Energy transitions and the global land rush: Ultimate drivers and persistent consequences

Scheidel, Arnim; Şorman, Alevgül H.

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.12.005

Cited by 167 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Such practices can include monitoring, temporal or total protection of species or habitats, multiple At present, global environmental change is unfolding at an unprecedented speed, with current patterns of production and consumption, and the ensuing climate change, being the key causes and drivers (Wilk 2002, Pachauri and Reisinger 2007, Perry et al 2010. Sociopolitical and economic processes operating at different spatial scales, such as increased logging pressure, agribusiness expansion, and land grabs, impact upon the ability of rural communities to access and sustainably manage formally owned and informally used resources (Dauvergne and Neville 2010, Yurdi and Heiner 2010, Cotula 2012, Scheidel and Sorman 2012. In many regions of the world, climate change is also contributing to transform ecosystems and species niches through altered rainfall and temperature patterns, thus having effects on the conditions for community-based conservation (McClanahan et al 2008, Groves et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Implications for Social-Ecological Resilience

Ruíz-Mallén¹,

Corbera²

2013

E&S

126

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ABSTRACT. Our review highlights how traditional ecological knowledge influences people's adaptive capacity to socialecological change and identifies a set of mechanisms that contribute to such capacity in the context of community-based biodiversity conservation initiatives. Twenty-three publications, including twenty-nine case studies, were reviewed with the aim of investigating how local knowledge, community-based conservation, and resilience interrelate in social-ecological systems. We highlight that such relationships have not been systematically addressed in regions where a great number of community conservation initiatives are found; and we identify a set of factors that foster people's adaptive capacity to social-ecological change and a number of social processes that, in contrast, undermine such capacity and the overall resilience of the socialecological system. We suggest that there is a need to further investigate how climate variability and other events affect the joint evolution of conservation outcomes and traditional ecological knowledge, and there is a need to expand the current focus on social factors to explain changes in traditional ecological knowledge and adaptive capacity towards a broader approach that pays attention to ecosystem dynamics and environmental change.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Implications for Social-Ecological Resilience

Ruíz-Mallén¹,

Corbera²

2013

E&S

126

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“…Usually, EROIs in agriculture have been used to measure the "energy cost" (Scheidel and Sorman 2012) of net biomass produced for appropriation by society (Martinez Alier 2011), whether in the form of foodstuffs, raw materials, or biofuels. However, it has recently been proposed to broaden its application to the assessment of agrarian sustainability.…”

Section: Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The agrarian metabolism as a tool for assessing agrarian sustainability, and its application to Spanish agriculture (1960-2008)

Guzmán¹,

Aguilera²,

García‐Ruiz³

et al. 2018

E&S

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-Fernández, J. Infante-Amate, and M. González de Molina. 2018. The agrarian metabolism as a tool for assessing agrarian sustainability, and its application to Spanish agriculture ABSTRACT. Agrarian metabolism applies the social metabolism framework to agriculture. It focuses on the study of the exchange of material and energy flows between a society and its environment for producing useful biomass. These flows must maintain the fund elements of the agroecosystem in sufficient quantity and of sufficient quality for them to continue providing ecosystem services. This methodology was applied to Spanish agriculture between 1960 and 2008, a period characterized by a deep process of intensification based on external inputs (EIs). We specifically focused on nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), carbon (C), and energy flows, and on the three fund elements that they sustain such as soil, biodiversity, and woodland. The results show that the growing incorporation of EIs has broken the equilibrium between land and biomass uses required by traditional farming, lowering the density of internal energy loops. On cropland, the relative fall in unharvested biomass had a negative effect on both biodiversity and the soil, which reduced the replenishment of organic C between 1960 and 1990. The sharp increase in internal and external flows of biomass for animal feed hardly contributed to increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) between 1990 and 2008 because of the fact that these flows had increasingly lower C:N ratios. The massive importation of N in feed and mineral fertilizers (553 and 1150 Gg in 2000, respectively) increased the surplus and the losses of N, which in turn could have a negative impact on biodiversity, water, and the atmosphere. The scenario constructed without imported animal feed would allow a reduction in the environmental impacts related to the excess of N, with hardly any negative effect on SOC replenishment, and improving energy return rates in the form of total, unharvested, and accumulated phytomass.

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“…However, it is asserted that "energy driven intensification has greatly reduced the need for the new cropland and deforestation" as it supports innovation that improves agricultural yield (Ringler et al 2014). On the other hand, a "global transition towards renewable energies" has raised a concern over "land rush" with a long-term consequence on land demand or the "struggles over access to land" (Scheidel and Sorman 2011). Besides concern over "land grabbing" for biofuel development, continuing loss of tropical forest fuels competition for scarce resources between energy and food production (Mirzabaev 2014;Guta 2014, von Braun andMeinzen-Dick 2009).…”

Section: Energy and Food Linkagementioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralized Energy in Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus in Developing Countries: Case Studies on Successes and Failures

et al. 2015

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We would like to thank Prof. Joachim von Braun for his guidance and important suggestions. Terms of use: Documents inWe would also like to thank Dr. Manfred Denich and Dr. Nicolas Gerber for their insightful comments and suggestions on the paper. We also express our appreciation to Dr. Katharina Gallant for editorial assistance. AbstractAccess to modern energy is vital for sustainable development. In rural areas, decentralized energy solutions may play a significant role in reducing poverty, supporting community institutions and facilitating the generation of basic services such as communication, water access, education and health services. However, the majority of dwellers in off-grid communities in developing countries have little or no access to modern energy technologies, although they are endowed with a vast potential of renewable energy resources.Decentralized energy solutions could serve as an option to solve this energy access problem.However, the previous literature indicates that there are financial, technical, infrastructural, and institutional constraints to scale up decentralized energy options. This paper seeks to study the underlying factors behind the successes and failures of household-and community-based decentralized energy technologies through local case studies from different parts of the world, analyzed through the lenses of the Water-Energy-Food Security (WEF) nexus. First, the paper reviews the literature on the main benchmarks used to evaluate the success and failure of community-based energy. Second, the conceptual framework relating decentralized energy to the WEF nexus elements is briefly described.Thirdly, the methods and data used in the paper are described, followed by the presentation of the case studies. Lastly, the paper is concluded by drawing policy lessons and recommendations. Further empirical studies are recommended to quantitatively evaluate the impacts of decentralized energy solutions on the welfare of households and communities within the framework of the Water-Energy-Food nexus.

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Energy transitions and the global land rush: Ultimate drivers and persistent consequences

Cited by 167 publications

References 21 publications

Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Implications for Social-Ecological Resilience

Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Implications for Social-Ecological Resilience

The agrarian metabolism as a tool for assessing agrarian sustainability, and its application to Spanish agriculture (1960-2008)

Decentralized Energy in Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus in Developing Countries: Case Studies on Successes and Failures

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