Land and soil governance towards a transformational post-2015 Development Agenda: an overview

Developing Soil Conservation Strategies with Technical and Community Knowledge in a Degrading Sub‐Humid Mountainous Landscape

“…Pretty & Shah () furthermore suggest that considering that imposed soil and water conservation strategies have not delivered on environmental or economic benefits promised, sustained effective soil conservation strategies will need to involve local communities or risk creating continually simplistic, disappointing programs. Similar calls in more recent times (Cordingley et al, ; Scoones, ; Weigelt et al, ; Wolfgramm et al, ) show that few advancements have been made in demonstrating appropriate pathways for operationalizing and achieving this involvement. Setting interdisciplinary data sets in relation to each other allows each to be acknowledged as partial and situated, challenging supremacy of one kind of knowledge as being able to authoritatively inform national and international environmental monitoring, evaluation, and policy (Nightingale, ; Forsyth, , ).…”

“…Furthermore, improvements in calculating (and expressing limitations) of soil erosion estimates will be needed, particularly in the case of USLE/RUSLE where it forms the basis of many GIS‐based temporal and spatial variation modeling efforts (Kinnell, ). Although these criticisms and assertions to include more stakeholder knowledge might not be new, reports show that operationalizing these suggestions is still limited, with top‐down approaches still dominating (Weigelt et al, ).…”

“…Whether through frameworks in political ecology (Forsyth, , ; Blaikie, ), sustainable land management (Haile et al, ; Hurni et al, ), or soil and land governance (Weigelt et al, ), more and more researchers recognize that a transdisciplinary, complex systems perspective is becoming ever more necessary to develop effective soil conservation strategies (Scoones, ). Because each of this investigation's methods identifies processes occurring spatially, GIS was designated as the common system of graphical representation for integrating the technical and community knowledge data.…”

“…But such strategies (mostly physical structures) have failed to improve local livelihoods (Hengsdijk et al, ), and rates of erosion have yet to be controlled because of complications of maintenance (Pretty & Shah, ; Hurni, ; Haile et al, ; Zegeye et al, ; Adimassu et al, ) or by improper placement of conservation structures (soil bunds, stone bunds, and terraces) (Dagnew et al, ). Although sustainability and conservation strategies may be put forth on an international level (e.g., resilience, sustainability, sustainable land management, sustainable development, sustainable (inclusive) agriculture, conservation agriculture, and climate‐smart agriculture) and are often promoted by the UN (Weigelt et al, ; Wolfgramm et al, ), World Food Program (O'Connor et al, ), or FAO (Baudron et al, ; FAO, ), more detailed analysis is needed concerning how to effectively operationalize these concepts in degrading sub‐humid mountainous landscapes. The remaining portions of this section focus on food‐energy‐water implications of persistent erosion, nascent interdisciplinary research efforts, limitations of overreliance on conventional technical efforts, and the objectives of the study.…”

A Holistic Approach for Assessing the System of Governance of Agrarian Sustainability

“…goals development greatly depends on the specific system of governance in different countries, industries, regions, communities, etc. (Bachev, 2009;Barrett;De Molina;Epp;Kremen et al;Weigelt et al;Zimmerer). Having in mind the importance of agrarian sector (in terms of employed resources, contribution to individuals and social welfare, positive and/or negative impacts on environment, etc.…”