Transdisciplinary perspectives on current transformations at extractive and agrarian, frontiers in Latin America

Goals and scope of the special issue

Land use is at the centre of political and ethical dispute all over the world. How these disputes are conducted depends, to a certain extent, on scientific policy advice. Knowledge related to land rights, food sovereignty, environmental governance, societal and cultural values, and social and human behaviour, among others, represent the frame conditions, well analysed data the content for a qualified debate. Accordingly, cross-fertilization between social and natural sciences and with local stakeholders is critical to produce the knowledge needed to spur transformation (Jahn et al., 2012). In this special issue we aim at:

• encouraging transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge on land use in sustainability research

• generating original theoretical and methodological insights on the rapid and profound societal and environmental processes currently taking place at Latin American frontiers, and beyond

• contributing to an inventive research agenda for transformative research on land use at extractive and agrarian frontiers.

Two assumptions guide our reflection:

• True transdisciplinarity implies trusting that each source of knowledge involved has a significant role to play in generating the collective insights needed to construct sustainable futures.

• We need innovative arenas, where scientific/lay, Western/non-Western, quantitative/qualitative approaches fruitfully interact, to produce hybrid, socially, politically and ecologically conscious research results.

With our Special Issue we, therefore, want to foster integrative approaches from a broad spectrum of social science perspectives, ranging from critical geography, agrarian/gender/cultural studies, political sciences, sociology to anthropology and history. We wish to incorporate qualitative, empirical and exploratory methods, which address the societal root causes, processes and implications of land use change. Indeed, they are invaluable in performing actor-, network-, and policy analyses, and providing critical insights into the motivations, perceptions, preferences, and decision-making of societal actors in relation to nature, ecosystem services and land use/land cover (LULC) changes.

Setting the scene

Latin American rural regions have been deeply transformed through complex socio-political processes and rapid technological and infrastructural development. Since the 1960s, development policy (or the lack of) has pushed the modernization of rural areas, their absorption within the dominant economy, and dynamic demographic change, including in- and out-migration (Hecht et al., 2015; Kay, 2008). This is particularly obvious in frontier regions, where traditional agriculture precariously survives next to intensive agro-industrial systems (Barbier, 2012). In this context, top-down land use conceptualizations have strongly shaped approaches to agricultural intensification and conservation, and become implicitly embedded in policy and planning recommendations, with little to no consideration of local populations (de la Vega-Leinert & Clausing, 2016).

Extractive and agrarian frontiers are characteristically resource-rich regions of low demographic density, often located at some distance from the respective political centres, and undergoing a complex process of environmental, economic, political and cultural transformation (Coy et al., 2016; Rasmussen & Lund, 2018). Natural environment and local ways of life are being rapidly reconfigured to enable the exploitation and integration of land and natural resources into global commodity chains (Brand & Wissen, 2018). At those frontiers, due to wide spread corruption and impunity land use tends to be unsustainable and conflicts over land control and resource access are frequent (Schönenberg, 2019). Latin American frontiers, the core focus of this Special Issue, are strongly demand-driven and consequently depend to a great extent on volatile prices on world markets, whether for soybean, meat, timber, iron ore, bauxite, copper, gold, silver or rare earths. Recently, emerging markets for ecosystem services complement this list. Indeed, the mechanisms involved in international, nature-based tourism and conservation have comparable characteristics. Emerging green narratives thereby increasingly enable new forms of land control, albeit under the explicitly goal of fostering ecological regeneration and “non-destructive” land use (Bebbington et al., 2018; Borras et al., 2011; Fairhead et al., 2012; Peluso & Lund, 2011).

Originally articulated as the interface between wildness and civilization (Turner, 1893), then as a transition region between primary forest and agricultural land, the frontier, as a multi-faceted analytical category, is currently foremost seen as a space where land occupation and resource appropriation takes place (Fold & Hirsch, 2009). The concept of ‘post-frontier’ moves away from the understanding of the frontier as a peripheral region in process of integration, to emphasize, instead, its economic interconnection at multiple levels and ongoing political, legal, and socio-cultural transformation processes (Coy & Klingler, 2014; Klingler, 2017). Frontiers are further characterized by complex, dynamic constellations of actors, all competing to access the region’s land and natural resources against a backdrop of fragmented governance, chronic conflict and violence against nature and local populations (Svampa, 2013).

To imagine, let alone realize, a U-turn in this process of destruction is a formidable conundrum. Resolving conflicts over land control and resource access at extractive frontiers implies fundamental changes that need to be concerted at scientific, political and societal levels both in regions where extraction actually happens, but also, and perhaps foremost, in regions where disproportionally high consumption of natural resources takes place. To promote this process and elaborate socially, politically and ecologically meaningful recommendations, scientists need to embrace the multi-dimensionality of land use change and thereby overcome pervasive disciplinary barriers. Indeed, although, transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge is advocated in current research agendas, and despite important efforts in that direction, it remains a challenging endeavour (Lahsen, 2016; Liverman & Roman Cuesta, 2008; Schönenberg et al., 2017a; Zscheischler et al., 2017).

