Sustainable Agroforestry Landscape Management: Changing the Game

Abstract

Location-specific forms of agroforestry management can reduce problems in the forest–water–people nexus, by balancing upstream and downstream interests, but social and ecological finetuning is needed. New ways of achieving shared understanding of the underlying ecological and social-ecological relations is needed to adapt and contextualize generic solutions. Addressing these challenges between thirteen cases of tropical agroforestry scenario development across three continents requires exploration of generic aspects of issues, knowledge and participative approaches. Participative projects with local stakeholders increasingly use ‘serious gaming’. Although helpful, serious games so far (1) appear to be ad hoc, case dependent, with poorly defined extrapolation domains, (2) require heavy research investment, (3) have untested cultural limitations and (4) lack clarity on where and how they can be used in policy making. We classify the main forest–water–people nexus issues and the types of land-use solutions that shape local discourses and that are to be brought to life in the games. Four ‘prototype’ games will be further used to test hypotheses about the four problems identified constraining game use. The resulting generic forest–water–people games will be the outcome of the project “Scenario evaluation for sustainable agroforestry management through forest-water-people games” (SESAM), for which this article provides a preview.

People-Centric Nature-Based Land Restoration through Agroforestry: A Typology

“…While some may envision a 'transition' to have distinct stages, in a large data set these are markers along a continuum of gradual change. In a parallel paper [132] the typology is applied to thirteen pantropical landscapes (from up-river Suriname in FT1 to densely polluted East Java in Indonesia in FT6, with key issues in the forest-water-people nexus identified for each landscape but changing in character. Generic aspects of degradation that occur across a range of forest transition stages are discussed elsewhere for a range of landscapes in Southeast Asia [118]: Forest classification conflicts in FT2-4, Over-intensified monocropping in FT3-5, Degraded hillslopes in FT3-6 and Fire-climax coarse-grass lands in FT3-6.…”

Narrow and Brittle or Broad and Nimble? Comparing Adaptive Capacity in Simplifying and Diversifying Farming Systems

“…• Pathways describe the directionality and continuity of a suite of processes that are situated in broader social and ecological contexts, wherein historical actions shape future possibilities that influence adaptive capacity (Box 1), or the ability to respond flexibly and effectively to changing circumstances (Wilson, 2007;Tomich et al, 2011;Anderson et al, 2019;Chhetri et al, 2019). The scale and scope of response matters, and varies along a spectrum ranging from simply coping with the impacts of shocks and stressors in the moment to re-imagining and reconfiguring the structural conditions and drivers that give rise to those shocks and stressors (Van Noordwijk et al, 2020). As such, farmers, agricultural service providers, academics, and policymakers must consider not only how transformation pathways address present social and environmental problems, but also how they build, do not build, or undermine the capacity to adapt to rapidly changing and unexpected biophysical and social challenges into the future.…”

Agroforestry-Based Ecosystem Services

“…'Serious games' have been shown to contribute to such understand-ing but they so far (1) appear to be ad hoc and case-dependent, with poorly defined extrapolation domains, (2) require heavy research investment, (3) have untested cultural limitations, and (4) lack clarity on where and how they can be used in policy making. The final contribution to this special issue in this section [20] addresses ways to overcome these four challenges through a more systematic approach to game prototypes linked to a typology of forest-water-people nexus issues, in which agroforestry-based ecosystem services can be appreciated.…”

“…Beyond directly responding to the three questions raised in the call for papers for the special issue, the concept of agroforestry-based ecosystem services itself evolved [21] as part of the broader debates on Sustainable Development Goals and the multifunctionality of land use, understood as a mosaic of forests, agroforestry, agriculture, and urban areas, at coarse or finely grained mosaic of interacting components. New perspectives that were introduced in [20] but elaborated in [21] include the balance between relational (two-way, reciprocal relations) and instrumental (goal-oriented, substitutable) value articulation on ecosystem functions relevant for human well-being at local, national, and global scales. Whereas the 'ecosystem services' language emphasized human benefits, part of which can also be substituted by technical means (potentially at higher cost) and are thus nice to have but not essential.…”