Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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Dr. Diana Sietz

Member since
Organization: Thünen Institute of Biodiversity
Country: Germany
Field(s) of expertise:

Targeted agroecological action to enhance food security and farmland biodiversity 
Rooted in land system science, I assess interactions between food security, agriculture, biodiversity and livelihoods in the context of weather extremes and other disturbances. Vulnerability and resilience of agriculture, communities and food systems, actors’ differentiated impacts and expectations, critical thresholds and archetypical patterns of socio-ecological systems receive particular attention. Agroecology provides a basis to focus on shared landscapes in which agriculture and biodiversity thoughtfully interact. Insights support decision making to enhance food security and sustainable land management at local, regional and global scales and guide policy towards effective response options that enhance resilience. Learning from regional diversity supports policy tailoring and provides knowledge for scaling the insights obtained fostering the achievement of global targets on food security, Land Degradation Neutrality and biodiversity, among others.

I am a lead author of  IPBES Nexus Assessment, the thematic assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

I coordinate Future Earth’s Global Land Programme (GLP) Working Group on “Archetype Analysis in Sustainability and Land Governance Research”.

This member contributed to:

    • Related thematic areas and guiding questions:

      • What kind of inequities and power imbalances are present in food systems and how do they affect resilient FSN and especially for those groups facing multidimensional and intersectional aspects of inequality and vulnerability?
      • What are the main types of vulnerabilities facing food supply chains and what are the potential consequences for food system actors (including input suppliers, food producers, traders, food system workers and consumers), considering different kinds of potential shocks?

      Indigenous Peoples’ food systems can be particularly affected by pollution and other types of environmental degradation, e.g. when pesticide accumulation contributes to a decline in native pollinators and pest predators upon which Indigenous (and other) food systems depend (Fernández-Llamazares et al., 2020). Moreover, the loss of subsistence/traditional livelihoods (Torres-Vitolas et al., 2019; Blackmore et al., 2021) and limited access to and other actors’ appropriation of land and associated resources can decrease adaptation to current and newly emerging shocks (Parraguez-Vergara et al., 2016; IPBES, 2019). This restricts traditional food system management including the application of Indigenous knowledge and generation of novel insights/practices that address newly emerging opportunities and challenges. In addition, various actors’ risk perceptions and future visioning can create trade-offs and conflicts so that the design of multi-scale governance approaches is important (Hess & Brown, 2018).

      Archetype analysis can help reveal recurrent patterns in the trade-offs and synergies between land use, food, biodiversity and climate adaptation, among others, and in the configurations of associated policy processes (Sietz et al., 2019; Oberlack et al. 2023). Focussing on food system interactions, insights into archetypes can support the tailoring of integrative response options. The up-scaling of actions to sustainably transform food systems can be informed by closing of regional knowledge gaps about archetypical interactions and systematic investigation of scenario archetypes (Sietz & Neudert 2022).

      References

      • Blackmore, I., Iannotti, L., Rivera, C., Waters, W. F., & Lesorogol, C. (2021). Land 1693 degradation and the link to increased livelihood vulnerabilities among indigenous 1694 populations in the Andes of Ecuador. Land Use Policy, 107, 105522. 1695 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105522
      • Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Garteizgogeascoa, M., Basu, N., Brondizio, E. S., Cabeza, M., 1937 Martínez-Alier, J., McElwee, P., & Reyes-García, V. (2020). A State-of-the-Art 1938 Review of Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Pollution. Integrated 1939 Environmental Assessment and Management, 16(3), 324–341. 1940 https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4239
      • Hess, D. J., & Brown, K. P. (2018). Water and the politics of sustainability transitions: From 2045 regime actor conflicts to system governance organizations. Journal of Environmental 2046 Policy & Planning, 20(2), 128–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2017.1341304 
      • IPBES. (2019). Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES 2125 Secretariat. https://ipbes.net/node/35274  
      • Parraguez-Vergara, E., Barton, J. R., & Raposo-Quintana, G. (2016). Impacts of Climate 2531 Change in the Andean Foothills of Chile: Economic and Cultural Vulnerability of 2532 Indigenous Mapuche Livelihoods. Journal of Developing Societies, 32(4), 454–483. 2533 https://doi.org/10.1177/0169796X16667874 
      • Oberlack C, Pedde S, Piemontese L, Václavík T and Sietz D (2023). Archetypes in support of tailoring land-use policies. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 060202. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/acd802. 
      • Sietz, D & Neudert, R (2022). Taking stock of and advancing knowledge on interaction archetypes at the nexus between land, biodiversity, food and climate. Environ. Res. Lett. 17 113004. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac9a5c. 
      • Sietz, D, Frey U, Roggero M, Gong Y, Magliocca N, Tan R, Janssen P and Václavík T (2019). Archetype analysis in sustainability research: methodological portfolio and analytical frontiers Ecol. Soc. 24, 34. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11103-240334
      • Torres-Vitolas, C. A., Harvey, C. A., Cruz-Garcia, G. S., Vanegas-Cubillos, M., & 2825 Schreckenberg, K. (2019). The Socio-Ecological Dynamics of Food Insecurity among 2826 Subsistence-Oriented Indigenous Communities in Amazonia: A Qualitative 2827 Examination of Coping Strategies among Riverine Communities along the Caquetá 2828 River, Colombia. Human Ecology, 47(3), 355–368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-2829 019-0074-7 

