Understanding sustainable landscapes through the lens of apple growing: cases of Jumla, Nepal and Harcourt, Victoria

Abstract

Through the lens of apple growing and by employing a social-ecological systems approach, this paper seeks to understand how identity and biodiversity both contribute to place formation. This paper compares two apple-growing regions, Jumla in Nepal and Harcourt in Australia by analysing qualitative interviews and historical documents. The study finds that identity and place play an important role in the way growers interact with their local landscapes. This paper argues that sustainable landscapes can be realised through diverse production systems that adhere to physical place limitations and also adapt to longterm changes in social and physical conditions.

Editorial: Pathways towards sustainable landscapes

“…1; Swanwick and Consultants 2002). The outcome of these synergies creates dynamic and evolving landscapes, which are consequently multifunctional and best understood contextually and historically (Antrop 2005(Antrop , 2006Beilin and Bohnet 2015;Bohnet and Konold 2015;Christensen and Gaire 2014;Hashimoto et al 2014;Sayer et al 2014). We argue that sustainability science, as a growing field of inquiry, offers important insights into the tremendous challenges that researchers face who are committed to act as catalysts for changing societal values that support pathways towards sustainable landscapes.…”

“…The results highlight the limits of consumer choice as a method of deliberative democratic engagement with issues of agri-food sustainability. It also points to the importance of international connections, as in the Christensen and Gaire (2014) paper, where analysis of pesticide use, or crop developments in one nation, is frequently repeated, sometime later, in another.…”

“…They provide an understanding of the complex dynamics that arise from interactions between social systems, ecological systems and social change processes (Miller 2013). Several of the articles in this special issue analyse the sustainability challenges that farmers, as individual land managers and at the farm scale, face (Christensen and Gaire 2014;Fielke and Bardsley 2014;Hunt 2014;Santhanam-Martin et al 2014) and how they respond to increasing pressures by narrowly framed policies that equate agricultural sustainability with economic productivity, e.g. producing more agricultural products for export and thereby increasing their contributions to the national economy.…”

“…Hunt 2014) and global and local impediments (e.g. Christensen and Gaire 2014;Clapp 2014;Hill et al 2015). This special issue represents a work-in-progress as we recognise that the 'landscape' metaphor is intrinsically about people in places at a time when the Earth is frequently conceived as global and 'placeless'.…”

“…Clapp 2014), and point of departure (e.g. Christensen and Gaire 2014;Hunt 2014;Santhanam-Martin et al 2014), the papers in this special issue study practical sustainability challenges in real-world human development systems. The contributions are as diverse as the landscapes under investigation and written by a wide range of scholars from the social and natural sciences as well as the humanities.…”