Resilience thinking and agricultural biodiversity governance

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Resilience thinking and agricultural
biodiversity governance towards a system
approach for catalyzing desired change

• Pernilla Malmer, Senior Advisor
• The Resilience and Development Programme,
• Stockholm Resilience Centre

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Stockholm Resilience Centre

• Advances transdisciplinary research for
  governance of social-ecological systems
• A special emphasis on resilience the ability to
  deal with change and continue to develop

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Planetary boundaries

• Food for a growing world population within the
  planetary boundaries will require a new
  planetary food revolution

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Aichi target 7

• By 2020 areas under agriculture, aquaculture and
  forestry are managed sustainably, ensuring
  conservation of biodiversity.

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Resilience thinking

• Resilience the capacity
• of a system to deal with
• change and continue to
• develop
• Social ecological systems
• Adaptation
• Transformation

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Why social-ecological resilience?

• Human well-being is underpinned by ecosystems
• Human activities are strong drivers of ecosystem
  change
• People can and do act as stewards of their
  environment

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The challenge of transformation of agricultural
systems

• Increasing yields
• needs not translate
• into bioidversity
• loss or more land
• spared for nature

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Agroecological intensification
Tscharntke, T., et al. Biological Conservation
2012
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Relations between people and nature are complex

• Cannot manage social and ecological systems in
  isolation
• History is important and place matters
• Ecosystems change and evolve
• We change, adapt and innovate

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Causal loop analysis
From E. Enfors. 2009
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How to maintain social-ecological resilience?

• Learn to live with change and uncertainty
• Combine different sources of knowledge
• Facilitate self-organization
• Nurture diverse sources for renewal and
  reorganization

Folke et al. 2003
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What is resilience?

• Resilience is the ability of a community to
  withstand negative internal and external
  pressures and threats. Resilience enables
  adaptation and strength, coherence and
  intergenerational learning.
• Communities can be resilient when they
  are empowered and clear about their future and
  can act together to protect their rights.

African Biodiversity Network
Quote from African Biodiversity Network
www.africanbiodiversity.org
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Regreening of the Sahel

How do transformations take place?

• Farmers appear to have actively managed their
  land in ways that contribute to re-greening, and
  also enhanced productivity.

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The Tigray experience

• An approach based on sound ecological principles
  can enable farmers to overcome environmental
  constraints such as erosion, poor soil fertility
  and build household food security on a
  sustainable basis.

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Kenvo and the Kijabe landscape an
ecoagriculture approach

• The question that KENVO is grappling with now is
  how best to measure the landscape in terms of
  agricultural production and socioeconomic
  (livelihood) welfare

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Participatory plantbreeding linking action
research to global policy
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Sustainable agricultural intensification
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What needs to be done

• Watch out for planetary boundaries
• Food is creation from cultural and biological
  diversity place based, diverse
• Food security policies for resilient and
  productive agricultural systems and landscapes
  must emphasize and build on an increase in
  agroecologic capacity.

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Thank you
Pernilla Malmer Stockholm Resilience
Centre pernilla.malmer_at_stockholmresilience.su.se
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