      Further references: 

      • Caviedes et al. (2024). Indigenous and local knowledge on social-ecological changes is positively associated with livelihood resilience in a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. Agric Syst. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2024.103885. 
      • Maudrie TL, Colón-Ramos U, Harper KM, Jock BW, Gittelsohn J. A Scoping Review of the Use of Indigenous Food Sovereignty Principles for Intervention and Future Directions. Curr Dev Nutr. 2021 Jul 1;5(7):nzab093. doi: 10.1093/cdn/nzab093. PMID: 34345758; PMCID: PMC8321882.
      • Nadal and Nazar-Beutelspacher (2023) COVID-19: Solidarity initiatives for food security in the Mayan indigenous region of south-southeast Mexico. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2023.100697

    • Proponent



      Date/Timeframe and location

      1980–2012, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria



      Main responsible entity

      National governments, International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) , Nigerian Forestry Department, National Agricultural Research Institute of Niger, Maradi Integrated Development Project, Aguie Desert Community Initiative and others



      Nutrition context

      High undernourishment in dryland farming systems due to limited agricultural productivity, on-going land degradation, highly variable climate and lack of enabling institutional environment to improve nutrition conditions



      Key characteristics of the food system(s) considered

      Smallholder farming systems in the drylands of western Africa where land degradation and severely limits agricultural productivity and remoteness from decision-making challenges sustainable food production. Food systems are highly vulnerable to climate variability/change and price fluctuations demanding urgent action to improve local production of nutritious food through soil and water conservation.

      Key characteristics of the investment made

      - Direct investments and food-for-work based initiatives to improve soil and water conservation as a key strategy for improved food and nutrition security.

      - Multi-stakeholder and participatory approaches used to design and implement soil and water conservation practices



      Key actors and stakeholders involved (including through south-south/triangular exchanges, if any)

      Multi-stakeholder process involving local smallholder farmers, NGOs, national governments, international development agencies.



      Key changes (intended and unintended) as a result of the investment/s

      Soil fertility improved, erosion controlled, agroforestry systems established



      Challenges faced

      - Partially limited continuity of investments.

      - Local natural resources, agro-ecology, institutions and market impacts often not differentiates according to pronounced diversity of local farming contexts. However soil and water conservation depends largely on the suitability of specific practices in a given biophysical and socio-economic context. Limited knowledge of biophysical and institutional pre-conditions has restricted comparative analysis on agricultural intensification.

      - It remains largely unknown/under-investigated in which ways farmers creatively fine-tune and combine trade-offs in space and time to find the best possible way of integrating the high variability in natural resources, markets and institutions with the scarce resources they have available.

      - The perceived importance of particular factors that facilitate soil and water conservation can vary significantly between farmers, extension staff and other stakeholders.



      Lessons/Key messages

      Four principles are proposed to advance future implementation and research on soil and water conservation as a land-based adaptation strategy:

      1. Assess socio-ecological drivers of soil and water conservation: The fundamentally interwoven biophysical and socio-economic drivers need to be fully captured to improve our understanding of soil and water conservation. Scale issues and critical thresholds need to receive particular attention. 
      2. Investigate farmers’ management of resource variability: Due consideration needs to be given to assessing the ways in which farmers manage biophysical and socio-economic variability in the context of soil and water conservation and how they balance trade-offs in the input of labour, organic material and other scarce resources, based on their local knowledge. This requires an in-depth understanding of the relation between local and scientific knowledge. 
      3. Understand the key dynamics of soil and water conservation: In framing soil and water conservation as a dynamic process, major efforts are required to go beyond static assessments of factors that drive the uptake of particular practices. Gaining insight into the motivation, rate and time of intensification, modification, abandonment and replacement would provide the missing links in order to better understand crucial dynamics in soil and water conservation. 
      4. Test and integrate diverse research methods: It is imperative for future studies to systematically test the role of different methods of analysis, including quantitative and qualitative approaches, in determining the dynamic socio- ecological drivers of soil and water conservation. Besides statistical methods such as Tobit models, which offer valuable opportunities to account for the intensity of adoption, configurational comparative methods such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis should be explored more systematically to support the assessment of conjunctural causation and other complex causal relations.

      Reference: Sietz, D. and Van Dijk, H. (2015) Land-based adaptation to global change: What drives soil and water conservation in western Africa? Global Environmental Change 33: 131-141.