Ecosystem service bundles in different agricultural landscapes . ..... In the following section I outline the theoretical foundation from which the topics of this thesis ...
Ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes A study on farming and farmers in South Africa and Sweden
Rebecka Malinga
©Rebecka Malinga, Stockholm University 2016 ISBN 978-91-7649-506-3 (printed) ISBN 978-91-7649-507-0 (pdf) Printed in Sweden by Holmbergs, Malmö 2016 Distributor: Stockholm Resilience Centre Cover photos: Top centre by E. Andersson
Abstract
Humanity is facing challenges of sustainably producing enough food for a growing population without further eroding the world’s ecosystems. Transformation of natural habitats into agriculture has resulted in opportunities for civilization, but has also led to land degradation and loss of biodiversity, threatening the generation of ecosystem services. A better understanding of interlinkages and trade-offs among ecosystem services, and the spatial scales at which services are generated, used and interact, is needed in order to successfully inform land use policies. This includes the need to develop transdisciplinary tools that can disentangle the relationships between the supply of and demand for ecosystem services. This thesis investigates agricultural landscapes as complex social-ecological systems, and uses a multi-method approach to assess ecosystem service generation from different types of agricultural landscapes and to examine the socialecological nature of these services. More specifically, the thesis discusses the importance of appropriate spatial scales, explores landscape change, integrates stakeholder knowledge and develops tools to investigate supply and demand of multiple ecosystem services. Paper I reviews the literature on ecosystem service mapping, revealing that services were mostly mapped at intermediate spatial scales (municipality and province), and rarely at local scales (farm/village). Although most of the reviewed studies used a resolution of 1 hectare or less, more case-specific local scale mapping is required to unravel the fine-scale dynamics of ecosystem service generation that are needed to inform landscape planning. To explore future uncertainties and identify relevant ecosystem services in a study area, paper II builds alternative scenarios using participatory scenario planning in the Upper Thukela region, South Africa. The paper compares methods to select services for an ecosystem service assessment showing that scenario planning added limited value for identifying ecosystem services, although it improved knowledge of the study area and availed useful discussions with stakeholders. Papers III and IV combines social and biophysical data to study the supply and demand of ecosystem services at farm- and landscape level, through participatory mapping and expert assessments in the Upper Thukela region, South Africa (paper III), and through in-depth interviews and biophysical surveys in Uppsala County, Sweden (paper IV), including small-scale and large-scale farmers. Both papers find apparent differences between the farmer groups in terms of the supply and the demand of services, and also the capacity of the farmers to influence the generation of services (paper III). Paper IV further establishes the importance of using multiple indicators combining social and biophysical data to quantify and investigate the complex social-ecological nature of ecosystem services. A cross-case comparison of ecosystem service bundles, using data from papers III and IV, finds similarities in bundles generated in the large-scale systems, while the small-scale agriculture bundles varied. This thesis provides new insights into the social-ecological generation of ecosystem services at fine scales such as farm and landscape levels, and shows the importance of including the knowledge of various stakeholders, combining different methods and tools to increase the understanding of supply and demand of ecosystem services.
Table of content
List of papers ...................................................................................................................................v Introduction .....................................................................................................................................6 Theoretical background ...................................................................................................................8 Agricultural landscapes as social-ecological systems .............................................................................................. 8 Ecosystem service bundles in different agricultural landscapes ............................................................................ 10 The beneficiaries of ecosystem services ................................................................................................................ 11 Mapping ecosystem services.................................................................................................................................. 12 The supply and demand of ecosystem services...................................................................................................... 13
Scope of the thesis .........................................................................................................................14 Empirical approach ........................................................................................................................16 Study areas ............................................................................................................................................................. 16 KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa ........................................................................................................................... 16 Uppsala County, Sweden .................................................................................................................................. 18 Methods ................................................................................................................................................................. 19
Results and discussion ...................................................................................................................22 Comparing different agricultural landscapes ......................................................................................................... 22 Cross-case comparison of ecosystem service supply ........................................................................................ 25 Mapping and assessing ecosystem services ........................................................................................................... 26 Mapping ecosystem services at relevant scales ................................................................................................ 27 Selecting ecosystem services ............................................................................................................................ 27 Ecosystem service categories............................................................................................................................ 28 Stakeholder participation .................................................................................................................................. 28 Reflections on the empirical approach and ways forward ..................................................................................... 29 On a personal note ............................................................................................................................................ 30
Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................31 References .....................................................................................................................................32 Sammanfattning .............................................................................................................................38 Isifingqo .........................................................................................................................................41 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................43 Appendix .......................................................................................................................................45
List of papers
I.
Malinga, R., Gordon, L.J., Jewitt, G., and Lindborg, R. 2015. Mapping ecosystem services across scales and continents – A review. Ecosystem Services 13:57-63.
II.
Malinga, R., Gordon, L.J., Lindborg, R., and Jewitt, G. 2013. Using participatory scenario planning to identify ecosystem services in changing landscapes. Ecology and Society 18(4):10.
III.
Malinga, R., Lindborg, R., Andersson, E., Jewitt, G., and Gordon, L.J. On the other side of the ditch: The stark contrasts between smallholder and commercial farmers’ contribution to multiple ecosystem services. Manuscript.
IV.
Andersson, E., Nykvist, B., Malinga, R., Jaramillo, F., and Lindborg, R. 2015. A social–ecological analysis of ecosystem services in two different farming systems. Ambio 44(Suppl. 1):S102-S112.
The published papers are reprinted with the permission from the publishers.
Introduction
The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof. It is welltended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fires burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed. Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. But the rich green hills break down. They fall to the valley below, and falling, change their nature. For they grow red and bare; they cannot hold the rain and mist, and the streams are dry in the kloofs. Too many cattle feed upon the grass, and too many fires have burned it. Stand shod upon it, for it is coarse and sharp, and the stones cut under the feet. It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men. The titihoya does not cry here any more. Alan Paton, 1948. Cry, the Beloved Country
In 1948, Alan Paton described a landscape in the South African grasslands of the Drakensberg mountain range near to where a major part of this thesis takes place. He first illustrated a healthy agricultural landscape used for grazing cattle, managed sustainably to maintain healthy soils, grasses and water streams. Viewed through the eyes of an ecosystem services scientist, he envisioned a landscape that generated multiple ecosystem services for society, in a manner that would sustain future generations. In the second paragraph he predicted the degradation of the same landscape by the overuse of natural resources and mismanaged grasslands, where the land could no longer provide society with the ecosystem services they depend on, and the bird species, the titihoya (Vanellus melanopterus), had disappeared. Ecosystem services are the benefits humans obtain through their interaction with nature (Ernstson 2013, Reyers et al. 2013). These benefits translate into several dimensions of people’s quality of life, from human needs such as food, water, health, security, and livelihoods, to cultural and spiritual meaning, and identity people acquire through their relationship with ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) 2005). Many of the ecosystem services on which humans depend, are derived from agriculture. While the primary goal of agriculture is to produce food, there is an increasing pressure on agricultural landscapes to deliver a broad range of ecosystem services to meet the demands of multifaceted societies as well as those from a growing global population (Foley et al. 2005, Bindraban and Rabbinge 2012). Societies and their composition of beneficiaries desire different sets of services (Biggs et al. 2015), which link to various aspects of human well-being; from mere survival to maintaining certain chosen lifestyles. Agricultural landscapes, seen as coupled social-ecological systems, result from the interplay between the biophysical and the social environment that constitute the landscape (Parrott and Meyer 2012, box 1). A combination of factors such as climate, geology and ecology as well as management practices, technology, skills, institutions and societal demand, will hence result in the 6
supply of ecosystem services within an agricultural landscape (Swinton et al. 2007, Kroll et al. 2012, Huntsinger and Oviedo 2014). The generation of these ecosystem services do not operate in isolation from one another. Instead, they are either interconnected by corresponding in various ways to different driving forces (i.e. climate change or management interventions) or through the interaction with other services (Bennett et al. 2009). While some services may be enhanced by a specific driver, other services may respond adversely and decrease. The composition of services from a landscape or given land unit, will consequently alter as a result of the driving forces at play. In this thesis I aim to deepen the understanding of the generation of multiple ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. I particularly focus on agricultural landscapes that provide a diverse set of ecosystem services and include different farming intensities and farming cultures. I apply an integrative approach capturing both the biophysical and social components of ecosystem services to compare supply and demand of ecosystem services in small-scale and large-scale agriculture from two different case studies. In the following section I outline the theoretical foundation from which the topics of this thesis have emerged and highlight the research gaps the thesis aims to address. I then summarise the scope of the thesis before introducing the study areas and methods used. In the next section I summarise the findings from the four papers, followed by an in-depth discussion on the implication of the results and ways in which this research could develop further.
Box 1. Defining the agricultural landscape While scale is an important feature when studying a changing landscape, there is no particular scale that is correct when referring to a landscape (Lindenmayer and Fischer 2006). The agricultural landscapes in focus will alter in spatial scale throughout this thesis, and will be defined when needed. Also the definitions of the term landscape vary in different contexts (Fry 2001). When reading this thesis it is relevant to envision a landscape as “a spatial area constituting of several farms or small villages that are or have been interconnected. A landscape includes a mosaic of different rural environments and habitats, and covers at least one to a few square kilometres. In this area, physical as well as immaterial and human aspects are included as features of the landscape“ (Lindborg et al. 2008). I see the farmers as the primary actors in the agricultural landscapes making them central to this thesis (figure 1).