From state of the art to the new contributions

Land use changes in frontier regions and their associated drivers and dynamics form a core topic of a number of scientific disciplines which investigate transitions (Boillat et al., 2017; Lambin & Meyfroidt, 2011). Land Use Science (LUS) has proven to be a powerful approach to detect, explain and compare land and resource use trends, and model their potential socio-ecological impacts spatially and over nested scales (Müller & Munroe, 2014; Verburg et al., 2013). The literature produced by this relatively recent discipline may be categorized along three main interconnected goals:

1. Studies that detect, monitor and analyse LULC phenomena through remote sensing techniques, geographic information systems and statistically test these against a range of possible explanatory variables. This has greatly enhanced our understanding of the interconnected causes and processes of LULC changes at global (e.g., Song et al., 2018), continental (e.g., Latin America, Aide et al., 2013; Nanni et al., 2019), regional (e.g., in transborder protected areas in central America, Schlesinger et al., 2017) and subnational levels (e.g., in Paraguayan Chaco, Caldas et al., 2013). Specific aspects of LULC changes, such as anomalous forest loss related to drug trafficking (Sesnie et al., 2017), patterns of forest fragmentation associated with different land property and management systems (Arima et al., 2016) or buffering effects related to the presence of protected areas (Bailey et al., 2015; Guerra et al., 2019) can thereby be analysed in detail.

2. Studies that develop new modelling approaches to incorporate interrelated socio-ecological drivers, multiple actors, complex feedback mechanisms and tele-coupling processes in LULC analyses (e.g., Friis et al., 2015; Lambin & Meyfroidt, 2011). Conceptual reviews have paved the way to experiments on how to concretely operationalize social drivers of LULC changes in modelling, e.g., Schreinemachers and Berger (2006) on how to represent land use decisions in modelling; Meyfroidt (2013) on the interconnections between environmental change, behaviour and environmental cognition; Schönenberg et al. (2017b) on transdisciplinary scenario construction and modelling; or Lambin et al. (2018) on corporate-driven supply-chain initiatives.

3. Studies explicitly produced to support normative goals through policy relevant recommendations. A typical example here is the corpus of literature on the Food – Biodiversity (and water, land, energy etc …) nexus (Glamann et al., 2017) centred on the issue of how to feed a growing world population while preserving life supporting biodiversity (Godfray, 2011). This spurred two competing and apparently irreconcilable land use conceptualizations: Land Sparing vs. Land Sharing, and a lively debate in academic circles (e.g., Phalan et al., 2011; Grau & Aide, 2008; Perfecto et al., 2019; Rudel et al., 2019; Tscharntke et al., 2012). Many voices have since sought common ground (e.g., Grau et al., 2013; Kremen, 2015; Phalan et al., 2016) and proposed alternative conceptual approaches (e.g., Fischer et al., 2017). Nevertheless, the recent debate around the Global Deal for Nature, which pushes for setting aside half of the Earth to protect world biodiversity, has prompted a reflection on the legitimacy of top-down, segregating approaches, especially from an environmental justice perspective (Schleicher et al., 2019).

LUS recommendations have rapidly gained weight at the science-policy interface at national to international levels (e.g., through international research framework such as the Global Land Project, De Bremond et al., 2019; Verburg et al., 2015). In recent years, LULC studies have increasingly incorporated perspectives from critical studies, in particular from political ecology, thereby gaining substantial depth in the interpretation of observed and modelled LULC trends through their historical, political and societal contextualization (Turner & Robbins, 2008; Welch & Coimbra, 2019). Further, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has coined the notion of nature’s contributions to people, and recently acknowledged the need to encourage a broader perspective in addressing current socio-ecological transformations (Díaz et al., 2018). For example, Benatti and Rodrigues de Cunha Fischer (2017) investigate the legal evolution of land tenure and environmental regulations on deforestation trends in the Brazilian Amazon. Matias-Pereira (2013) considers the role of a different type of public management models to explain how the patrimonial system of administration induced increased corruption and economic slowdown. De la Vega-Leinert and Huber (2019) highlight the importance of better understanding how cross border integration may contribute to accelerate deforestation and land conversion trends. Further, Magliocca et al. (2019) analyse how clandestine capital may precipitate land-use transitions from forest to cattle ranching, mining operations and drug production in conflict and paramilitary zones. In the same direction, studies that explore the criminogenic effects related to formalization and fragmented top-down governance need to take into account the complexity of local regulatory regimes (Schönenberg, 2019).

We selected 20 case studies, which illustrate a broad range of current socio-ecological transformations at Latin American extractive and agrarian frontiers in six countries (i.e. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru). We additionally invited contributions from Namibia and Indonesia to open up our reflection to other regional contexts. The present collection includes approaches based on Anthropology, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Landscape Ecology, Political Ecology, Political Economy, Political Sciences, Sociology and Toxicology, alone or in combination.

