Socio-ecological resilience to soil erosion driven by extreme climatic events: past, present and future challenges in East Africa.

随着越来越大的土地利用压力和随之而来的严重土壤侵蚀，东非许多社会生态系统正处于临界点。持续和加速的土壤侵蚀对未来气候变化冲击的社区和生态适应能力构成了可信的威胁。土壤侵蚀和下游淤积问题挑战着水、粮食和能源安全，气候变化的威胁越来越大。即使在“正常”气候条件下，土壤侵蚀也会降低农田上的水和养分保持、生物多样性和植物初级生产力，从而对粮食生产造成压力，尽管下游生态系统和水资源/发电会受到影响。这削弱了依赖土壤和水资源的社区的复原力，物质和社会文化的积极反馈机制往往会放大冲击。然而，冲击可能会带来一种学习体验，将一个系统推向一条截然不同的道路。这可以支持比以前更强的弹性水平(有时被称为“反弹”)。共同生产可持续土地管理做法将有助于使农业和牧民社区能够(1)抵御未来极端水文气候事件的冲击，(2)通过恢复/加强退化景观，从先前的环境影响恢复到超过以前状态的恢复水平。促进土地管理做法的逐步改变，以减少复杂的土壤侵蚀影响，是联合国可持续发展目标中的一个基本目标，这是一项需要采取跨学科方法的挑战。为了使土地管理行为发生迫切需要的改变，需要有证据表明，通过自然资源系统和依附的农村社区的共同进化，社会复原力如何与景观/生态复原力内在地联系在一起。东非裂谷系统(EAR)地区是撒哈拉以南非洲地区集水泥沙产量最高的地区，部分原因与地形和降雨有关，但也与最近和历史上的土地转作农业有关，特别是草原上牲畜数量的增加。极端干旱和降雨事件已经是热带气候学的一个特征(例如，与ENSO有关)，人们普遍认为，随着全球气候变化，极端干旱和降雨事件的规模和/或频率会增加。在没有社区拥有的土壤管理方案的情况下，最近的土地利用变化将放大水文气候和随之而来的社会影响，这是一个真正的风险。社会文化的束缚加剧了这种情况，如通过饲养牲畜获得的权力和尊重，给脆弱的生态系统和生态系统服务带来压力，对经济和人类健康产生影响。土壤侵蚀和土地退化问题识别方面的专家不一定是社会经济和社会文化解决方案的专家。为了应对这一挑战，我们提出了一种跨学科的方法来设计可持续的土地管理做法，使受土壤侵蚀影响的农村社区能够克服侵蚀后的冲击，实现比以前更高的复原力水平。通过将环境科学、艺术和人文科学与社会科学证据进行新的整合，该项目将规划潜在的行为变化，以及如何将这些变化纳入土壤保持和恢复战略的设计和实施中。这一基础建设方案中的跨学科方法将发展关于EARS地区土壤退化、气候变化和社区复原力之间复杂的相互联系的知识，并探索可能的解决办法。将对照复杂的社会文化社区的关切和需要，探索这一问题的跨学科证据，并将与利益攸关方团体一起考虑可能的解决办法，以确定和支持未来土地管理的行为变化。

With growing land-use pressures and consequent severe soil erosion, many East African socio-ecological systems are at a tipping point. Continued and accelerating soil erosion presents a credible threat to community and ecological resilience to future climate change shocks.Soil erosion and downstream siltation problems challenge water, food and energy security, with growing threat from climate change. Even under 'normal' climatic conditions, soil erosion reduces water and nutrient retention, biodiversity and plant primary productivity on agricultural land putting stress on food production, notwithstanding ecosystem and water resource/power generation impacts downstream. This undermines the resilience of communities that depend on soil and water resources, and shocks are often amplified by physical and socio-cultural positive feedback mechanisms. Shocks can, however, lead to a learning experience that propels a system to a qualitatively different pathway. This can support greater-than-previous levels of resilience (sometimes termed 'bounce back'). Co-production of sustainable land management practises will help enable agrarian and pastoral communities to (1) withstand shock of future extreme hydro-climatic events and (2) recover from prior environmental impacts to a resilience level beyond the prior state through restoration/enhancement of degraded landscapes.Facilitating a step change in land management practice to reduce complex soil erosion impacts is a fundamental target within the UN Sustainable Development Goals, a challenge that requires an interdisciplinary approach. To bring about urgently needed change in land management practice behaviour, evidence is required to demonstrate how social resilience is intrinsically linked to landscape/ecological resilience through the coupled co-evolution of natural resource systems and dependent rural communities.The East African Rift System (EARS) region has the highest catchment sediment yields of sub-Saharan Africa linked in part to topography and rainfall but also to recent and historic land conversion to agriculture and, in particular, increasing livestock numbers on grasslands. Extreme drought and rainfall events, which are already a characteristic feature of tropical climatology (e.g., linked to ENSO), are widely accepted to increase in magnitude and/or frequency with global climate change. There is a real risk that, in the absence of community-owned soil management programmes, recent land use change will amplify hydro-climatic and consequent societal impacts. This is exacerbated by socio-cultural lock-ins such as power and esteem gained by owning livestock, putting pressure on fragile ecosystems and ecosystem services, with repercussions for economic and human health.Experts in soil erosion and land degradation problem identification are not necessarily experts in socio-economic and socio-cultural solutions. To tackle this challenge, we propose an interdisciplinary approach to designing sustainable land management practices that would enable rural communities affected by soil erosion to overcome post-erosion shocks and achieve a higher level of resilience than previously. Through novel integration of environmental science, arts and humanities and social science evidence, this project will map out potential behavioural changes and how these can be embedded in the design and implementation of soil conservation and restoration strategies. The interdisciplinary approach in this foundation-building programme will develop knowledge of complex interlinkages between soil degradation, climate change, and community resilience in the EARS region, as well as to explore pathways to possible solutions. Interdisciplinary evidence of the problem will be explored against complex socio-cultural community concerns and needs, and potential solutions will be considered with stakeholder groups to identify and underpin future behavioural change in land management.