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Theoretical background
Agricultural landscapes as social-ecological systems Almost 40% of the world’s terrestrial surface has been transformed into agriculture, either for cultivation of crops or for grazing of livestock, enabling tremendous opportunities for humanity and increased economic development (Ramankutty et al. 2008). Converting pristine lands into agriculture has however been identified as one of the main causes for global land degradation and biodiversity loss over the past decades (Tilman et al. 2001), consequently degrading the ecosystems’ ability to generate many other ecosystem services. The decline of the generation of ecosystem services is alarming throughout the world (MA 2005, IPCC 2014). Food production has been targeted at the often unintended cost of other services, e.g. non-cultivated provisioning, regulating and cultural services (Foley et al. 2005, MA 2005, Müller et al. 2016). Humanity now faces the challenge of catering for a growing population, with limited resources at hand, and the pressing need to find ways towards long-term sustainable agriculture (Rockström et al. 2016). While an increased understanding of the undesirable outcomes of agriculture provide opportunities to deal with these challenges, there are still important gaps that need to be addressed. In order to improve land management and land use strategies we need to fully understand the interactions and trade-offs among multiple ecosystem services, and how multifunctionality in agricultural landscapes can increase human well-being. Food production derives from fundamental ecological and biological processes, such as soil nutrients, microorganisms, pollination, temperature, day light and water, and the genetic origin of the species used within agriculture (crop and livestock varieties). However, these biophysical elements also require human inputs to produce food (Biggs et al. 2015). Societal needs, institutions, technology and skills are examples of socioeconomic characteristics that are part of food production systems and shape the agricultural landscapes and the services they deliver (Reyers et al. 2013). This thesis asserts the notion that agricultural landscapes are intertwined social-ecological systems (SES) (figure 1), where the social system and the ecological system are inseparable. The SES perspective of the agricultural landscape views farmlands as going beyond an entity of land that produces food for people to eat. By improving the knowledge on the complex dynamics between the social and ecological aspects of agricultural landscapes, and the ecosystem services they generate, land management and environmental policy can focus on increasing the multifunctionality of those landscapes, i.e. to diversify the portfolio of ecosystem services sustained by the landscapes to society (Foley et al. 2005, Parrott and Meyer 2012). Viewing agricultural landscapes as SES also acknowledges the landscapes as complex adaptive systems that constantly change, both gradually and abruptly (Walker et al. 2004, Folke 2006). This complexity requires tools that take the various components and characteristics of a SES into account. Ecosystem service assessments that do not consider the temporal dynamics in a changing landscape may soon be outdated and encounter undesirable surprises (paper II). A tool for dealing with change and complexity is scenario planning and it has increasingly been applied in 8
environmental management and social-ecological systems research in general (Carpenter et al. 2006, Oteros-Rozas et al. 2015) and ecosystem service research in particular (Plieninger et al. 2013a, Reed et al. 2013).
Figure 1. The figure illustrates the agricultural landscape as a social-ecological system supplying multiple ecosystem services to society. Farmers, being the main actors in the agricultural landscape, work along with socioeconomic and biophysical factors to mangage their landscapes according to the demand from society, themselves and their families.
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Ecosystem service bundles in different agricultural landscapes Different kinds of agricultural landscapes generate different kinds of ecosystem services. There are many studies that compare different kinds of agricultural systems and the services they generate, for example conventional monoculture farming vs organic farming, and the effects that intensification of agriculture has on biodiversity and ecosystem services (Björklund et al. 1999, Haas et al. 2001, Kleijn et al. 2009, Kremen and Miles 2012). A few publications present comparative analyses between small-scale and large-scale agriculture, and focus on aspects such as: productivity (Lele and Agarwal 1990); soil degradation and soil loss (Essiet 1990); environmental impact from palm oil plantations (Lee et al. 2014); income after adoption to cotton production (Gouse et al. 2003); birds and plants species richness and assemblages (Andersson and Lindborg 2014) and adaptation to climate change (Wilk et al. 2011). However, none of these examples provide comparisons between multiple ecosystem services associated with agricultural landscapes but focus on single services. Assessing multiple ecosystem services simultaneously is required to understand the interrelations between services, how services respond to drivers of change such as management innovations, and how the alteration of one service affects other services (Bennett et al. 2009). Targeted landscape management practices which respond to the demand for particular ecosystem services by certain beneficiaries will unavoidably result in trade-offs (Rodriguez et al. 2006, Bennett et al. 2009, King et al. 2015, Schoon et al. 2015). Examples are upstream food production causing reduced water provision and other ecosystem services downstream (Gordon et al. 2010), historical clearing of land for agricultural crop production and pastures leading to severe salinization of the lands and reduced biodiversity, productivity and livelihoods for descendant generations (Briggs and Taws 2003, Islam et al. 2015), and biodiversity conservation resulting in reduced access to natural resources and livelihoods for local communities (Benjaminsen and Bryceson 2012). Understanding these trade-offs is an important part of ecosystem service management, and useful approaches to investigate the extent and complexity of ecosystem service trade-offs and multifunctionality need to be further developed. Already in 2005, Foley and others presented a conceptual framework using flower diagrams to compare ecosystem service generation from three different theoretical landscapes, illustrating the differences in ecosystem service generation among those land uses (figure 2). While these well-cited flower diagrams are thought provoking and useful for highlighting the challenges in terms of trade-offs between ecosystem services in different landscapes (Parrott and Meyer 2012, Helfenstein and Kienast 2014, Paudyal et al. 2015), they are both hypothetical and highly simplified, and neglect many of the ecosystem services generated in a diversity of agricultural landscapes. An increasing number of studies provide empirical assessments of multiple ecosystem services and their interactions from real landscapes (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2010, Maes et al. 2012, Martín-López et al. 2012, Turner et al. 2014, Queiroz et al. 2015, Früh-Müller et al. 2016), contributing to an improved understanding of multifunctionality, and disentangling the mechanisms behind the bundling of ecosystem services in certain land uses, landscape types or regions. The methodologies used in these studies vary in terms of spatial scale, data collection and analysis, spatial units, and what ecosystem services and indicators are assessed, challenging the possibilities for cross-case comparisons (Queiroz et al. 2015). However, the studies highlight the context-dependence of drivers in
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Figure 2. Conceptual framework for comparing land use and trade-offs of ecosystem services. Three hypothetical landscapes are compared where the length of the petals illustrate the extent of ecosystem service generation. (Source: Foley et al. 2005. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.)
ecosystem service generation, calling for more empirical evidence in this relatively new strain of ecosystem service research, at various scales. In this thesis, I use results from papers III and IV to present a farm- and landscape scale comparison of multiple ecosystem services visualised as flower diagrams, from contrasting agricultural systems (small-scale and large-scale agriculture) from two different case study areas.
The beneficiaries of ecosystem services The ecosystem services generated within the agricultural landscapes will reach society as different kinds of benefits, ranging from direct benefits such as food intake to income generating benefits and regulating processes important for these benefits, such as pollination and erosion regulation (Daw et al. 2011). Agricultural landscapes involve a wide range of beneficiaries: land owners or land managers who through their farming practices shape the landscapes; people living within the agricultural landscapes and who benefit from it but who do not directly manage the land; visitors who enjoy the agricultural landscapes for recreation and amenities and other beneficiaries who benefit from the services generated in the landscapes without being physically connected to the place. A society contains a diverse set of beneficiaries, from different socioeconomic and sociocultural groups, which may lead to unequal access and asymmetric resource use (Schoon et al. 2015, paper III). Consequently, stakeholder involvement, where local perspectives of ecosystems are taken into account, is an important part of ecosystem service assessments when taking societal injustices into consideration (Folke et al. 2005, Cowling et al. 2008). A fair representation of beneficiaries, cultures and social constructs can best be achieved by including an
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extensive array of stakeholders (Menzel and Teng 2009, Reyers et al 2010, Björklund et al. 2012, Elbakidze et al. 2015). Local, indigenous as well as practitioner knowledge, has proven complementary to integrate with scientific knowledge for instance in sustainable ecosystem management (Tengö et al. 2014, Gaspare et al. 2015). Seppelt et al. (2011) suggested that stakeholder involvement is a method for relating ecosystem function to human well-being “to gain a wider picture, to ground-truth academic possibilities and to provide a first estimate of which measures of ecosystem management would be looked upon favorably by members of the public”. The non-material and intangible values of ecosystems, called cultural ecosystem services (MA 2005, TEEB 2010), are pivotal when considering a diverse set of beneficiaries, cultures and social constructs (Daniel at al. 2012, Plieninger et al. 2015). Most cultural services are both directly experienced and subconsciously valued, in contrast to other services. The identification and valuing of many cultural services therefore require participatory approaches (MA 2005, Daniel el al. 2012, Hernández-Morcillo et al. 2013, Plieninger et al. 2015). Papers II, III and IV integrate local and scientific knowledge to capture the perspectives of a wide range of beneficiaries, and seeks to include a wide range of ecosystem services, including cultural ecosystem services. The inclusion of cultural services other than recreation and tourism will contribute towards filling a gap in the understanding of cultural ecosystem services and their importance for human well-being (Seppelt et al. 2011, Plieninger et al. 2013b).
Mapping ecosystem services Spatial quantification and mapping of ecosystem services has been recognised as an important tool for scientists and decision-makers to assess and communicate ecosystem conditions and the ecosystem services provided at various scales (Burkhard et al. 2013). The scientific literature presenting mapping tools, models, indicators and decision support systems has expanded tremendously over the past couple of decades (Egoh et al. 2012, Martínez-Harms and Balvanera 2012, Maes et al. 2016, paper I). There are many different mapping approaches, as well as new techniques and models that aim to better inform policy (Crossman et al. 2013b). Maps that build on primary data and measurements, as well as remote sensing observations, are more accurate than those relying on secondary data and proxies (Crossman et al. 2013a). However, the lack of primary data and resources to carry out field surveys are common limiting factors that force studies to rely on secondary data (Eigenbrod et al. 2010). Land use proxies are commonly used to estimate ecosystem service generation, either as simple assumptions where a certain land use type is considered to generate a specific service or groups of services (Maes et al. 2016) or included in more advanced models with several variables and/or in combination with expert opinion of selected stakeholders with certain expertise (Jacobs et al. 2015). The importance of spatial scale when assessing and managing ecosystem services and their interactions is unanimously emphasised among scholars. Yet, much remains unknown in terms of at what spatial scales services should ultimately be studied (Raudsepp-Hearne and Peterson 2016). The underlying ecological processes that generate ecosystem services operate at different scales, as do the external social and ecological driving forces (Potschin and Haines-Young 2011). The purpose of the study, including which components or aspects of ecosystem services are aimed to be captured, determine which spatial scale and mapping approach(es) is(are) most suitable (paper I).
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The supply and demand of ecosystem services Despite the development of ecosystem service frameworks to make them more useful for policy and decision making (e.g. MA 2005, TEEB 2010), and a rapid advancement in mapping methodologies, there are still some important aspects of the ecosystem service concept that need more attention (Daw et al. 2016, Maes et al. 2016). For instance, the differences between what services potentially can be produced in a given piece of land, what services are available and used by different beneficiaries, and what services are desired or needed, are often casually handled in the ecosystem service literature (Villamagna et al. 2013). In other words, ecosystem service studies do not always explicitly describe or define which aspect(s) of ecosystem services they aim to assess (Wolff et al. 2015). The terms for the hierarchical elements of an ecosystem service chain, i.e. from ecosystems, via flows of services from ecosystems to beneficiaries, and to the contributions that the benefits bring to human well-being, are used differently within the various frameworks, and within the greater scientific community (Villamagna et al. 2013, Daw et al. 2016). Villamagna et al. (2013) provide a useful overview of the inconsistency of the use of these terms within the ecosystem service literature. They find that terms like: capacity; potential supply; ecosystem potential and function; stocks and provision, are all used interchangeably to refer to the capacity of an ecosystem to provide a service. Furthermore, the terms: flow; benefit; supply; demand and provision, are used to describe the benefits actually delivered to people. Lastly, the terms societal demand and sociocultural preferences refer to the needs and preferences of beneficiaries (Villamagna et al. 2013). The demand of services (i.e. needs and preferences) has also been termed ‘perceived ecosystem service supply’ (De Vreese et al. 2016) and ‘needs, gaps and aspiration’ (Daw et al. 2016). While the discrepancy of the use of terms is inevitable given the diversity of ecosystem frameworks and their various ways of conceptualizing ecosystem services (Wolff et al. 2015), the components must be properly defined in order to select the most suitable indicators and methods for quantification, as well as to improve the application of the analyses. Although the potential supply of services, with land use and land cover as proxies, is most commonly mapped (Egoh et al. 2012, Martínez-Harms and Balvanera 2012, Crossman et al. 2013b), there is a growing body of literature presenting assessments of the actual supply of ecosystem services to beneficiaries, as well as the demand and societal preferences (Wolff et al. 2015, Maes et al. 2016). Separate measures of the different components of ecosystem service delivery are needed to understand the social-ecological nature of ecosystem services, which includes the supply of and the demand for multiple ecosystem services (Villamagna et al. 2013, papers III and IV).
