| 1. |
- Andersson, Elina, et al.
(författare)
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The Political Ecology of Land Degradation
- 2011
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1545-2050 .- 1543-5938. ; 36, s. 295-319
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Land degradation, as a threat to smallholders in the tropics, attracts less attention than other global challenges. In addition, gaps between scientific understandings of land degradation and international policy regimes are problematic. We identify the three most significant debates including their different policy implications: desertification in the Sahel, nutrient depletion in Africa, and rural reforms in China. Using a political ecology frame across disciplines, scales of inquiry, and regional experiences, we nuance the often polarized scientific debate while seeking to bridge the gap between science and policy. Three main findings emerge: State-led rural reforms in China represent an important approach to land degradation; a renewed focus on agriculture and sustainability in development discourses opens new ways for tackling nutrient depletion with combined sociotechnological reforms; and a policy void in Africa paves the way for market mechanisms, such as payment for environmental services, that are insufficiently understood and put fairness at risk.
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| 2. |
- Angeler, David
(författare)
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Transformative Environmental Governance
- 2016
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 41, s. 399-423
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transformative governance is an approach to environmental governance that has the capacity to respond to, manage, and trigger regime shifts in coupled social-ecological systems (SESs) at multiple scales. The goal of transformative governance is to actively shift degraded SESs to alternative, more desirable, or more functional regimes by altering the structures and processes that define the system. Transformative governance is rooted in ecological theories to explain cross-scale dynamics in complex systems, as well as social theories of change, innovation, and technological transformation. Similar to adaptive governance, transformative governance involves a broad set of governance components, but requires additional capacity to foster new social-ecological regimes including increased risk tolerance, significant systemic investment, and restructured economies and power relations. Transformative governance has the potential to actively respond to regime shifts triggered by climate change, and thus future research should focus on identifying system drivers and leading indicators associated with social-ecological thresholds.
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| 3. |
- Arneth, Almut, et al.
(författare)
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Restoring Degraded Lands
- 2021
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 46, s. 569-599
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Land degradation continues to be an enormous challenge to human societies, reducing food security, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols, driving the loss of biodiversity, polluting water, and undermining a wide range of ecosystem services beyond food supply and water and climate regulation. Climate change will exacerbate several degradation processes. Investment in diverse restoration efforts, including sustainable agricultural and forest land management, as well as land set aside for conservation wherever possible, will generate co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and morebroadly for human and societal well-being and the economy. This review highlights the magnitude of the degradation problem and some of the key challenges for ecological restoration. There are biophysical as well as societal limits to restoration. Better integrating policies to jointly address poverty, land degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions and removals is fundamental to reducing many existing barriers and contributing to climate-resilient sustainable development.
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| 4. |
- Bhatt, Uma S., et al.
(författare)
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Implications of Arctic Sea Ice Decline for the Earth System
- 2014
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1545-2050 .- 1543-5938. ; 39, s. 57-57
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Arctic sea ice decline has led to an amplification of surface warming and is projected to continue to decline from anthropogenic forcing, although the exact timing of ice-free summers is uncertain owing to large natural variability. Sea ice reductions affect surface heating patterns and the atmospheric pressure distribution, which may alter midlatitude extreme weather patterns. Increased light penetration and nutrient availability during spring from earlier ice breakup enhances primary production in the Arctic Ocean and its adjacent shelf seas. Ice-obligate marine mammals may be losers, whereas seasonally migrant species may be winners from rapid sea ice decline. Tundra greening is occurring across most of the Arctic, driven primarily by warming temperatures, and is displaying complex spatial patterns that are likely tied to other factors. Sea ice changes are affecting greenhouse gas exchanges as well as halogen chemistry in the Arctic. This review highlights the heterogeneous nature of Arctic change, which is vital for researchers to better understand.
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| 5. |
- Bieroza, Magdalena, et al.
(författare)
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The Cold Region Critical Zone in Transition: Responses to Climate Warming and Land Use Change
- 2021
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 46, s. 111-134
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global climate warming disproportionately affects high-latitude and mountainous terrestrial ecosystems. Warming is accompanied by permafrost thaw, shorter winters, earlier snowmelt, more intense soil freeze-thaw cycles, drier summers, and longer fire seasons. These environmental changes in turn impact surface water and groundwater flow regimes, water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, soil stability, vegetation cover, and soil (micro)biological communities. Warming also facilitates agricultural expansion, urban growth, and natural resource development, adding growing anthropogenic pressures to cold regions' landscapes, soil health, and biodiversity. Further advances in the predictive understanding of how cold regions' critical zone processes, functions, and ecosystem services will continue to respond to climate warming and land use changes require multiscale monitoring technologies coupled with integrated observational and modeling tools. We highlight some of the major challenges, knowledge gaps, and opportunities in cold region critical zone research, with an emphasis on subsurface processes and responses in both natural and agricultural ecosystems.
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| 6. |
- Biggs, Reinette, et al.
