Food security at the forest-agriculture Interface: A complex systems analysis of ecosystem services trade-offs and tipping points

由于气候和经济变化的速度加快，在地方和区域尺度上预测全球变化对农村社区的影响越来越具有挑战性。然而，由于食物链的不稳定性和不可预测性，粮食安全显然仍将是发展中国家的一个关键问题。农村社区的粮食安全在很大程度上依赖于自然环境中生态系统服务的流动。几千年来，人类一直在思考和学习经验，这些经验塑造了支撑农业实践的过程，解决了多种因素和权衡。随着时间的推移（例如），作物的种植或牲畜的饲养已经适应和“调整”，以提高每公顷的生产力。这包括改造植物和动物（通过杂交和最近的基因改造）以增强有用的生物特性（例如，抗虫害或提高产量）或通过改进技术和增加能源来提高生产力（使用化肥和杀虫剂）。然而，许多这些系统需要集约化管理，并且在其最佳气候条件（有时是狭窄的）范围之外容易发生故障。此外，这些做法还会产生累积的负面影响（如养分枯竭或土壤侵蚀）。在干旱等极端气候事件或其他冲击或危机期间，农村社区往往被迫转向自然环境中ES的存量和流量，以满足其营养需求。解决自然资源管理和农村生计的可持续性问题需要跨学科的综合思考。因此，这一伙伴关系和项目发展（PPD）提案汇集了人类学和社会科学、经济学、生态学、风险管理、空间规划、气候变化和复杂性科学方面的专业知识，设计并整合了一套现有的模型和方法，以分析景观尺度上生态服务的动态存量和流量如何转化为地方一级的营养福祉和福利。该研究的一个重点是审查生态系统服务与对营养和社会经济状况以及妇幼健康结果的影响之间的联系。实现这项研究的活动将主要集中在将在英国、马拉维和哥伦比亚举行的三个讲习班上。研讨会将汇集合作伙伴和其他利益相关者，包括当地社区、非政府组织和政策制定者，设计一个新的综合框架，可以在亚马逊和非洲的两个当地案例研究地区进行测试，这些地区的特点是森林和农业用地的马赛克，以探索在气候和社会经济变化下管理这些动态景观的不确定性、波动性、权衡和临界点。

Predicting the impacts of global change on rural communities at local to regional scales is increasingly challenging due to the accelerated pace of climate and economic change. However, it is clear that food security will continue to remain a critical issue in developing countries due to the volatile and unpredictable nature of food chains. Food security in rural communities rely significantly on the flow of ecosystem services (ES) from natural environments. Over thousands of years, humans have engaged in thinking and learning experiences which have shaped the processes underpinning agricultural practices, addressing multiple factors and tradeoffs. The growing of crops or rearing of livestock has been adapted and 'tuned' over time (for instance) to increase productivity per hectare. This has involved the modification of plants and animals (through hybridisation and, more recently, genetic modification) to enhance useful biological traits (e.g. pest resistance or higher yields) or through improving technology and adding energy to increase productivity (use of fertilizers and pesticides). However, many of these systems require intensive management and are prone to failure outside of the (sometimes narrow) range of their optimal climate conditions. In addition, cumulative negative effects arise from these practices (such as nutrient depletion or soil erosion). During extreme climate events, such as drought, or other shocks or crisis, rural communities are often forced to turn to stocks and flows of ES from natural environments to meet their nutritional needs. Addressing the sustainability of natural resource management and rural livelihoods requires integrated thinking across disciplines. This Partnership and Project Development (PPD) proposal therefore brings together expertise in anthropology and the social sciences, economics, ecology, risk management, spatial planning, climate change and complexity sciences to design and integrate a suite of existing models and methods to analyse how dynamic stocks and flows of ecological services at the landscape scale translate to local-level nutritional well-being and welfare. A key focus of the study is to examine the link between ecosystem services and impacts on nutritional and socio-economic status and maternal and child health outcomes. Activities to achieving this research will primarily focus around three workshops, to be held in the UK, Malawi and Colombia. The workshops will bring together the partners, and other stakeholders, including local communities, NGOs and policy-makers to design a new integrating framework that can be tested in 2 local case-study areas in Amazonia and Africa which are characterised by mosaics of forests and agricultural lands to explore the uncertainty, volatility, trade-offs and tipping points associated with managing these dynamic landscapes under climate and social-economic change.