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Scope of the thesis
Despite tremendous methodological and conceptual improvements, the multifaceted field of ecosystem service research still contains gaps and challenges that need to be addressed. This thesis combines social and biophysical data to improve the understanding of the social-ecological nature of ecosystem services and covers different levels of stakeholder involvement, ranging from local to regional (figure 3). It also encompasses various spatial scales of analysis, from a literature review at a global scale, to two local case studies in South Africa and Sweden, at farm to landscape scales (figure 3). The study areas were chosen to include agricultural landscapes that provide a diverse set of ecosystem services, farming intensities and farming cultures. South Africa and Sweden were specifically chosen to represent two areas geographically distanced from one another, in countries within different climatic regions and with different socioeconomic positions, in order to explore whether similar patterns of ecosystem service generation could be detected between the two systems despite the fundamentally different contexts. The complexity of a social-ecological system such as an agricultural landscape and its intertwined social and ecological components clearly calls for integrated, explorative methods that can tackle the various dynamics of ecosystem service supply and demand at relevant scales. The thesis starts off with paper I, which examines the ecosystem services mapping literature in terms of what services are mapped, where in the world and at what spatial scale the mapping is carried out. The rest of the thesis explores the generation of multiple ecosystem services through the perspectives of stakeholders, foremost farmers, in contrasting, changing, agricultural landscapes. Paper II applies an iterative scenario planning approach with multi-level stakeholders, from local to regional levels (e.g. farmers, practitioners, officials, and researchers), to develop alternative scenarios and to identify relevant ecosystem services in the Upper Thukela region, KwaZuluNatal, South Africa. It also explores the challenges and opportunities that a rapid changing agricultural landscape may face twenty years into the future. Paper III combines social and biophysical data to map ecosystem services in the same study area. Specifically, supply and demand of ecosystem services are mapped using participatory mapping and in-depth interviews including small-scale and large-scale farmers, and expert interpretation of biophysical data previously collected in the study area. Paper III also discusses the capacity of the farmers from the different farmer groups to maintain the supply and meet their demands for ecosystem services. To contrast the socioeconomic and climatic prerequisites in South Africa, this thesis uses a second study area, Uppsala County, Sweden (paper IV). Similar to paper III, it investigates the supply and demand of ecosystem services by using a mixed-method approach including multiple social and biophysical indicators to quantify a wide range of services in contrasting agricultural landscapes. Finally, drawing on the results from papers III and IV, I use flower diagrams to visualise bundles of ecosystem service supply in different kinds of agricultural landscapes from the two case study areas.
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This thesis explores the following overarching questions: 1. What are the differences in terms of bundles of ecosystem services between different agricultural landscapes (such as between small-scale, low-intensive and large-scale, highintensive agriculture, and between different parts of the world)? Are the differences more apparent within or between the case study areas? (papers III and IV) 2. How do the relationships between ecosystem service supply and demand manifest differently in different agricultural landscapes? (papers III and IV) 3. How can stakeholder involvement and participatory methods improve insights into ecosystem service assessments? (papers I, II, III, and IV)
Figure 3. Spatial scale of assessment (x-axis), level of stakeholder involvement (y-axis) and types of data included in the four papers.
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Empirical approach
Study areas The main part of the research in this thesis was conducted in the South African Drakensberg, in the upper parts of the Thukela River Catchment (figure 4:1, papers II and III). Paper IV used the south-central parts of Sweden, Uppsala County, as study area (figure 4:2). The comparison between small-scale, low-intensive and large-scale, high-intensive agriculture is principal to both study areas, although the terminology used to describe the systems in the three papers, and in the thesis, differ. In paper II, mostly the terms ‘small-scale subsistence’, and ‘large-scale commercial’ farmers were used, while paper III used ‘smallholder’ and ‘commercial’ farmers. Although, the terms subsistence and smallholder farmers are often used interchangeably in much of the academic and policy literature, the term smallholder is more suitable to describe the small-scale farmers in the South African study area (papers II and III) since ‘smallholder’ mostly refer to low-intensive small-scale farmers in developing countries, using mainly family labour (Morton 2007). Paper IV used mainly the terms ‘low-intensive’ and ‘high-intensive’ agriculture. Throughout the remainder of this thesis I use the terms ‘small-scale’ and large-scale’ for the two farmer groups in both Sweden and South Africa. It is however important to stress, that it is not simply the size of the farm, or the intensity of the agricultural production that determine the generation of ecosystem services in the various landscapes. Sociocultural-economic factors contribute greatly to shape the agricultural landscapes, such as economic and social capital, skills, policies and legislation, cultural preferences and lifestyle choices.
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa The study area is located in the Drakensberg mountain range, in the upper part of the Thukela River catchment, South Africa (figure 4:1, papers II and III) The mean annual precipitation ranges from around 550 millimetres per year in the lower valley regions, to 2000 millimetres per year in parts of the Drakensberg Mountains, with an altitude of 3000 meters above sea level (Lynch 2004). The region has two small towns, Bergville and Winterton, although the majority of the population is rural. The land is mainly used for commercial, privately owned agriculture with large crop fields and grazing areas, or traditional Zulu villages presenting a mosaic of small crop fields and communal grazing areas. Small-scale and large-scale farmers are situated right next to one another since generations back but are characterised by highly contrasting farming intensities, management practices, ethnic/cultural identity and socioeconomic position. The crop fields in the small-scale farming villages are typically sized around 0.5-2 hectares, lowyielding and rain fed (Kongo and Jewitt 2006, Sturdy et al. 2008, Salomon et al. 2013). Only family labour is used and farmers have very limited access to mechanised equipment. Some rotate and/or intercrop maize, beans and pumpkin varieties, and a few use no-till practices while most
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Figure 4. The case study areas. Pictures 1a) small-scale agricultural village, Upper Thukela region, 1b), c) large-scale irrigated crop lands next to small-scale farmers’ homesteads and crop land, Upper Thukela region, 1d) grazing land, Upper Thukela region. 2a), b) large-scale farms, Uppsala County, 2c), d) smallscale farms, Uppsala County. Photos by 1a) - d) R. Malinga. 2b), c) S. Cousins. 2a), c) Obtained from Google Earth.
practice conventional tillage using oxen (Kosgei et al. 2007). The communal grazing areas show clear evidence of land degradation related to soil erosion, gully formations, and overgrazing (Sonneveld et al. 2005, Kosgei and Jewitt 2006, Salomon et al. 2013). Mainly cattle are grazed in the communal grazing lands, with little restrictions or coordinated grazing management in place (Salomon 2011). These kinds of communal villages were evolved under the apartheid era where people were either forcefully allocated or prevented from moving or expanding due to land restrictions and racial segregation laws. There are still evident legacies of these discriminating processes in terms of land access, education levels, and the distribution of wealth, development opportunities and basic services, despite recent attempts by the government during the past two decades to amend the historical inequalities (Francis 2006, Thornton 2009, Smith et al. 2014). The large-scale farmers, distributed in the surroundings of the towns Bergville and Winterton, privately own several hundreds to thousands hectares of agricultural land, for crop and grazing. The presence of dams and irrigation systems provide opportunities for expanding the growing season through double cropping of summer and winter crops (Wesely 2010). The large-scale farmers’ crop lands are characterised by large fields, and high intensive, mechanised monoculture
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(Wilk et al. 2011). Most farmers follow similar application programs of artificial fertiliser and chemical pesticides and practice no-tillage techniques, typically rotating maize and soya, and often planting winter cover crops for soil improvement and winter grazing (Wilk et al. 2011). The grazing on the grazing lands is predominantly by cattle. Although large-scale farmers also battle with erodibility of the sloping grasslands and gully formations, management practices (e.g. rotation of grazing camps and fencing off gullies) are in place to minimise the land degradation (Wilk et al. 2011). The commercial farms are important sources of employment for surrounding communities, both in terms of permanent and seasonal employments. Many farms also have present and previous farm employees and their families residing within the farm boundaries.
Uppsala County, Sweden The study area is situated in south-central Sweden in Uppsala County (figure 4:2), an area with fairly homogeneous climate. Rainfall is higher during the summer months of the year (up to 60 millimetres per day), while less abundant in winter (up to 25 millimetres per day), accumulating around 530 millimetres per year. The large-scale farms (average 336 hectares) are located in the intensively managed agricultural area around Uppsala-Enköping-Västerås, and were selected among the 100 largest farms in that area. The small-scale farms (average 13 hectares) are situated on the Hållnäs peninsula and were selected among the 50 smallest farms around Hållnäs. The two farming systems mainly differ in the proportion of crop land (on average 6% within a 5 kilometre circle around farmhouses in the small-scale system compared to 44% around farmhouses in the large-scale system) and of forest (78-41% within 5 kilometres from farm houses) surrounding the farms (often, if not always, in part owned and managed by the same farmers) (paper IV). The geophysical conditions also differ in the region; the more forested, small-scale farming landscape in north-east is characterised by poorer, primarily sandy soils, while soils in the large-scale area in the south-west are dominated by richer clay soils, and with a flatter topography (Lindborg et al. 2008). Cereal production, primarily of wheat and barley, dominates the crop production in both these agricultural landscapes (Nykvist 2014). The vast majority of crop land and cultivated pastures in Sweden is rain fed (Eurostat 2012). Irrigation is carried out at a very small scale and often at trial levels (Rosenqvist et al. 1997). The agriculture in Sweden has undergone constant changes through history in terms of land use and political change (Saifi and Drake 2008, Slätmo 2014). The land surface used for agriculture has decreased after 1950, as well as the number of farms, while the farm sizes have increased during the same period of time (Saifi and Drake 2008). The two farming systems in paper IV represent two contrasting outcomes of this gradual change. Around Hållnäs (figure 4:2), population has decreased over the past decades, and the agricultural land uses have shifted towards mainly forest, and the traditional family-farming system has become more small-scale hobby farming in addition to other income sources (Stenseke et al. 2012). There has been a decline in agricultural land uses as well as population in the area over the past few decades (Stenseke et al. 2012, Slätmo 2014). Simultaneously, the Uppsala-Enköping-Västerås region (figure 4:2) is an increasingly urbanised area where agricultural management has intensified, and become more mechanised and specialised. The number of farm owners have declined, managing larger tracts of land than previously, while crop productivity has increased (Saifi and Drake 2008, Jaramillo et al. 2013)
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Swedish agriculture is controlled by regulations within the European Union, which through agroenvironmental subsidies schemes aims to diversify the agricultural landscapes. Diversification of the landscape is implemented by managing for biodiversity, conservation of cultural-historical land uses and artefacts, and reducing negative outcomes of the agricultural activities through for instance reduction of nutrient run-off, while increasing the profitability for European farmers. Agriculture in Sweden has experienced difficulties to compete on the globalised and increasingly specialised food market, related to issues such as expensive labour, strict environmental and animal husbandry laws, as well as climatic conditions which only allows short growing seasons (Björklund et al. 1999, Slätmo 2014). Thus, viability remains a challenge in the agricultural sector in Sweden (Saifi and Drake 2008).
Methods This thesis uses a multi-method approach, with a strong focus on field work and participatory methods, combined to capture several aspects of the social-ecological components comprising the agricultural landscapes. Throughout the thesis, I use both biophysical and social, primary and secondary data, stakeholder involvement, from local to regional level, expert assessments and global meta-data (see table 1 for overview). Tools for spatially explicit analyses of ecosystem services play an important role in land use planning and environmental policy (Burkhard et al. 2013, Reyers et al. 2013). Spatial scale is highly relevant to consider when assessing ecosystem services, as the distribution of ecosystem services is spatially dependent, vary among services, and the spatial units from which ecosystem services are generated differ (Bennett et al. 2009, Andersson et al. 2015, Raudsepp-Hearne and Peterson 2016). In Paper I I carried out a literature review, where I used a standardised literature search on ISI-Web of Knowledge to identify papers on ecosystem service mapping, using the terms “map” or “spatial distribution” or “spatial pattern” and “ecosystem services” or “ecosystem goods and services” or “ecological services”. Based upon this search, I selected only studies that (i) were performed within an ecosystem service framework, (ii) had a connection to a case study, (iii) included more than one services, (iv) were conducted in terrestrial systems, and (v) presented spatially explicit quantification of ecosystem services at a smaller scale than global. A total of 39 papers, which presented 47 different case studies, were then analysed in terms of what ecosystem services were mapped in the studies, where in the world they were based and at what spatial scale (size of the study area (spatial extent) and grain size (resolution)). Paper II used a similar method to compile a list of ecosystem services typically assessed in Southern African agricultural land uses (see paper II for details on search terms and selection criteria). Papers II, III and IV included the viewpoints from a wide range of stakeholders with various sets of knowledge, ranging from stakeholders with local, regional and global knowledge, i.e. indigenous, practitioners’ and scientific experts’ knowledge. Foremost, I included local farmers, who are the stakeholders with the most intimate knowledge and understanding of the lands they manage. I used three ways of including stakeholders in this theses: 1) through in-depth interviews with farmers and other informants (papers II, III and IV); 2) by eliciting expert opinion to prioritise among ecosystem services (paper II) and to evaluate spatial services generation (paper 19
III) and 3) by exploring interactive participatory methods (scenario planning in paper II and mapping exercises in paper III) (table 1). In paper II I applied an iterative participatory scenario planning approach (modified from Evans et al. 2006 and Enfors et al. 2008), with a broad range of stakeholders, to understand multiple perspectives of the past, present and future in the Upper Thukela region. The foci of the scenarios were the three largest user groups in the area, namely large-scale and small-scale farmers, and representatives from nature reserves. A series of interviews, workshops, focus group discussions and exercises resulted in three explorative and contrasting storylines (Equal environment, Diverging climate and Adaptive collaboration, see Appendix 3 in paper II), presenting internally consistent alternative futures in the year 2030, including both challenges and opportunities for all user groups. The storylines were analysed to estimate the potential change of ecosystem services by translating general social and ecological variations into the changeability of services (table 1 in paper II). This analysis generated a list of ranked services that were most prone to change across all three scenarios. Further, three lists of prioritised and ranked ecosystem services for the area were composed using experts and through a literature search. The four lists of identified and prioritised ecosystem services were compared in terms of similarity of identity, placement and number of services in the lists. The lists were also compared in terms of ecosystem service categories (provisioning, regulating and cultural) using the top-ten ranked services in all lists. Participatory mapping is a technique used to obtain high resolution land use data, direct discussions with the land users about management practices and where in the landscapes material and nonmaterial values are valued (Ryan 2011, Plieninger et al. 2013b, Sinare et al. 2016). In paper III, I carried out a participatory mapping exercise with the local farmers in the Upper Thukela region, South Africa, to capture the farmers’ understanding and perspectives on the supply and demand of ecosystem services. Open-ended interviews were conducted in combination with mapping exercises where the farmers used aerial photographs of their land holdings to mark out boundaries, land uses and land cover, management practices and places where 12 different ecosystem services were perceived to be produced, used, collected and appreciated. The farmers were also asked questions about farming methods, farm inheritance, farming skills and knowledge heritage, and their perspectives of the farmers’ role and responsibility in society. The spatial information was synthesised and processed into Graphic Information Systems (GIS) layers using QuantumGIS. Polygons were drawn for each farmer and each land use, crop lands and grazing lands, which were used for calculations of e.g. areas, slope and identification of soil types from available GIS layers. Based on published and unpublished data on soil characteristics from the study area, and information on management practices as indicated by the farmers, an expert based assessment was conducted in order to estimate the supply of an additional four ecosystem services. Information about the demand for the ecosystem services was extracted from in-depth interviews. The term ‘supply’ in paper III meant the production/use/appreciation of a service, and the term ‘demand’ was referred to as the farmers’ own demand for the same service, in order to identify gaps between supply and demand. The supply-demand relation was also analysed in terms of the capacity of the farmer groups to maintain the supply and meet their demand based on a combination of the condition of the land, socioeconomic and cultural factors (see paper III for detailed description of the analytical approach).
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In paper IV I further deepened the understanding of the complexity of ecosystem service supply and demand by testing another explorative approach in a second case study area, Uppsala County, Sweden. This case study also included small-scale and large-scale agriculture, although with less apparent differences in farm-size, farming intensity and socioeconomic prerequisites between the two farmer groups. Paper IV combined already existing, spatially explicit, published data on farmers’ values and perspectives (Nykvist 2014), and bird and plant surveys (Andersson and Lindborg 2014) that were collected within the same scientific program (Ekoklim). The supply and demand of 11 ecosystem services in two Swedish farming systems (high intensity and low intensity), were analysed at a near-house and landscape scale. Publically available data such as land use and statistical census information were also used. In total, 11 biophysical and 11 social indicators were identified to describe different dimensions of supply and demand of services. Here, ‘supply’ was expressed as the quantity of a service, and ‘demand’ as the value placed on the services by the farmers (see paper IV for detailed description of the analytical approach).
Paper I
Paper II
Biophysical data
Social data
Meta-data
Secondary data
Primary data
Participatory method
In-depth interview
Expert opinion
Regional stakeholders
Local stakeholders
Literature review
Table 1. Overview of methods, approaches and stakeholder groups used throughout the papers.
Paper III
Paper IV
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Results and discussion
Box 2. Synthesis of the results The main results from this thesis are summarised here, and presented in more detail and discussed in the subsequent section.
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The majority of mapped ecosystem services in current literature were regulating services (47%). Services were mostly mapped at intermediate scales (municipality and provincial level) and 66% of the studies used a fine resolution of 1 hectare or less (paper I).
Scenario planning added limited value for identifying relevant ecosystem services to assess in a changing agricultural landscape, but improved knowledge of the case study area, strengthened relationships with stakeholders, and triggered useful discussions with stakeholders on expectations and uncertainties of the future (paper II).
When stakeholders were involved in the process of selecting ecosystem services, more attention was given to cultural services, especially other cultural services than recreation and tourism (papers I and II).
There were clear differences between South African small-scale and large-scale agriculture in terms of both the supply of and the demand for ecosystem services, as well as the capacity of the farmer groups to maintain the supply of and meet their demand for the services (paper III).
There was a dominating shortfall of ecosystem service supply in relation to the demand for these services among small-scale farmers in South Africa, while large-scale farmers generally met their demand (paper III).
The supply and demand of ecosystem services in a comparison between small-scale and large-scale agriculture in Sweden differed between the farmer groups and showed complexity in the ways services were interpreted and perceived in different systems (paper IV).
The choice of indicators significantly altered the outcomes of ecosystem service quantification, and a multiple indicator approach improved the understanding of the dynamics of ecosystem service supply and demand in Swedish agricultural landscapes (paper IV).
A cross-case comparison showed that large-scale agriculture in Sweden and South Africa presented similar ecosystem service bundles, while small-scale agricultural systems differed in terms of ecosystem service generation (papers III and IV).
Comparing different agricultural landscapes There is an increasing pressure on agricultural landscapes to be multifunctional, in order to meet the demands for multiple ecosystem services from diverse stakeholders and interests (Rabbinge and Bindraban 2012). Multifunctional landscapes, however, often experience trade-offs that occur due to conflicting interests between beneficiaries, preferences and policies (Power 2010, Bennett et al. 2009, Smith et al. 2012, King et al. 2015). This illustrates the need for spatial tools that analyse the supply and demand of ecosystem services, to guide land use policy and decision making that can help balance these different goals. Papers III and IV, also emphasised by Andersson et al. (2015), stressed that that the supply and demand of ecosystem services are highly context-dependent, and more field data of the social and ecological dimensions of ecosystem services at relevant scales are required to fully understand these dynamics. In paper III I found that the supply of services in the small-scale farming areas were distributed more evenly between the two land uses (crop land and grazing land), than in the large-scale areas (figure 2 in paper III). Non-cultivated provisioning services (e.g. collection of wild foods, fire wood and building material) and some cultural services (e.g. cultural heritage, spiritual value and social relations) had higher importance for small-scale farmers. Recreation was appreciated only by the large-scale farmers, predominantly in the grazing lands, while social relations (meetings) and the collection of traditional medicines were carried out only by small-scale farmers. These results showed similar pattern to a study comparing collection of wild foods and traditional medicines in Russia, Ukraine and Sweden (Stryamets et al. 2015). They found that the dependence on these services were much higher among the respondents in the least developed rural areas of Russia and Ukraine than in Sweden, where the respondents, similar to the large-scale farmers in South Africa, occasionally collected these species (but a significantly smaller variety) for recreational purposes. Stryamets et al. (2015), like paper III, showed that economic development influences the consumption of wild foods and medicine, and shifts those activities from survival and livelihoods to recreation. The same service may thus result in different kinds of benefits to different users, depending on the sociocultural-economic context (Daw et al. 2011). There were also clear differences between the two farmer groups in terms of supply, demand and the capacity of the farmers to influence ecosystem service generation within their landscapes (figure 5, paper III). The large-scale farmers generally produced food to meet their own demands (i.e. demands for the service food production as an income-generating benefit) (figure 5b), and had management practices in place to mitigate land degradation and erosion. The food production at the commercial farms thus cater to the demand of other beneficiaries elsewhere, while also providing opportunities for employment for others. On the contrary, small-scale farmers lacked the capacity to maintain the supply and meet their own demands (i.e. demands for the service food production as a benefit related to food security and nutrition) (figure 5a). These results showed that the significant shortage in agricultural production contributes significantly to poverty among the small-scale farmers, results in diversification of land uses and increases the dependence on common-resource ecosystem services. The high demand for these services contributes to land degradation which further aggravates poverty and vulnerability. Both landscape types have the potential to become more multifunctional, while a multitude of external and internal factors pose challenges to both farmer groups to develop strong-founded multifunctionality and sustainable agriculture. Paper III
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Figure 5. Comparison between a) small-scale and b) large-scale agricultural landscapes (crop land and grazing land combined) in terms of the supply of 16 ecosystem services (low, medium high, x-axis), the demand thereof (low, medium high, y-axis) and the capacity of the farmer groups to maintain the supply and meet the demand (colour of the box: low=dark red, medium=pink and high=light pink) (from paper III).
