Sustainability challenges for the social-environmental systems across the Asian Drylands Belt

Abstract

This paper synthesizes the contemporary challenges for the sustainability of the social-environmental system (SES) across a geographically, environmentally, and geopolitically diverse region – the Asian Drylands Belt (ADB). This region includes 18 political entities, covering 10.3% of global land area and 30% of total global drylands. At the present time, the ADB is confronted with a unique set of environmental and socioeconomic changes including water shortage-related environmental challenges and dramatic institutional changes since the collapse of the USSR. The SES of the ADB is assessed using a conceptual framework rooted in the three pillars of sustainability science: social, economic, and ecological systems. The complex dynamics are explored with biophysical, socioeconomic, institutional, and local context-dependent mechanisms with a focus on institutions and land use and land cover change as important drivers of SES dynamics. This paper also discusses the following five pressing, practical challenges for the sustainability of the ADB SES: (1) Reduced water quantity and quality under warming, drying, and escalating extreme events, (2) Continued, if not intensifying, geopolitical conflicts, (3) Volatile, uncertain, and shifting socioeconomic structures, (4) Globalization and cross-country influences, and (5) Intensification and shifts in land use and land cover change. To meet the varied challenges across the region, place-based, context-dependent transdisciplinary approaches are needed to focus on the human-environment interactions within and between regional landscapes with explicit consideration of specific forcings and regulatory mechanisms. Future work focused on this region should also assess the role of the following mechanisms that may moderate SES dynamics: socioeconomic regulating mechanisms, biophysical regulating mechanisms, regional and national institutional regulating mechanisms, and localized institutional regulating mechanisms.

Disproportionate contributions of land cover and changes to ecosystem functions in Kazakhstan and Mongolia

“…This is likely because the six provinces included in this study are dominated by grasslands, while other provinces in these countries include desert biomes that have substantially lower GPP and ET. Similarly, the ET estimate by Chen et al (2020)10 is 182 mm yr − 1 for Kazakhstan and 259 mm yr − 1 for Mongolia, while our ET estimate is 82.45-333.29 mm yr − 1 for Kazakhstan and 127.86-312.85 mm yr − 1 for Mongolia. In another study on GPP using a light use e ciency model in Kazakhstan, Propastin and Kappas (2012)30 reported a steppe grassland GPP of 243.70 (± 59.50) gC m − 2 yr − 1 , which is close to our estimate of 254.13 (± 101.97) gC m − 2 yr − 1 .…”

“…Another prerequisite to the downscaling method is that land cover class should be more or less equal in a landscape 15 . If one land cover type dominates a landscape, the linear downscaling method may not be converge as the model needs presence of all cover classes 10 . In Mongolia and Kazakhstan, the grassland class often dominates landscapes, as is illustrated in extreme cases such as Dornod, where grasslands make up > 90% and barrens < 10%.…”

“…(2020) 10 estimated the average GPP in Kazakhstan and Mongolia is 225.9 gC m − 2 yr − 1 and 181.9 gC m − 2 yr − 1 , respectively. These national averages of GPP are at the lower end of our study-area estimates, ranging 170.50-635.20 gC m − 2 yr − 1 for Kazakhstan and 176.08 181.9-595.14 181.9 gC m − the ranges modeled values.…”

“…Scienti c investigations on LULCC, as well as its causes and consequences on ecosystems properties, people and societies have been a central concern for several decades [5][6][7][8] . Across the Asia Drylands Belt (ADB), intensive and extensive LULCC has been jointly driven by rapid economic development, population growth, urban expansion, abrupt political shifts, and climate change 9,10 . Here the water-stressed ecosystems are under extreme pressure, with predictions of a drier and warmer climate and more frequent extreme climate events (e.g., droughts, heatwaves, dzuds), anticipating additional pressures on fragile ecosystems and societies with relatively less-advanced infrastructures.…”

The Social-Ecological System of Farmers’ Current Soil Carbon Management in Australian Grazing Lands

“…Ostrom's SES framework organises the empirical and theoretical variables to provide sustainable solutions to problems (Ostrom 2007(Ostrom , 2009, and enhances the sustainability of public policy by identifying particular issues from parts of the SES framework that might influence policy (Ostrom 2009). This SES framework has been used to understand the complexity of regional sustainability (Chen et al 2022;Hossain et al 2020b;Hossain et al 2020a;Willcock et al 2016) and the impact on ecosystem services (Lopes and Videira 2019;Hossain et al 2016;Hossain et al 2017), transformation systems and product accommodation (Marshall 2015), and fisheries and water management (de Wet and Odume 2019; Galappaththi et al 2019). A systematic review of SCM research in Australia found a limited understanding of the type of SES components and how they interact to influence Australian farmers' soil carbon management (Amin et al 2020).…”