Cumulatively, this collection of papers highlights the diversity of detailed, qualitative research. The first group of contributions illustrates well current efforts to depart from classical remote sensing-based LULC analysis to define new approaches and indicators and to integrate a richer set of data, including household surveys, focus groups, expert interviews and game simulations, that may better represent the multi-dimensionality of the situations at hand. In this way, changing patterns in farmers’ behaviour and choices, the impacts of stringent law enforcement on land use decisions, but also the benefits of indigenous agro-ecological food systems can be better addressed (Augstburger and Rist, 2019; Dobler-Morales et al., 2019; Nascimento et al. 2019).

A second group of articles reflects on standardized land use conceptualizations and mapping rationales in land use modelling, but also management (Arancibia et al., 2019; de la Vega-Leinert, 2020; Kelly, 2019; Salas Barboza et al., 2019). Important societal dimensions, such as asymmetrical access to land and natural resources, critical socio-environmental externalities, or profound cultural change (e.g., in values, relationship to Nature or local ways of life) that do not necessarily have clearly detectable spatial expressions need to be considered. A sound deconstruction of implicit ideological underpinnings encapsulated in LULC studies can thereby help to better align them with environmental justice goals.

A third group of articles has chosen to explicitly analyse the reconfiguration of land use in their specific frontier regions from a political ecology and postcolonial perspectives (Figueroa et al., 2019; Hruska, 2019; Otten et al., 2020; Sax, 2019) for a more contextualized understanding of processes characteristic of frontier regions. Extractive frontiers evolve in cycles, dating back to the initial settlement. It is therefore important to include historic perspectives to detect both cyclicity and points of departure. In so doing, complex actor constellations and power relationships related to land and resource control can be mapped out. A political ecology perspective is also well suited to analyse the frictions that may evolve around forests and peace-building in conditions of land use transitions shaped by coercive conservation, state territorialization, and land grabbing, as for example, in post-conflict Colombia (Guedes, 2020; Lugo, 2019; Van Dexter and Visseren-Hamakers 2019). In a debate paper, Guedes transcends the subject-object relationship between humans and nature. Conceptualizing violence as an experience shared by forests, Van Dexter and Visseren-Hamakers consider how forests become entangled in peace-building and suffer from failure.

Closely related topics are the commodification of Nature and the promotion of apparently non-destructive land use (e.g., via renewable energy, non-timber forest product extraction, tourism) in emerging local development models, and the associated implications for local communities, their productive systems, governance and world views. The articulation of ‘sustainable’ rationalities pave the way for new forms of resource exploitation at the frontier with profound impacts on local populations and their access to land. A further group articles, therefore, stress that LULC research needs to be sensitive to the social relations surrounding these endeavours and to conduct critical analyses of the respective narratives, be they sustainability or development-oriented (Backhouse and Lehmann, 2019; Graciano et al., 2019; Veloz, 2020). Future visions of development and sustainability are easily instrumentalized and emptied of their original meaning by state policy and powerful private actors, thereby legitimizing unequal access to land and unsustainable LU. However, changing tracks towards sustainability implies overcoming conflicts between mutually exclusive uses of natural resources and encouraging synergies, which pursue the common good, while negotiating trade-offs in an equitable way.

Finally, the existing huge implementation gap between written law and local practices is being addressed for cases studies in Brazil and Namibia (Klingler and Mack, 2020; Schönenberg, 2020; Odendaal and Hebinck, 2019). This group of articles analyses the drama taking place at most post-frontiers of the Global South, namely the badly regulated transition from customary law and informality to formality, shaped by inadequate and locally incomprehensible laws and regulations and often leading to the criminalization of whole life worlds.

A further insight of this Special Issue, is that to implement transdisciplinarity in a broader sense, we need intercultural and interdisciplinary brokers, who can play a critical role in communicating relevant insights from detailed case studies to more classical Land Use Scientists. These can be social scientists, who have a solid understanding of spatially explicit analyses, as well as natural scientists, who are open to experiment with ethnographic approaches. Finally, we are convinced that Land Use Science profits tremendously from engaging with a broader range of disciplines and submitting itself to societal scrutiny. This can contribute to close existing epistemological gaps and, grant credibility to its policy recommendations. Indeed, the question: Which policy recommendations may Land Use Science give to whom? can only be answered based on the grounds of solid knowledge of the political constitution of the respective societies, and should, therefore, be raised with willing and capable practice partners at the beginning of any research project. In this way, Land Use scientists, governmental institutions, non-governmental organizations and relevant societal actors may fruitfully engage in the co-production of applicable knowledge that may help them to address the problems at hand. The task ahead is challenging and at the same time inspiring: How can we, as scientists, together with local actors better understand, decide on, and shape land use trajectories and policies that can secure fulfilling and dignified lives for all, while keeping global demand for natural resources within planetary boundaries?

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

A. Cristina de la Vega-Leinert was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under the Project grant number: VE659/2-1. Regine Schönenberg is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the project grant number: PRODIGY-01LC1824B.