(författare)
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Toward Principles for Enhancing the Resilience of Ecosystem Services
- 2012. - 37
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Ingår i: Annual Review Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 37, s. 421-448
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services (ES) that underpin human well-being is critical for meeting current and future societal needs, and requires specific governance and management policies. Using the literature, we identify seven generic policy-relevant principles for enhancing the resilience of desired ES in the face of disturbance and ongoing change in social-ecological systems (SES). These principles are (P1) maintain diversity and redundancy, (P2) manage connectivity, (P3) manage slow variables and feedbacks, (P4) foster an understanding of SES as complex adaptive systems (CAS), (P5) encourage learning and experimentation, (P6) broaden participation, and (P7) promote polycentric governance systems. We briefly define each principle, review how and when it enhances the resilience of ES, and conclude with major research gaps. In practice, the principles often co-occur and are highly interdependent. Key future needs are to better understand these interdependencies and to operationalize and apply the principles in different policy and management contexts.
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| 7. |
- Buhaug, Halvard, et al.
(författare)
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Vicious Circles : Violence, Vulnerability, and Climate Change
- 2021
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Ingår i: Annual Review Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 46, s. 545-568
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change threatens core dimensions of human security, including economic prosperity, food availability, and societal stability. In recent years, war-torn regions such as Afghanistan and Yemen have harbored severe humanitarian crises, compounded by climate-related hazards. These cases epitomize the powerful but presently incompletely appreciated links between vulnerability, conflict, and climate-related impacts. In this article, we develop a unified conceptual model of these phenomena by connecting three fields of research that traditionally have had little interaction: (a) determinants of social vulnerability to climate change, (b) climatic drivers of armed conflict risk, and (c) societal impacts of armed conflict. In doing so, we demonstrate how many of the conditions that shape vulnerability to climate change also increase the likelihood of climate?conflict interactions and, furthermore, that impacts from armed conflict aggravate these conditions. The end result may be a vicious circle locking affected societies in a trap of violence, vulnerability, and climate change impacts.
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| 8. |
- Cork, Steven, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring Alternative Futures in the Anthropocene
- 2023
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Ingår i: Annual Review Environment and Resources. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 48, s. 25-54
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many challenges posed by the current Anthropocene epoch require fundamental transformations to humanity's relationships with the rest of the planet. Achieving such transformations requires that humanity improve its understanding of the current situation and enhance its ability to imagine pathways toward alternative, preferable futures. We review advances in addressing these challenges that employ systematic and structured thinking about multiple possible futures (futures-thinking). Over seven decades, especially the past two, approaches to futures-thinking have helped people from diverse backgrounds reach a common understanding of important issues, underlying causes, and pathways toward optimistic futures. A recent focus has been the stimulation of imagination to produce new options. The roles of futures-thinking in breaking unhelpful social addictions and in conflict resolution are key emerging topics. We summarize cognitive, cultural, and institutional constraints on the societal uptake of futures-thinking, concluding that none are insurmountable once understood.
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| 9. |
- Hamann, Maike, et al.
(författare)
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Inequality and the biosphere
- 2018
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 43, s. 61-83
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rising inequalities and accelerating global environmental change pose two of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century. To explore how these phenomena are linked, we apply a social-ecological systems perspective and review the literature to identify six different types of interactions (or "pathways") between inequality and the biosphere. We find that most of the research so far has only considered one-directional effects of inequality on the biosphere, or vice versa. However, given the potential for complex dynamics between socioeconomic and environmental factors within social-ecological systems, we highlight examples from the literature that illustrate the importance of cross-scale interactions and feedback loops between inequality and the biosphere. This review draws on diverse disciplines to advance a systemic understanding of the linkages between inequality and the biosphere, specifically recognizing cross-scale feedbacks and the multidimensional nature of inequality.
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| 10. |
- Herrero, M., et al.
(författare)
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Livestock and the Environment: What Have We Learned in the Past Decade?
- 2015
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Ingår i: Annual Review of Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 40, s. 177-202
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The livestock and environment nexus has been the subject of considerable research in the past decade. With a more prosperous and urbanized population projected to grow significantly in the coming decades comes a gargantuan appetite for livestock products. There is growing concern about how to accommodate this increase in demand with a low environmental footprint and without eroding the economic, social, and cultural benefits that livestock provide. Most of the effort has focused on sustainably intensifying livestock systems. Two things have characterized the research on livestock and the environment in the past decade: the development of increasingly disaggregated and sophisticated methods for assessing different types of environmental impacts (climate, water, nutrient cycles, biodiversity, land degradation, deforestation, etc.) and a focus on examining the technical potential of many options for reducing the environmental footprint of livestock systems. However, the economic or sociocultural feasibility of these options is seldom considered. Now is the time to move this agenda from knowledge to action, toward realizable goals. This will require a better understanding of incentives and constraints for farmers to adopt new practices and the design of novel policies to support transformative changes in the livestock sector. It will also require novel forms of engagement, interaction, and consensus building among stakeholders with enormously diverse objectives. Additionally, we have come to realize that managing the demand trajectories of livestock products must be part of the solution space, and this is an increasingly important research area for simultaneously achieving positive health and environmental outcomes.
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