Applying social-ecological system resilience principles to the context of woody vegetation management in smallholder farming landscapes of the Global South

Figures & data

Box 1. Definition of key terms.

Global South: The Global South refers to low and middle-income countries situated mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Here, many landscapes have maintained diverse cultural practices and traditional ecological knowledge to this day. Local people: We mainly refer to local people as those who were born, grew up, work, and live, and have local ecological knowledge and practical experiences in a particular landscape. Local benefits: These are benefits that are co-produced by social and ecological systems and actually flow to local people in a specific landscape. Resilience is the ability of a complex adaptive system to withstand shocks and to continue functioning in much the same way as before disturbance in the long run at landscape level. Smallholder farming is a family farming system often performed on less than or equal to two hectares of land, and harbour crop diversity at local and landscape levels. Social-ecological system: A complex adaptive system involving interlinked human and non-human living and non-living components. Woody vegetation management: These are actions to deliberately enhance different woody plant species (i.e. their traits, composition and configuration) across the landscapes (in agriculture-forest mosaic heterogenous land-uses) to secure an ongoing flow of both material and non-material benefits.

Figure 1. Overview of multiple and basic material and non-material benefits of trees in smallholder farming landscapes. (a) trees in the landscape regulating wetland and small streams drainage; (b) trees serving for social learning or experience sharing; (c) trees for honey production (food and medicine); (d) a tree for coffee shade-production; (e) tees regulating water flow and evapotranspiration of a river; (f) homegarden trees serving as habitat for a chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus); (g) various material benefits of trees to local people; and (h) trees as construction materials for a local house. (Photo: Girma Shumi).

Table 1. Principles for building SES resilience adapted from Biggs et al. (2012).

Key SES properties and processes	Maintain diversity and redundancy	Diversity refers to diversity of social actors (can be expressed by a variety of social and age classes, lifestyles, cultures, language, ethical and spiritual values, knowledge systems and experiences); and diversity of species (i.e. species identity, traits, composition, their configuration), their habitats and ecosystems in the landscape. Redundancy is the functional replication of social actors (e.g. their roles in securing livelihood or tree management for different purposes) and species that provide options for responding to change and confronting uncertainty, thereby building SES resilience.
	Manage connectivity	It pertains to the way in which various social actors can interact with each other and collaborate across units and levels. It also refers to the way in which species or resources, e.g. seeds disperse, species migrate, mate or interact with each other across habitats. It is useful to maintain diversity and redundancy and thus, a key for SES resilience.
	Manage slow variables and feedbacks	It refers to slowly changing ecological and social variables (e.g. gradual loss of trees, human population growth or gradual change in norms, cultures and values) in the landscape, as well as positive and negative feedbacks that influence the configuration and dynamics of a system. Monitoring and managing them in the landscape is important to avoid crossing a threshold.
Key SES governance aspects	Foster systems understanding	It refers to viewing and understanding landscapes as complex adaptive systems. Promoting systems thinking and its understanding helps to make sense of SES dynamics and manage SES for multiple benefits in an integrated way, across multiple temporal and spatial scales.
	Learning and experimentation	It is a continuous renewal of SES knowledge via adaptive management, co-monitoring and governance. It is useful to adapt to unavoidable uncertainty, change and shocks.
	Broaden participation	It refers to active and genuine involvement of all relevant stakeholders in SES management and governance processes. It fosters collective action for SES resilience building.
	Foster polycentric governance system	This refers to a system in which power is distributed to various interacting bodies and hence, have autonomy to make and enforce rules across units and levels to enhance resilience by increasing diversity and redundancy, connectivity, participation and adaptive learning.

Figure 2. Illustrating context specific smaller scale units embedded in smallholder farming landscapes, which can be used for the arrangement of multiple and nested units for polycentric governance systems. Blue coloured circles show each small-scale unit, and red arrows highlight horizontal connections among units across the landscape. (Photo: Girma Shumi).

Biggs R, Schlüter M, Biggs D, Bohensky EL, BurnSilver S, Cundill G, Dakos V, Daw TM, Evans LS, Kotschy K, et al. 2012. Toward principles for enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services. Annu Rev Environ Resour. 37(1):421–448. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-051211-123836.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar