A Framework for Tracing Social–Ecological Trajectories and Traps in Intensive Agricultural Landscapes

Abstract

Charting trajectories toward sustainable agricultural development is an important goal at the food-energy-water-ecosystem services (FEWES) nexus of agricultural landscapes. Social-ecological adaptation and transformation are two broad strategies for adjusting and resetting the trajectories of productive FEWES nexuses toward sustainable futures. In some cases, financial incentives, technological innovations, and/or subsidies associated with the short-term optimization of a small number of resources create and strengthen unsustainable feedbacks between social and ecological entities at the FEWES nexus. These feedbacks form the basis of rigidity traps, which impede adaptation and transformation by locking FEWES nexuses into unsustainable trajectories characterized by control, stability, and efficiency, but also an inability to adapt to disturbances or changing conditions. To escape and avoid rigidity traps and enable sustainability-focused adaptation and transformation, a foundational understanding of FEWES nexuses and their unique trajectories and traps is required. We present a framework for tracing trajectories and traps at the FEWES nexuses of intensive agricultural landscapes. Framework implementation in a case study reveals feedbacks characteristic of rigidity traps, as well as opportunities for modifying and dissolving them. Such place-based understanding could inform sustainable agricultural development at the FEWES nexus of intensive agricultural landscapes worldwide.

Resilience Meets the Water–Energy–Food Nexus: Mapping the Research Landscape

“…Not surprisingly, infrastructure is most often the topic of engineering resilience studies (36% of infrastructure studies adopt an engineering resilience scope), such as in the studies by He et al (2019) and Karan et al (2019). The comparison of the methodological focus with the thematic domain of resilience studies ( Figure 3C) reveals that infrastructure studies chiefly model (25%) or build (33%) resilience, e.g., Amjath-Babu et al (2019) and Haupt (2019); studies in the policy and governance domains theorize (45 and 50%, respectively), e.g., Uden et al (2018) and Karlberg et al (2015) or build resilience (40 and 38%, respectively), e.g., Mpandeli et al (2018) and Antwi-Agyei et al (2018); social capital and investment themed publications theorize about resilience (44 and 67%, respectively), e.g., Givens et al (2018); and technology focused research mainly models (38%), e.g., Johnson et al (2019) or measures resilience (19%), e.g., Schlor et al (2017). Figure 3D starts from the methodological focus and intersects this dimension with the scope of the nexus and resilience type.…”

“…Figure 3G revisits the thematic domain once more, but in this instance in combination with the type of resilience, and whether the publication includes a case study. We learn that few domains employ general resilience in combination with a case study (policy domain 15%, governance 23%, social capital 29%), e.g., Gragg et al (2018) and Uden et al (2018). In contrast, studies that focus on specified resilience by and large do have a case study across domains, particularly in the infrastructure domain (67%), e.g., Romero-Lankao et al (2018).…”

“…de Loe and Patterson (2017), for example, observed that although resilience thinking pays attention to external drivers such as climate change and teleconnections, it remains unclear to what extent water resilience accounts for connections between water and other sectors, since studies tend to emphasize processes that are internal to water governance over external connections that can influence water governance. In another study, investigating risks of climate extremes to WEF security in cities, Romero-Lankao et al (2018) stress the need to consider the role of technology in mitigating impacts, while Uden et al (2018) warn in their study on transforming agricultural landscapes that neglecting considerations from financial, technological and policy domains may create unsustainable feedbacks between WEF systems. These crossdomain feedbacks may form so called rigidity traps, which impede transformation by locking the nexus into an undesired trajectory.…”

“…Some-particularly but not exclusively those involved in public policy debates-assumed a nexus approach, which they applied to enhance (specified) resilience of linked WEF systems (e.g., Pahl-Wostl, 2019). Others, on the other hand, started from a (predominantly academic) resilience perspective, in which water, food and energy systems happened to be the (SES) arena where adaptations and transformations take place (e.g., Uden et al, 2018).…”

Conceptual Framework to Integrate Economic Drivers of Decision Making for Technology Adoption in Agriculture

“…The integration of such improvements in agricultural practices have led to the maximation of production and economies and, sometimes, increasing environmental degradation [3]. Sustainable agriculture can be seen as a broad term that merges elements of sustainable development in the form of resource conservation, technologic suitability, social compliance, and economic viability with agroecosystem resilience, human livelihoods, and agricultural productivity [4,5]. A sustainable intensification of agriculture might be possible if the use of external inputs, the improvements of management techniques and practices, and the efficient use of natural resources and purchased inputs are balanced [3,6].…”