further discusses the various factors that hamper multifunctionality within the two kinds of landscapes. Paper IV identified multiple, biophysical and social, indicators to quantify the ecosystem services. All services, except water availability, could be described by multiple indicators. Some indicators could address multiple ecosystem services, e.g. open landscape, which described pollination, biodiversity, nutrient retention and aesthetic experience. Additionally, some indicators could refer to both supply and demand of a certain service, such as cultural heritage elements. This approach highlighted the complexity in the relationship between supply and demand of services, and showed, in congruence with a study by Martín-López et al. (2014) that the outcomes of an ecosystem service assessment is likely to differ with the chosen indicators (table 2 in paper IV). Martín-Lopéz et al (2014) found that biophysical, social and monetary indicators for the same services gave different results, and highlighted the need to develop methods to systematically combine different kinds of indicators. The supply of and demand for many ecosystem services differed between the farmer groups also in Sweden, especially on the demand dimension (figure 2 in paper IV). Examples are crop production which is, not surprisingly, higher in the large-scale areas while timber production is higher in the more forested small-scale areas. Like paper III, paper IV also found mismatches between the supply and demand of services when comparing small-scale and large-scale farmers, although not showing as clear patters as paper III. This mismatch was most clearly shown in the services recreation, biodiversity, aesthetic experience, farmer identity and cultural heritage. For 24
example, there was no significant differences in biodiversity (in terms of species richness and number of red-listed species) between the small-scale and large-scale systems, which is a result that goes against literature suggesting that production-oriented agriculture holds less biodiversity (Stoate et al. 2009, Tcharntke et al. 2012). At the same time, biodiversity was valued higher among small-scale farmers. Rather than of value, legislation to protect biodiversity was considered to limit management options by large-scale farmers. The aesthetic values connected to the indicator ‘open landscape’ were expressed to a larger degree by small-scale farmers in the more forested areas, than by the large-scale farmers, who live in a more open landscape, which is congruent with other studies on farmer perception (Stenseke 2009). This shows that ecosystem services can be perceived in various ways and the appreciation of a service can be contextualised differently between different groups (Daw et al. 2011).
Cross-case comparison of ecosystem service supply In order to compare patterns of ecosystem service supply in small-scale and large-scale agriculture between the two study areas (Upper Thukela region, South Africa, paper III, and Uppsala County, Sweden, paper IV) I used flower diagrams to visualise the supply of six ecosystem services (crop production, recreation, cultural heritage, aesthetic values, nutrient retention and water availability) that had been assessed in both study areas (figure 6). The ecosystem service flowers representing the Swedish and the South African large-scale farming systems were highly similar, with overall high levels of all services except cultural heritage, which is a pattern that may be typical for many large-scale agricultural systems across the globe (Daugstad et al. 2006). In contrast, the similarities between the small-scale farmers were not as strong. They shared relatively low levels of crop production and nutrient retention, but other than that they differed. Water availability was high in the Swedish system, based on rainfall and the general hydroclimate, and in the South African largescale agricultural lands, where the farmers have access to irrigation. Although the rainfall in the South African site is fairly similar between small-scale and large-scale areas, the condition of the small-scale farmers’ lands, erosion, farming methods, and absence of irrigation technology means that the water availability for small-holder farmers was low. Irrespective of agricultural systems, the farmers attributed high values to the aesthetics of their lands. This probably reflects the general expression from the vast majority of the farmers in the interviews that farming is a passion, a choice of life and that the landscapes shaped by the farming culture is in accordance with the farmers’ preferences. Recreation, an ecosystem service that is often associated with agricultural landscapes (Swinton et al. 2007, Pinto-Correia et al. 2013), was also shown to be highly connected to lifestyle and culture. Recreational activities were widely carried out among the large-scale farmers in South Africa, and in both Swedish farming systems. Recreation opportunities were high in these systems, and expressed as important, especially among the Swedish small-scale farmers. Small-scale farmers in South Africa however expressed a lack of interest in recreational activities as those are not part of their way of life. The general similarity between the large-scale bundles and the dissimilarity between the small-scale bundles indicates that as the farm size and intensity increase, the variability of ecosystem service bundles decreases. This can be because factors such as climate and biophysical preconditions become less critical for intensive agriculture, at least in the shorter term, due to increased inputs, e.g. artificial nutrients, chemical pest control and largescale irrigation, that are aimed at ‘mimicking’ the ecological processes on which farming relies (Rist et al. 2014). On the other end of the intensity continuum (Rist et al. 2014), small-scale
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Figure 6. The supply of six ecosystem services in contrasting agricultural landscapes from two different case study areas. 1a) South African small-scale agriculture (average farm size 2 ha), 1b) South-African large-scale agriculture (average farm size 1600 ha), 2a) Swedish small-scale agriculture (average farm size 13 ha), 2b) South African large-scale agriculture (average farm size 336 ha). The supply of each service was normalised for the study areas separately, where each of the six flower petals represented one ecosystem service. The length of the axes across the flower petals represent the maximum value, and were calculated differently for each study area (see Appendix 1 for a more detailed description of data handling and analysis).
systems with less anthropogenic inputs, are shaped more by a diversity of sociocultural-economic and biophysical-climatic factors. The small-scale systems are thus likely to have more distinct context-dependent sets of drivers and types of values influencing the ecosystem service generation. The small-scale systems in this comparison are largely shaped by the lifestyle choices of the farmers in Sweden, and by the poverty of farmers in South Africa.
Mapping and assessing ecosystem services The concept of ecosystem services has gained increasing attention from science and policy in the last decades leading to remarkable development of methods to assess and spatially map ecosystem services (Seppelt et al. 2011, Burkhard et al. 2013). However, knowledge gaps and methodological challenges persist, which hamper the implementation of the ecosystem service concept into practice. In the following sections I address some of these gaps and challenges and relate them to the findings of the four papers: the aspect of spatial scale in ecosystem service mapping, methods for selecting and prioritizing among ecosystem services, and lastly stakeholder participation in ecosystem service assessments. 26
Mapping ecosystem services at relevant scales The literature review in paper I was based on 47 studies from 39 papers, which mapped in total 300 ecosystem service entries. The analysis found that the 47 mapping studies were fairly well distributed across the world, and took place at six different continents and in 22 different countries (figure 1 in paper I). As highlighted also by other authors (Lavorel et al. 2011, Egoh et al. 2012, Martínez-Harms and Balvanera 2012), paper I showed that local scale ecosystem service mapping were scarce. Most common, in 35 of the 47 studies, was mapping at intermediate scales (municipality or provincial), and only two studies mapped ecosystem services at local scale (village/farm) (figure 3 in paper I). The fact that most studies on multiple ecosystem service generation are performed at larger scales has been raised as a concern with regards to land use policy being informed by predominantly large-scale assessments (Fischer et al. 2008). However, while studies at a local scale were most lacking, most of the mapping studies in the review (66%) used the grain size of 1 hectare or smaller, meaning that these studies can potentially still provide meaningful insights into land use planning. On the other hand, ecosystem services are most commonly quantified and mapped using land use proxies, which can lead to errors when it does not account for spatial variability in different landscape variables (e.g. soils, slope, vegetation) (Eigenbrod et al. 2010). Further, as much as 17% of the studies in the literature review lacked information on the resolution. In order to capture the fine-scale spatial dynamics to adequately inform local management decisions and landscape planning for multiple ecosystem services, methods for fine-scale mapping, such as presented by papers III and IV, need to be developed.
Selecting ecosystem services While the process of selecting services for an ecosystem service assessment is highly important (Seppelt et al. 2011), there is no standardised way of doing this. Ecosystem service studies list various criteria for selecting services, such as literature reviews (Anderson et al. 2009), data availability (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2010, Queiroz et al. 2015), case-specific needs, issues, and trends (Fisher et al. 2011), local and national policy goals (Wendland et al. 2010, Fisher et al. 2011), representation of ecosystem service categories (Posthumus et al. 2010, Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2010, Queiroz et al. 2015), and integrated knowledge of stakeholders (Reyers et al. 2009, O'Farrell et al. 2010, Willaarts et al. 2012). The selection approach and criteria that influence the service selection will thus affect the outcome and application of the assessment. Paper II tested different ways of selecting ecosystem services for an assessment and showed that using participatory scenario planning gave very similar lists of prioritised services as consulting experts with experience in working in the study area. Paper II also reviewed literature as a method to select services, and this resulted in a list of services that was noticeably different from the other methods using experts and stakeholder participation to select services, especially in terms of fewer cultural services (figure 5 in paper II). This result was echoed by unpublished data from paper I, which further showed that in 10 out of 39 papers, stakeholders were involved in the process of selecting ecosystem services, and in these papers, a more diverse set of cultural services were prioritised. Recreation and tourism, cultural heritage, aesthetic value and nature inspiration had almost equal priority in these 10 studies as opposed to the rest of the papers, which had 72% of the cultural services covering only recreation and tourism.
