Ester Boserup: An interdisciplinary visionary relevant for sustainability

Turner, B. L.; Fischer‐Kowalski, Marina

doi:10.1073/pnas.1013972108

Cited by 34 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Clearly, urban centers present both market and trade opportunities, which point is important in interpreting the results in this paper. Finally, Turner and Fischer-Kowalskic (2010), in a tribute to Boserup’s 100th birthday, find that the Boserup framework has held up well.…”

Section: Agricultural Intensification: Theory and Findingsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Agricultural intensification: The status in six African countries

2017

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Boserup and Ruthenberg (BR) provided the framework to analyze the impact of population growth and market access on the intensification of farming systems. Prior evidence in Africa is consistent with the framework. Over the past two decades, rapid population growth has put farming systems under stress, while rapid urbanization and economic growth have provided new market opportunities. New measures of agro-ecological potential and urban gravity are developed to analyze their impact on population density and market access. The descriptive and regression analyses show that the patterns of intensification across countries are only partially consistent with the BR predictions. Fallow areas have disappeared, but cropping intensities remain very low. The use of organic and chemical fertilizers is too low to maintain soil fertility. Investments in irrigation are inadequate. In light of the promising outcomes suggested by the Boserup-Ruthenberg framework, the process of intensification across these countries appears to have been weak.

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Section: Agricultural Intensification: Theory and Findingsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Agricultural intensification: The status in six African countries

2017

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“…In China, the population collapsed in the late 19th century, concomitant with diminishing agricultural production and cropland per capita, reduced population, and low temperatures. In contrast, after the 1980s, as depicted in Figure 4 h, the Boserupian process [ 51 , 91 ] appears to dominate as China managed to sustain the booming population via increasing agricultural intensification, for example, by adopting the new agricultural technologies developed since the Green Revolution of the late 1960s. This practice was delayed in China, until reform of institutions that had constrained agricultural production through the transition period of the 1950s–1980s.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’s Land-Use Changes during the Past 300 Years: A Historical Perspective

Miao

Zhu

Sun

et al. 2016

IJERPH

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Understanding the processes of historical land-use change is crucial to the research of global environmental sustainability. Here we examine and attempt to disentangle the evolutionary interactions between land-use change and its underlying causes through a historical lens. We compiled and synthesized historical land-use change and various biophysical, political, socioeconomic, and technical datasets, from the Qing dynasty to modern China. The analysis reveals a clear transition period between the 1950s and the 1980s. Before the 1950s, cropland expanded while forested land diminished, which was also accompanied by increasing population; after the 1980s land-use change exhibited new characteristics: changes in cropland, and decoupling of forest from population as a result of agricultural intensification and globalization. Chinese political policies also played an important and complex role, especially during the 1950s–1980s transition periods. Overall, climate change plays an indirect but fundamental role in the dynamics of land use via a series of various cascading effects such as shrinking agricultural production proceeding to population collapse and outbreaks of war. The expected continuation of agricultural intensification this century should be able to support increasing domestic demand for richer diets, but may not be compatible with long-term environmental sustainability.

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“…Often, these theories are related to specifi c land conversion processes or sectors, e.g. Boserupian theory concerning the effects of population on land use intensity (Boserup 1965 ;Turner and Fischer-Kowalski 2010 ;Turner and Ali 1996 ), neo-Thünen theory about moving frontiers and urban markets (Walker 2004 ;Walker and Solecki 2004 ) and the theories of Fujita and Krugman about urban development (Fujita et al 1999a , b ) as notable examples. Most theories cannot adequately explain the complexity of land use decision making underlying the observed land changes.…”

Section: Conceptual Models Of Human-environment Interactions In Land mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Representation of Human-Environment Interactions in Land Change Research and Modelling

Verburg

2014

Understanding Society and Natural Resources

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Ester Boserup: An interdisciplinary visionary relevant for sustainability

Cited by 34 publications

References 58 publications

Agricultural intensification: The status in six African countries

Agricultural intensification: The status in six African countries

China’s Land-Use Changes during the Past 300 Years: A Historical Perspective

The Representation of Human-Environment Interactions in Land Change Research and Modelling

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