Toward the Integrated Framework Analysis of Linkages among Agrobiodiversity, Livelihood Diversification, Ecological Systems, and Sustainability amid Global Change

Abstract

Scientific and policy interest in the biological diversity of agriculture (agrobiodiversity) is expanding amid global socioeconomic and environmental changes and sustainability interests. The majority of global agrobiodiversity is produced in smallholder food-growing. We use meta-analyses in an integrated framework to examine the interactions of smallholder agrobiodiversity with: (1) livelihood processes, especially migration, including impacts on agrobiodiversity as well as the interconnected resource systems of soil, water, and uncultivated habitats; and (2) plant-soil ecological systems. We hypothesize these interactions depend on: (1) scope of livelihood diversification and type resource system; and (2) plant residues and above-/belowground component ecological specificity. Findings show: (1) livelihood diversification is linked to varied environmental factors that range from rampant degradation to enhancing sustainability; and (2) significant ecological coupling of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity (AGSOBIO assemblages). The environmental impacts of livelihood interactions correspond to variation of diversification (migration, on-farm diversification) and resource system (i.e., agrobiodiversity per se, soil, water). Our findings also reveal mutually dependent interactions of aboveground and soil agrobiodiversity. Results identify livelihood diversification-induced reduction of environmental resource quality with lagged agrobiodiversity declines as a potentially major avenue of global change. Our contribution re-frames livelihood interactions to include both agrobiodiversity and ecological systems. We discuss this integrated social-environmental re-framing through the proposed spatial geographic schema of regional agri-food spaces with distinctive matrices of livelihood strategies and relations to biodiversity and resources. This re-framing can be used to integrate livelihood, agrobiodiversity, and ecological analysis and to guide policy and scientific approaches for sustainability in agriculture and food-growing.

Smallholder telecoupling and potential sustainability

“…Yet to date their potential contributions to sustainability, and limits thereof, have not been a focus of the telecoupling perspective. In addition to the predominant emphasis mentioned above, a widespread assumption of the impending demise of smallholders also fuels this oversight (discussed in Zimmerer et al 2015, Zimmerer andVanek 2016).…”

Introduction: The Continued Importance of Smallholders Today

“…Gender difference is likewise mostly invisible in the majority of human-environment smallholder studies, and this volume is little different (although Zimmerer and Vanek [3] include in their meta-analysis an assessment of the examined studies' inclusion of gender analysis). Women often become visible in the context of female-headed households (see [64], this volume) or as specific or dominant categories of smallholders (see [62], this volume).…”

“…Geographers Karl Zimmerer and Steven J. Vanek [3] also use a meta-analysis to draw complex linkages and feedbacks between smallholder agrobiodiversity, livelihood diversification, social-ecological systems, and sustainability. Their work expands upon and reframes previous land use and livelihood studies to also include the impacts of livelihood diversification on both above-and below-ground biodiversity, and soil and water resources, with implications for sustainability science.…”

“…The currents of global environmental change and sustainability have marshalled in a new era of attention to the social-environmental (or ecological) system. Championed by ecology, this new label for human-environment systems has attracted a wide array of practitioners, largely focused on system resilience and vulnerability [49][50][51], poverty traps (e.g., [26]), and ecosystem services, including payments for services otherwise lost in land change [3,52]. Increasingly, this problem orientation has been applied to smallholders worldwide (e.g., [48,53]), with linkages to political ecology (e.g., [54]).…”

“…Approximately, 570 million smallholder households exist worldwide, and those farming two hectares or less take up about 75% of agricultural land globally [2]. Overall, "the world's present day population of 2.0-2.5 billion smallholders and their access to food and resources, combined with non-and off-farm linkages" make them key actors influencing land-use/land-cover change (LULCC) and biodiversity ( [3]; p. 4, this volume). As a result, smallholders remain an important part of human-environment research, particularly in cultural and political ecology, peasant and development studies, and increasingly in land system and sustainability science.…”