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Ecosystem service categories Paper I and other literature reviews (Egoh et al 2012, Martínez-Harms and Balvanera 2012) found that regulating ecosystem services were the services most commonly mapped compared to other categories. Several ecosystem service authors highlight the importance of including cultural ecosystem services in ecosystem service assessments (Daniel et al. 2012, van Berkel and Verburg 2014, Plieninger et al. 2015), and some stress that cultural ecosystem services are overlooked (Schaich et al. 2010, Plieninger et al. 2013b). Paper I showed that 47% of the 300 mapped ecosystem service entries were regulating services, 24% provisioning, 19% cultural and 10% supporting. Unpublished data from the literature review in paper I, showed that a majority of the papers (69%) included at least one cultural service. Although cultural services were not underrepresented compared to provisioning and supporting services, there was a clear bias towards tourism and recreation within the mapped cultural services (figure 4 in paper I). Also, only 9 of the 39 papers included two or more cultural services. This probably reflects the shortage of applicable methods to quantify many of the cultural services that are of obvious importance for human well-being (Seppelt et al. 2011, Plieninger et al. 2013b). Lack of available spatially explicit data may be one of the major reasons for not including a wider range of cultural services, given that many of the mapping studies mention availability of data as a requirement when selecting services to map (e.g. Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2010, Rogers et al. 2010, Queiroz et al. 2015). Ways of including a more balanced set of ecosystem services, accounting also for the less tangible and possibly irreplaceable values, are hence needed. Even though cultural ecosystem services are increasingly included in ecosystem service research, the incorporation of cultural ecosystem services into policy and practice, both at local, regional and national levels, is less developed (Axelsson et al. 2013, Sitas et al. 2014).
Stakeholder participation These results illustrate the importance of involving stakeholders in the process of selecting and prioritizing among services, which can lead to a more diverse set of services (paper II) and broaden the choices of cultural services (paper I). The ecosystem service concept has been proven challenging to implement into practice (Sitas et al. 2014). Land use policy and landscape planning targeting ecosystem services that have been prioritised through participatory methods with a wide range of beneficiaries can thus potentially be received better by the broader public (Seppelt et al. 2011). The integration of various stakeholders’ knowledge and participatory methods in this thesis were aimed at both widening and specializing the understanding of the people, ecosystems and ecosystem services in the study areas. Participatory mapping was useful in order to engage with the farmers to obtain local knowledge associated with the farmers’ land holdings, management practices, crop varieties, and local species and ecosystems (Plieninger et al. 2013b, Sinare et al. 2016, paper III). The regional stakeholders, such as practitioners and officials from local organizations, shared their perspectives of recent history, state and trends in the area, having a broad knowledge of local and regional policy and the implementation thereof. Scientific experts from across the world, both with or without direct experience from the study area, helped to place the local and regional knowledge into a scientific context, anchored both to the local circumstances and to global scientific relevance (papers II and III). Although being a resource demanding method, participatory scenario planning (paper II) proved to be particularly useful for the project by enabling dynamic discussions with both local and regional stakeholders of the area, and improving the understanding of the diversity of perspectives by the people who face future 28
challenges and opportunities in a changing world (Peterson 2007, Enfors et al. 2008). The process helped establishing trust and contacts with the local stakeholders and provided a platform for sharing ideas and expectations, which is crucial when carrying out research with stakeholders, here farmers, and at farmer’s lands (Nicholas and Hinckley 2011). The result from paper II further inspired the planning of the subsequent participatory mapping exercise and assisted in prioritizing among ecosystem services (paper III). The use of participatory methods in this thesis increased the understanding of values and perspectives of ecosystem services, which biophysical data would not have captured, especially regarding the demand dimension of ecosystem services which is connected to people’s personal perceptions and reflections (Costanza et al. 2007, HernándezMorcillo et al. 2013, papers III and IV). Papers III and IV further revealed important dynamics of the social-ecological nature of ecosystem services, and showed the diversity of ways in which ecosystem services can be produced, used, valued and perceived, even within a relatively narrow selection of beneficiaries.
Reflections on the empirical approach and ways forward In this thesis I used multiple methods from different disciplines and I also developed new integrated analytic approaches. I combined local and scientific knowledge through stakeholder participation and expert assessment. The development and implementation of transdisciplinary approaches, both within research and policy, however come with challenges (Lang et al. 2012, Angelstam et al. 2013, Brandt et al. 2013). Amongst these challenges are: integrating methods from different disciplines (Bryman 2006), and integrating different knowledge systems (Chalmers and Fabricius 2007, Tengö et al. 2014). Here follows a reflection on the approaches used in this thesis, and how the methods can be advanced to address new research questions that have emerged from this thesis. During the scenario planning approach (paper II) the aim was to integrate the perceptions of the local stakeholders with regional stakeholders and scientific experts, to develop scenarios on future regional development. This proved to be challenging as some of the viewpoints were conflicting, both between and within groups of stakeholders. Through iteration and by validating the plausibility and relevance of the storylines with all stakeholder groups, I was positive that the perceptions of the stakeholder groups were sufficiently balanced. Future studies integrating knowledge from a wide range of stakeholders and knowledge systems could benefit from a thorough analysis of the analogous and conflicting perceptions and opinions that arise. This could help emphasizing where and how the knowledge systems can add value to one another (MartínLópez et al. 2014, Tengö et al. 2014, Gaspare et al. 2015). Papers III and IV combined biophysical and social data to quantify the supply and demand of ecosystem services. The papers gained knowledge through in-depth interviews with farmers related to their values and perceptions of services as well as management practices and strategies to deal with various constraints. While the interviews contributed significantly to the understanding of ecosystem services, in particular related to the demand of services, a potential development of this approach could be a more systematic socio-cultural value survey among a larger number of stakeholders (Martín-López et al. 2014), and ranking exercises (López-Marrero 29
and Hermansen-Báez 2011). This could increase the understanding on the perceived relative importance of ecosystem services within different stakeholder groups. The cross-case comparison between the case studies in South Africa (paper III) and Sweden (paper IV) revealed intriguing patterns suggesting that ecosystem service bundles generated in large-scale agricultural systems are more similar than the bundles generated in small-scale systems (figure 6). However, there are limitations to what conclusions can be drawn from these relatively small data sets, and because different methods were used to quantify the services in the two studies. One way to improve possibilities for cross-comparison is to develop a more robust spatial analysis approach, with solid and well-described datasets including both social and biophysical, sitespecific data at relevant scales. Some questions that arise from figure 6 are: How would the ecosystem services bundles appear if other/more services were included? How would the bundles be shaped if other/more indicators were used? To address these questions, a more thorough multiple-indicator approach is needed, including a wider range of ecosystem services. Paper IV emphasised that the choice of indicators can have significant effect on the results, which could be explored further by depicting ‘sub-petals’ for each indicator. Another question relevant to explore further is: What are the social-ecological factors behind the shapes of the bundles? In this thesis I discuss that the similar bundles between the large-scale farmers in Sweden and South Africa can be related to specialised and mechanised agriculture where anthropogenic inputs reduce the importance of the natural biophysical conditions, and that the small-scale farms are likely to have a wider range of context-dependent drivers leading to more variable ecosystem service bundles. However, by adopting an approach similar to Meacham et al. (2016), the social-ecological drivers behind ecosystem service bundling can be further analysed and understood. Moreover, the analysis could be strengthened by including a spectra of farm sizes and farming intensities, such as presented by Rist et al (2014), ranging from natural to anthropogenic inputs to production systems. While papers III and IV provide important contributions to further understanding of the complex relationships between the supply of and demand for ecosystem services, the flower diagrams in figure 6 however only include the supply aspect. In order to identify insufficient supply in relation to demand, a future analysis building on the results from this thesis could thus further be layered with the demand for the services. This could help guiding management towards reducing these gaps and increasing multifunctionality.
On a personal note How can the gaps we see between the supply of and the demand for ecosystem services in areas like the small-scale farming villages in the Drakensberg be reduced? How can Alan Paton’s feared degradation of grasslands unable to keep and guard humanity, as described in the introduction of this thesis, be avoided? What is needed to make the high producing agriculture in the world productive also in the long-term? My hope is that this thesis will inspire others to further explore the diverse field of ecosystem services and the stimulating topic of agricultural landscapes. There is so much more to learn about farming and farmers! Only by joint efforts we can gain the knowledge we need to improve the sustainability of agricultural landscapes and secure a long-term provision of the multiple ecosystem services on which we depend.
30
Conclusions
In this thesis I use and develop local scale, transdisciplinary and participatory methods that will deepen the understanding of how multiple ecosystem services in different agricultural landscapes are generated. The results indicate that all agricultural systems present multifunctionality to a varying degree. The large-scale systems display similar ecosystem service bundles, while the small-scale systems differ. This diversity is driven by the substantially different social-economic contexts of these systems. The small-scale system with high levels of poverty underperforms in terms of many ecosystem services compared to all the other systems. This illustrates that we need to tackle poverty in order to ensure better performing landscapes. The thesis also provides new insights into the complex relationships between supply and demand, and highlights the need to understand both the biophysical and social dimensions of ecosystem services to sustainably manage agricultural landscapes for multifunctionality. For example, the results show clear differences between South African small-scale and large-scale agriculture in terms of the capacity to maintain the supply and meet their demand, for almost all services (from provisioning to regulating and cultural). The small-scale farmers struggle to meet their demand for services while large-scale farmers generally produce from their lands in accordance with their demands. The thesis looks at the role that stakeholder inclusion has in understanding ecosystem services. It shows that a diverse set of beneficiaries and users, is likely to diversify the prioritised ecosystem services included in an assessment, as well as to capture broader perspectives of how the services are analysed. For example, when stakeholders were involved in the process of selecting ecosystem services, more attention was given to cultural services, especially other cultural services than recreation and tourism. The thesis also illustrates that participatory approaches such as scenario planning and mapping exercises can facilitate bringing some of these perspectives into scientific knowledge. The thesis also reflects on the transdisciplinary methods needed to perform ecosystem services analyses and it shows that multiple indicators are needed to increase the understanding of the social-ecological nature of ecosystem services. The results highlight that the choice of indicators can significantly alter the outcomes of ecosystem service quantification illustrating that indicators must be carefully selected. There is a need to combine qualitative and quantitative data at different scales (such as farm- and landscape-level) to better understand the fine-scale dynamics of ecosystem services bundles. This will lead to better management of multiple interacting ecosystem services and planning for increased multifunctionality.
