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The relevance of traditional land-use systems in Asia is under threat from externally influenced drivers such as the use of modern agricultural technologies, urbanization, rapid industrialization, overexploitation, and underutilization. The impacts of these changes in land use are contributing to a loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) in social-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS). Societal actors operating from multiple scales create and implement place-based solutions in SEPLS in response to landscape-specific challenges and opportunities for achieving biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. This study aims to identify and demonstrate the abundance of place-based solutions for solving challenges to sustainable use and management of natural resources in SEPLS, and to better inform the existing suite of conservation and restoration solutions. We review a set of 88 case studies from The International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) in the South, East and Southeast Asian regions using a societal-based solution scanning approach to systematically identify these solutions for conservation and restoration at local scales and to categorize them by solution type. Societal actors demonstrate preferences for solution types to reversing the loss 118 of BES in SEPLS while embracing a mix of all solution types across ecosystems. Institutional and governance solutions are the most common type across Asia. Technological solutions are preferred in East Asia, while knowledge and cognitive solutions are preferred in Southeast Asia. Economic and incentive-based solutions are found most often in South Asia as livelihood investments for local residents, and to balance trade-offs among food production and biodiversity conservation. Sharing the knowledge of various place-based solution types in different social-ecological contexts helps improve more purposeful and deliberate design of SEPLS for multiple benefits.

Agroforestry landscapes in the Philippines provide benefits or ecosystem services that have traditionally and sustainably supported food production for rural communities and the protection of natural resources. However, the very continuity and sustainability of agroforestry is in question because of the rise of new generations of landscape users that can ascribe different values toward these benefits. Thus, this study highlights age-based local ecological knowledge (LEK) on these agroforestry-based ecosystem services to understand differences in the generational persistence and sources of their LEK. A structured survey was conducted with 36 youth, 36 middle-aged, and 36 elderly users of an agroforestry landscape in Libungan-Alamada Watershed in Mindanao, Philippines. This survey focused on the presence of LEK on seven provisioning and five regulating ecosystem services previously identified through multiple participatory exercises in the agroforestry landscape. Results indicated high LEK (more than 50% of knowledgeable respondents in all age groups) across all the ecosystem services, highlighting strong social-ecological interdependence on the agroforestry landscape. While generational persistence of local knowledge was observed, the knowledge sources varied depending on the age group or the ecosystem service. Intergenerational transfer of knowledge was prominent for provisioning ecosystem services. However, institution-based learning was essential for regulating services (e.g. climate change mitigation), especially for the youth. Experiential learning was the primary mode of knowledge acquisition for regulating services (e.g., biodiversity conservation) for the older generations. These results provide strong evidence to help guide policy actors, decision makers, and program managers as they promote, conserve, and restore agroforestry practices, especially in production-protection landscapes such as the Libungan-Alamada Watershed. The revised policy should be based on age-targeted interventions and proper learning entry points that have been found effective in this study.

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Social-ecological transitions in the silvopastoral system of San Isidro, Rosario, Batangas, Philippines were analyzed using land cover trends and community perceptions. A combination of remote sensing processing, randomized survey, and participatory approaches were conducted. Four of six land cover categories (forests/orchards, grasslands, crop fields and water bodies) were identified to be sources of ecosystem services in the landscape which are essential for cattle farming. In 2000, the landscape became an on-farm research site on cattle farming. Coupled with other social factors such as land privatization and infrastructure development, this has reshaped land cover changes over time. In response, cattle farming dynamics, especially during critical dry periods, have adapted through measures such as switching to greater supplementation of commercial feeds. Despite social-ecological transitions, the cattle-based silvopastoral system in the landscape has persisted by exhibiting key principles of resilience such as diversity, connectivity, and feedback management. However, concerns on further impacts of key issues (e.g., land privatization) should be addressed to sustain the cattle-based silvopastoral system in the landscape. This study provides critical insights on how natural resource management by communities and policies by decision makers should carefully consider their potential impacts in sustaining locally important ecosystem services in the face of rapidly transitioning social-ecological systems.