This will include: Leverage points for sustainability transformation in human–nature connections. Maraja Riechers, Agnes Balazsi, Tibor Hartel, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Session on Resilience and Wellbeing: Cross-cutting perspectives on resilience; Room 33 (30); 15:30 – 16:10
This will include: Environmental degradation erodes household capital assets and undermines resilience and food security. Aisa Manlosa, Ine Dorresteijn, Jannik Schultner, Joern Fischer. ABSTRACT.

Wednesday 23 August

Contributed session on Reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation in farming landscapes; C1/C2 (250); 09:00 – 10:30; Chair/s: Jan Hanspach, Joern Fischer.
Speakers will include Teja Tscharntke, Roseline Remans, Jahi Chappell, Kristoffer Hylander and Line Gordon. This session will be live streamed. Stay tuned on this blog and on our twitter account for details! Session summary and Abstracts can be found here.

Additional talks by colleagues from Leuphana University

MONDAY: In the session Drivers and outcomes of altered landscapes; Connectivity and cross-scale dynamics in the Anthropocene; Room 27 (60); 14:00 – 14:40, you will hear:
Exploring sustainable biophysical human-nature connectedness at regional scales. Christian Dorninger, Henrik von Wehrden, David J. Abson.

MONDAY: In the session Food, Agriculture and Resilience: Cross-cutting perspectives on resilience; Room 24/25 (70); 14:50 – 15:30, you will hear:
Is food security and sovereignty influenced by informal labor sharing among smallholders? Arvid Bergsten.

MONDAY: In the session Communities and resilience practices: Cross-cutting perspectives on resilience; C1/C2 (250); 16:00 – 17:30, you will hear:
Effects of the “back to the land” movement for rural sustainability a case study from Spain. Elisa Oteros-Rozas, Álvaro Fuentes, Berta Martín-López, Claudia Bieling, Daniel López, Federica Ravera, Francisco Martin-Azcárate, Irene Iniesta-Arandia.

WEDNESDAY: In the session Integrating gender and feminist research into global environmental change: Theory, Methods, and Practice; Contributed session – Approaches and methods for understanding social-ecological system dynamics; Room 21 (30); 11:00 – 12:30, you will hear:
The diversity of gendered adaptation strategies to climate change of Indian farmers: a bottom-up feminist intersectional approach. Federica Ravera, Berta Martín-López, Unai Pascual, Adam Drucker