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Sammanfattning
Mänskligheten står inför utmaningen att på ett hållbart sätt producera mat till en växande befolkning utan att ytterligare skada världens ekosystem. Förändringen av livsmiljöer och ekosystem till jordbruksmark har möjliggjort civilisationens utveckling, men har också lett till markförstörelse och förlorad biologisk mångfald, vilket i sin tur idag hotar grunden till de många ekosystemtjänster vi männniskor är beroende av. Ekosystemtjänster är det som gynnar samhället genom vårt förvaltande, användande och uppskattande av ekosystemen. Ekosystemtjänsterna bidrar till och förbättrar vårt välbefinnande och våra livsvillkor på olika sätt, till exempel genom livsmedel, dricksvatten och material till hus, möbler och kläder, eller genom vatten- och luftrening, näringstillförsel och pollinering, samt möjligheter till rekreation, naturupplevelser, hälsa och inspiration. För att kunna förvalta våra jordbrukslandskap mot en förbättrad och mer hållbar markanvändning, där ekosystemtjänster står i fokus, behövs en bättre förståelse för hur olika ekosystemtjänster relaterar till varandra, hur de kan samspela eller motverka varandra under olika typer av förvaltning och skötsel av ett landskap. Ett exempel är när delar av odlingsmarken avsätts till naturmark, vilket kan bidra till ökad biologisk mångfald, begränsat näringsläckage samt nya livsmiljöer för arter som behövs vid pollinering och naturlig skadedjurbekämpning, medan det medför begränsad yta för odling. Vi behöver också mer kunskap om på vilka rumsliga skalor olika tjänster tillhandahålls, används och interagerar. För detta krävs att tvärvetenskapliga metoder och verktyg utvecklas vidare, för att kunna reda ut de komplexa förhållandena mellan tillgång och efterfrågan av olika ekosystemtjänster. En viktig komponent i arbetet med hållbar utveckling är att bättre integrera kunskapen som besitts av olika slags aktörer utanför den akademiska världen. Det är därför betydelsefullt att använda sig av deltagandemetoder i den här typen av forskning. Den här avhandlingen utforskar jordbrukslandskap som komplexa social-ekologiska system, det vill säga system där sociala och ekologiska drivkrafter samspelar och påverkar varandra och därför inte kan hanteras som antingen sociala eller ekologiska system. För att studera uppkomsten av ekosystemtjänster från olika typer av jordbrukslandskap och undersöka dessa tjänsters socialekologiska dynamik används i avhandlingen flera olika metoder. Mer specifikt diskuterar avhandlingen betydelsen av rumslig skala i studier av ekosystemtjänster, utforskar landskapsförändringar, integrerar den akademiska kunskapen med kunskap från andra aktörer i samhället, samt utvecklar verktyg för att bättre förstå de dynamiska förhållandena mellan tillgång och efterfrågan av flera samspelande ekosystemtjänster. Artikel I presenterar en systematisk översikt av studier där ekosystemtjänster kvanitfierats och hur dessa studier förhåller sig till rumslig skala. Artikeln fann att tjänster vanligtvis kvantifierades på intermediära skalor (på kommun- och provinsnivå), och sällan på lokal skala (gårds-/bynivå). Det behövs därför mer platsspecifik kvantifiering av ekosystemtjänster på lokal skala för att förstå
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finskaliga dynamiker hos ekosystemtjänster, vilket är nödvändigt för en hållbar landskapsförvaltning. För att utforska framtidens möjligheter och utmaningar i ett jordbruksdominerat område i Övre Thukela-regionen i Sydafrika, utvecklade artikel II alternativa framtidsscenarier. Detta gjordes genom en deltagandeprocess för scenarieutveckling, där jordbrukare, representanter från lokala organisationer och myndigheter, samt forskare deltog. Ett av syftena med studien var att jämföra olika metoder för att välja ut och prioritera mellan relevanta ekosystemtjänster för fördjupade analyser. Det visade sig att processen där scenarier utvecklades gav ett liknande urval av tjänster som den metod som tillfrågade en grupp experter verksamma inom studieområdet. Samtidigt bidrog scenarieprocessen till att skapa kontakter och ett ömsesidigt förtroende mellan forskargruppen och de olika aktörerna, samt tillförde ovärderlig kunskap om studieområdets social-ekologiska dynamik. Artikel I och II visar att deltagandetekniker kan medföra prioritering av ett bredare urval av ekosystemtjänster och att fler icke-materiella ekosystemtjänster, så som kulturarv och spirituella värden, ges större betydelse. Detta kan bidra till en landskapsförvaltning som tar hänsyn till en större mångfald av aktörer. Artikel III och IV kombinerade information om de sociala och ekologiska aspekterna av ekosystemtjänster för att studera tillgång och efterfrågan av tjänster på gårds- och landskapsnivå. Artikel III använde sig av djupintervjuer, deltagande kvantifieringstekniker samt expertutlåtande i Övre Thukela-regionen i Sydafrika. I artikel IV användes djupintervjuer och tidigare publicerade biofysiska/ekologiska undersökningar i Uppsala Län i Sverige. I båda studieområderna jämfördes småskaliga och storskaliga jordbruksområden, där stor vikt lades vid jordbrukarnas kunskaper, erfarenheter och perspektiv. Båda studierna visar tydliga skillnader mellan de småskaliga och storskaliga jordbruken, både gällande tillgång och efterfrågan av ekosystem-tjänster. Artikel III visar även att den förmåga jordbrukarna har att påverka uppkomsten av tjänster i sina jordbrukslandskap skiljer sig avsevärt. De storskaliga bönderna förvaltar sina jordbruks-landskap på sådant sätt att det svarar mot deras efterfrågan av tjänster. Däremot är jordbruksproduktionen så pass låg, och fattigdomen så pass utbredd, bland de småskaliga bönderna, att deras efterfrågan av ekosystemtjänster kraftig överstiger det utbud av tjänster som tillhandahålls inom deras områden. Artikel IV befäster vidare vikten av att använda flera indikatorer och kombinera social och biofysisk/ekologisk information för att kvantifiera och undersöka ekosystemtjänsternas komplexa och social-ekologiska natur. Genom att använda resultaten från artikel III och IV, möjliggjordes en jämförelse också mellan de två studieområdena, med avseende på de sammankopplade ”knippen” av ekosystemtjänster som tillhandahålls inom de småskaliga och storskaliga jordbruksområdena i Sydafrika och Sverige. Analysen visar att de ekosystemtjänstknippen som generas i de storskaliga jordbrukssystemen är relativt lika. De båda storskaliga systemen visar på höga nivåer av bland annat produktion av grödor, kontroll mot näringsläckage, vattentillgång och rekreationsmöjligheter men lägre kulturhistoriska värden. De båda småskaliga jordbruken har betydligt lägre produktion av grödor, högre kulturhistoriska värden, men i övrigt genererade de olika ekosystemtjänstknippen. Dessa skillnader och likheter mellan och inom studieområderna beror på den mängd olika sociala och ekologiska drivkrafter som påverkar hur jordbruksmarkerna fungerar i kombination med hur de 39
olika grupperna av jordbrukare förvaltar sina landskap. För att förstå komplexiteten i de kombinerade drivkrafterna i respektive område behövs mer tvärvetenskaplig forskning. Den här avhandlingen bidrar med en fördjupad kunskap om den komplexa social-ekologiska dynamiken som påverkar uppkomsten av ekosystemtjänster på gårds- och landskapsnivå, och belyser betydelsen av att integrera kunskaper och perspektiv från olika grupper av aktörer. Genom att kombinera olika metoder samt utveckla nya verktyg för att studera ekosystemtjänster bidrar reslutaten i den här avhandlingen till en utveckling mot ett mer hållbart globalt jordbruk.
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Isifingqo
ISintu sibhekene nezinqginamba eziningi zokuzikhiqizela ukudla okwanele ukondla inani labantu elikhuphuka minyaka yonke, bebe beqikelelela ukungaqhubeki behlukumeza futhi bebulala imvelo. Ukuguqulwa kwezinto zemvelo zenziwe imkhiqizo yezolimo kunikeze isintu amathuba empucuzeko kanti futhi kuholele ekumoshekeni nasekugugulekeni komhlaba kanye nokufa kwezilwanyazane ezibalulekile kwimvelo, lokhu kusongela ukukhiqizeka kwezinzuzo eziningi zemvelo esincike kuzo. Izinzuzo zemvelo yizo esizithola ngokusebenzisa, ukunakekela kanye nokuhlonipha imvelo. Lezizinzuzo zibamba elikhulu iqhaza ezimpilweni zethu, ikakhulukazi ekudleni, amanzi okuphuza, ukuhlanza umoya kanye namanzi, okokubasa, okokwakha izindlu, imisoco enhlabathini, izindawo zokungcebeleka kanye nokunye okuningi. Ukuze sikwazi ukunakekela umhlaba wethu ngendlela ephephile futhi sikhiqize kuwo isikhathi eside ngokugxila kwizinzuzo zemvelo, sidinga ukuqonda kabanzi ngendlela lezizinzuzo ezisabela ngazo kwimpatho ehlukahlukene. Isibonelo salokhu kungaba ukushiya iziqaba ezinde phakathi kwamasimu lapho izimila zemvelo zizozikhulela khona, lokhu kungandisa ukuphila ndawonye kwezilwanyazane ezehlukene, kwehlise ukuguguleka komsoco wenhlabathi, kwandise nezilwanyazane ezingabangani bemvelo, yize kuzonciphisa nendawo yokulima. Lokhu kubandakanya nesidingo sokuqhamuka nezinsiza kusebenza ezikwazi ukuqinisekisa ubudlelwano phakathi kwazo zonke izinzuzo zemvelo. Ngokwesibonelo ukubheka ukuthi yiziphi izinzuzo ezikhona kanti futhi yiziphi esizidingayo. Enye yezingxenye ezibalulekile kucwaningo olubheka impilonde wukuqokelela nolwazi lwabanye abantu abangayona ingxenye yezemfundo, ngaleyondlela kubalulekile ukusebenzisa izindlela ezibandakanya wonke umuntu. Lomqulu womphumela wocwaningo uqukethe izihloko ezijulile ezithinta ubudlelwane obukhona phakathi kwemvelo kanye nokuphila, okuchaza izindlela eziningi ngokubaluleka kokuqiniswa kobudlelwane phakathi kwemvelo nokuphila. Lomqulu uyinhlanganisela yezindlela ezingasetshenziswa ukuhlolisisa ubume bezindawo ngenhloso yokuzigcina zisesimweni esamukelekile ngokwemigomo yezemvelo, luphinde luhlanganise umhlahlandlela wezinsizakwenza zokucwaninga ukwenzeka kwezinto ngokucoshela ulwazi lwabathintekayo. Isigaba sokuqala socwaningo sigxile ekufundeni imibhalo ngezinzuzo zemvelo ukuze kwakheke isithombe esibanzi, okutholakele kulokhukufundwa kwemibhalo ukuthi luncane kakhulu ucwaningo oselwenziwe oluthinta lobudlelwano ezindaweni zasemakhaya kanye nezindawo ezibekelwe ukulinywa. Isigaba sesibili sokufundwa kwemibhalo sigxile ekuhlaziyeni amathuba okungenzeka abekhona kanye nezinselelo ezikhona ngaphansi komkhandlu weSifunda uThukela iNingizumu Afrika. Lokhu kwenziwe ngokuqamba izigameko nokuyilapho abalimi, nabacwaningi, nabamele izinhlangano ezizimele, kanye noMasipala bebambe iqhaza kucwaningo. Umbhalo wesibili uqhathanise izindlela zokuhlonza kanye nokukhetha izihloko ezihamba phambili kwezokuhlolwa kwezemvelo. Ukusetshenziswa kwezigameko kube nomphumela wokubalulwa kwezihloko eziseqhulwini ngokuxoxisana nezinzululwazi endaweni yocwaningo. 41
