Increasing social-ecological resilience within small-scale agriculture in conflict-affected Guatemala

Abstract

Climate change scenarios suggest largely detrimental impacts on agricultural production from a deterioration of renewable natural resources. Over the last 15 years, a new field of research has focused on the interactions between climate and conflict risk, particularly as it relates to competition over natural resources and livelihoods. Within this field, there has been less attention to the potential for resource competition to be managed in ways that yield greater cooperation, local adaptation capacity, social-ecological resilience, and conflict mitigation or prevention. The challenge of increasing social-ecological resilience in small-scale agriculture is particularly acute in the socioeconomically and agroecologically marginalized Western Highlands of Guatemala. Not only is climate change a threat to agriculture in this region, but adaptation strategies are challenged by the context of a society torn apart by decades of violent conflict. Indeed, the largely indigenous population in the Western Highlands has suffered widespread discrimination for centuries. The armed conflict has left a legacy of a deeply divided society, with communities often suspicious of outsider interventions and in many cases with neighbors pitted against each other. We use the example of the Buena Milpa agricultural development project to demonstrate how grassroots approaches to collective action, conflict prevention, and social-ecological resilience, linking local stakeholder dynamics to the broader institutional and governance context, can bear fruit amidst postconflict development challenges. Examples of microwatershed management and conservation of local maize varieties illustrate opportunities to foster community-level climate adaptation strategies within small-scale farming systems even in deeply divided societies.

Towards more sustainable agricultural landscapes: Lessons from Northwestern Mexico and the Western Highlands of Guatemala

“…A critical next step for the Highlands is developing support for agricultural extension programs, local seed banks, cooperatives, and community-based entrepreneurs to generate, reproduce, and disseminate appropriate natural resource management practices for transitioning towards more sustainable landscapes. According to Hellin, Ratner, Meinzen-Dick, and Lopez-Ridaura (2018)) , grassroots efforts in collective action have shown efficacy for conflict prevention and improved social-ecological resilience in the western Highlands. These collective actions need to link local stakeholder dynamics with broader institutional and governance context to be successful.…”

The Assessment of Multisystemic Resilience in Conflict-Affected Populations

“…Risk is understood as exposure to broader ethnocultural tensions and/ or scarcity of natural resources, which put pressure on a community to abandon prior collaborative strategies and transition into regimes of violent contestation. Specific examples that were cited in the literature include neighborhoods in Baghdad under pressure to adopt sectarian attitudes and behaviors (Carpenter, 2012), villages in the context of a water resource conflict in Bhutan (Gurung, Bousquet, & Trebuil, 2006), communities in a contested fisheries area in Cambodia (Ratner, Mam, & Halpern, 2014), small-scale agricultural stakeholders in Guatemala (Hellin et al, 2018), and populations at risk of violent conflict due to climate change in Nepal (Vivekananda, Schilling, & Smith, 2014b). Climate change is thought to be associated with conflict through the mediation of climate-induced resource scarcity (e.g., reduced rainfall affecting crop yield) that results in food insecurity, which in turn forms the context for violent contestation by societal stakeholders over a dwindling natural resource base (Vivekananda, Schilling, & Smith, 2014a).…”

Climate-Smart Agriculture and Non-Agricultural Livelihood Transformation

“…Its main objectives were to reduce poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition, while increasing the sustainability and resilience of maize-based farming systems (The ideas reported here stem from Hellin's involvement as a socio-economist in this project in the Western Highlands of Guatemala). More details are provided in [13,19]. A strong emphasis of the project was the promotion of CSA, and the project worked through a number of non-governmental organizations.…”