Lendlela yokwenza isize kakhulu ukwakha nokuqinisa ubudlelwane nabalimi bendawo nokusiza ukuqhubezela phambili izingxoxo nabathintekayo. Isigaba sesithathu nesesine sihlanganise ukucwaninga uhwebelwano olukhona phakathi kwezemvelo nenhlalo nokuqoqa ulwazi ezindaweni ezilinywayo. Kusona isigaba sesithathu kusetshenziswe imibuzo-ngxoxo ejulile, ukudwetshwa kwebalazwe ngokuhlanganyela kanye nokuxhumana nezinzululwazi ngaphansi komkhandlu wasoThukela. Kwisigaba sesine kugxilwe ekucwaningeni ngokwenzeka eUppsala County eSweden. Zombili lezigaba zihlanganise abalimi abasakhula kanye nalabo abahwebayo ngoba ulwazi nezimvo zabo zibalulekile kakhulu, okutholakele ukuthi kukhona umehluko phakathi kwamaqembu abalimi ngokohwebelwano. Esigabeni sesithathu kutholakale ukuthi kunokwehlukana ngolwazi lwemihlomulo etholakala kwezemvelo ngokuhlukana kwamazinga abalimi. Abalimi abahwebayo/abakhulu bona bayaqaphela indlela abasebenzisa ngayo umhlaba ukuze nabo ubabuyisele inzuzo. Kanti abalimi abasakhula bona umkhiqizo wabo mncane, lokhu okudlondlobalisa ububha nokugcina sekudala ingcindezi enkulu kumhlaba. Ngokusebenzisa imiphumela evela esigabeni sesithathu kanye nesesine amazwe amabili okucwaningwe kuwo, iNingizumu Afrika kanye neSweden angaqhathaniswa ngokwamaqoqo ezinzuzo zemvelo akhiqizwe ngabalimi abancane basemakhaya kanye nabakhulu basemaplazini. Loluqhathaniso lukhombise ukuthi lamaqoqo ezinzuzo zemvelo awehlukile kakhulu kubalimi abakhulu. Abalimi abakhulu eNingizimu Afrika kanye naseSweden babanomkhiqizo omningi, ukwehla kokuguguleka komsoco enhlabathini, banamanzi kanye nezokungcebeleka kodwa bayaxega ngasekuhlonipheni amasiko. Abalimi abancane bona babanemikhiqhizo emincane kodwa bakhombisa amazinga aphezulu okuhlonipha amasiko kuwo omabili amazwe, ngaphandle kwalokhu okubalwe ngenhla amaqoqo ezinzuzo zemvelo zabo akhomba ukwahlukana okukhulu. Lokwefana kanye nomehluko phakathi kwamazwe amabili aqhathaniswayo kuncike kwizindlela zenhlalo kanye nemvelo okuyikona okunquma ukuthi umhlaba wokulima usetshenziswa kanjani kubandakanya nokuziphatha kwalesosigaba sabalimi. Ukuze siqonde ngokuphelele ukuthi iziphi izimbangela zemiphumela yalolucwaningo kundingeka olunye olunzulu olubandakanya izinhlaka ezahlukene. Lomqulu unikeza ulwazi olusha ekukhiqizweni kwezinzuzo zemvelo ngokwenhlalo uma kubukelwa eduze njengaseplazini kanye nasemiphakathini. Lomqulu futhi uphinda ukhombise ukubaluleka kokuhlanganisa ulwazi lwezinhlaka ezahlukene. Ngokuhlanganisa amasu ahlukahlukene kanye nokuqhamuka nezindlela zokuqonda kangcono ukukhiqizwa nokusetshenziswa kwezinzuzo zemvelo. Lomqulu uphonsa esivivaneni solwazi oludingekayo ekulimeni nokonga imvelo.
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Acknowledgements
‘Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ is a Zulu proverb which can be translated as ‘A person is a person because of people’. This is the essence of Ubuntu, a Southern African ideology which guides you in terms of how to relate to other people. Ubuntu is a philosophy of social relationships, building on the belief that we are all profoundly connected. Without Ubuntu I would not have been able to do this work. The people I want to thank are: My supervisors Regina Lindborg and Line Gordon. Your great competencies and personalities complement each other, and the combination of the two of you is synergistic! Thank you for supporting my move to South Africa and continuing to guide and encourage me, even from 10 000 kilometres away. Thomas Elmqvist, I have you to thank for teaching me to be independent. You sent me to Africa and gave me almost free reign! Graham Jewitt, thanks to you I have always had a place to call my office. The support and generosity you have shown me over these years is exceptional. The farmers in Potshini, Okhombe, Bergville and Winterton. The periods I have spent in the field have been tremendously encouraging and rewarding, with all the engaging talks and discussions with you and your families. You have all enriched me as a person and as a scientist. An extra thank you to the Dladla and Shezi families for accommodation and hospitality. Johan Mwalimu Eklöf, you were the first to express your confidence in me, and convinced me to continue my academic route. You brought me back to Systems Ecology, and without your encouragement (forceful push) I wouldn’t have dared to jump on to this PhD train. And what a journey! It turned out to be a long one, and a few workplaces have taken turns at being my base over the years. Kräftan and Stockholm Resilience Centre: Matilda, it’s been 15 years now (!) since we got lost in those bunkers during the cradle days of our academic careers. Sara, Erik, Cibele, Emilie, Elin, Albert, Jerker, Magnus T, Björn, Lisen, Jacob, Stephan, Henrik, Maria T, Johan E, Nanda, Emma, Oonsie, Hanna S, Hanna W, Vanessa, Maike, and the entire PhD-team which I didn’t have the chance to get to know closely (but I know you are all awesome!). Cecilia, Emina, Therese, Tanja, Hanna, Barbara and Siw, you made my life easier while I made your work extra complicated. Thanks for putting up with me! My previous and current office mates at CWRR and BEEH: Victor, Eva, Vincent, Michele, Sabine, Roland and Stefanie. Siphiwe, thanks for the company all these late evenings in the office. And Cath, you left Pmb too soon (I know, too late) but were still by my side until the end and beyond. CSIR and the Sweat shop: What amazing hospitality and friendship from you guys, when I needed it the most! Belinda, Benis, Patrick, Nadia and family, Linda, Ilse, Odi, Thozamile, Ryan and all the rest! The times I have spent outside of the office, working or just hanging out with so many fabulous teams and individuals, I have so many people to thank! Julia and Hanna in the early days. Erna, 43
Monique, Brigid, Michal, Sofi, and Kajsa. Rutger, not just a friend but also a much valued GIS pro. Charmaine for your friendship, your knowledge on soil carbon, and for never getting tired of explaining those soil variables to me. Farmer Support Group: Maxwell, Zanele, Nonhlanhla and all the rest; especially Madondo and Malinga, without you my work in the field could not have gone this smoothly. Your commitment, knowledge and facilitation skills amaze me. Most memorable for me was the day when we arrived in the village to run a workshop, only to realize that the community thought the workshop was scheduled for the next day. Without any sign of distress, the two of you made some phone calls, went away briefly with the van, and within an hour the hall was filled with participants, the lunch was being cooked in big pots in the yard and the workshop turned out to be a great success. I have always wondered which is the hardest: to be a PhD student or to be a parent. There is no doubt that the combination of the two is not child’s play. Without the team of wonderful baby sitters who have taken their turns I could not have done this, especially during my times in Stockholm and Uppsala. Mamma, Malin, Daniel, Stina, Frida, PO, Sara, Klas, Birgitta and Berith, your support has been priceless, and thanks to Tiko and Khanya who enjoyed being with you all. To all my lovely and supportive friends, new and old! Bästa bönorna, Sara and Charlotta, I miss you so! Thanks for upholding our friendship from such a distance. I think our chats are as long as to the moon and back by now. Frida, it’s my turn now! Toscana is still waiting for you, and so am I! Anette, I don’t know where to start. Thank you always for the ways you endlessly care for both my inner and outer me. I have so much to thank you for! Infinite love and appreciation to my families: Mamezala Petty, Mamkhulu Nana, Mzala Samkeh and Sisi Thandeka. Your love and support is more than a daughter/sister/cousin in-law could ever wish for. Thanks to all Malingas (Zindeeeela!) and Ndlovus. Mamma Tinka! You are the best of mothers! Thank you for always showing interest in my work, and giving me and my family endless support and enjoyment. The always loving and supporting Flogsta team: My beloved brother Daniel, Stina Schw, Eja and Hugo. Tina, thanks for being you, and for inspiring me with your creativity. Thank you to Lars-Åke and Veronica for having us every summer! Thanks to all Henrikssons and Karlssons. My children Fana, Afika, Ayathoba, Vuyiswa, Vuyani, Lungi, Bianca, Tiko, Tswa, Bhoyi and Khanya. You have balanced my life to say the least. You all have lovely personalities with unbelievable capabilities. Thank you for being you, and for being in my life. Michael. You have taught me more than a thousand books could have taught me. I am forever grateful for having you in my life. Not only did you bring children into my life, but you also brought a huge loving family and never-ending adventures. If it wasn’t for you I would have finished this thesis several years ago, and I have loved the extended journey. Thank you! Finally, two stars who deserve an extra round of applause - actually a standing ovation: Mamma and Mamezala, you are my true heroes! Thank You – Tack – Ngiyabonga
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Appendix
Methods for comparing ecosystem services bundles in the two case studies (papers III and IV) In order to be able to compare the generation of ecosystem services between different case studies, the supply of each service was plotted in the flower diagrams, where each of the flower petals represents one ecosystem service, and the area of the petal reads as the extent of the service supply, in relation to the max value (figure 6). The original case studies used different methods, so for this comparison I made the following adaptations: 1. In paper III, a single indicator was used to quantify each service, in two different land uses (grazing land and crop land). This comparison analyses the landscapes as a whole, thus the values for the services in each land use were averaged (regardless of the proportions of crop land and grazing land), and normalised (figure 6:1). 2. In paper IV multiple indicators were used. Each indicator used for a service were weighted equally for each service, and the average of the normalised values of the 1-4 indicators was calculated (figure 6:2). The indicators that only expressed demand for services were removed (table S2 in paper IV). 3. Data and max values for figure 6:1 are found in figure 2 in paper III. Data for figure 6:2 are found in figure 2 in paper IV. The max values for figure 6:2 is the average of the maximum indicator values.
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