UNESCO biosphere reserves show demand for multifunctional agriculture.

Sustainable landscape management of protected areas in UNESCO-biosphere reserves (BR) has become an increasingly important topic for academics and environmental practitioners, yet it remains unclear how this can be operationalized in actual regional circumstances. To achieve positive and measurable sustainability impacts, effective BR management on the ground requires supplementary methods to conceive the unique territorial, political, economic and social characteristics of each case while also considering the needs and visions of different stakeholder groups. In this study, we used the Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA) to assess future projections of current land management strategies and possible alternatives in five BR in Germany. The FoPIA method helped identify major differences in the regional BR contexts, including defining the sustainability problem and sustainability challenges. It also proved suitable for fostering stakeholder dialog with regard to current and future sustainable land use management, particularly for the BR transition zones. Our results predict multiple negative impacts resulting from of a continuation of current practices, which are compared against the assessed outcomes of alternative multifunctional pathways. We use these findings to discuss recommendations and challenges for sustainable management of biosphere reserves, the potential of implementing the FoPIA in BR, and perspectives for further research needs.

Social learning as an underlying mechanism for sustainability in neglected communities: The Brazilian case of the Bucket Revolution project.

In neglected communities, waste and organic residues are not only a vector of several problems, like diseases and water pollution, but also a contributor to increasing forms of vulnerability and marginalization. At the same time, these communities also have presented innovative local initiatives and transformative learning about natural resources management that can be a vehicle for achieving more sustainable food systems. In the south of Brazil, community-based organic residue management has shown an extraordinary potential to improve food security and livelihoods for (≈1600) community members of a vulnerable urban territory. In this context, the overall objective of this article is (a) To better understand what Social Learning (SL) processes related to successful organic residues management in neglected communities exist and (b) To identify what knowledge systems are created in one empirical case. The study case is based on a communitarian waste management project, the Bucket Revolution Project (BRP). The analytical framework builds upon social learning theory and its triple-loop process focusing on four specific phenomena. The applied mixed-methods approach was made in four steps: 1. a focus group to investigate collective community issues; 2. semi-structured interviews to investigate specific and individual issues in the context of the BRP; 3. social media analysis to better understand the BRP narratives; and finally 4. participant observation in community and institutional meetings. Mainly using MaxQda software and coding indicators of SL, the data show that "Diversity of knowledge integration" is the most identified SL indicator in the interviews (52%). For BRP, identity development, community conditions improvement, and environment understanding are three key components of the knowledge system enhanced through an underlying process of social learning. Furthermore, the study also shows that there are endogenous and exogenous social learning processes at work.

Assessing impacts of COVID-19 and their responses among smallholder farmers in Brazil, Madagascar and Tanzania.

This study investigates the impacts of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on smallholder farmers and their coping strategies in three contrasting Low- and Middle-Income Countries. The case studies include Brazil (South region), Madagascar (Atsimo Atsinanana region), and Tanzania (Morogoro/Eastern Tanzania). These countries were chosen because i) the economies are strongly influenced by the agricultural sector; ii) their national food security is strongly affected by smallholder production, and, iii) they represent a set of contrasting government responses to COVID-19 including the denial of the pandemic. Data were collected through semi-structured household interviews in all three countries in rural areas. COVID-19 induced effects were found in all three countries, including in Brazil and Tanzania where both national governments initially neglected the existence of COVID-19 and introduced few containment measures only. Here, mobility and trade restrictions of other countries impact also on agricultural trade and production in countries in which governments took less action to COVID-19 and also people remained home and practiced social distancing even if no official government policy was issued. The findings in all three countries suggest that the COVID-19 crisis had negatively affected smallholders' agricultural production, leading to a vicious cycle of low production, low incomes, and higher food insecurity. Results of this study raise the thorny issue of how best to balance containment of pandemic and future shocks against the well-being of the vulnerable rural population in lower- and middle-income countries; especially considering also the degree of global interconnected and the potential of polices to effect people beyond the national scale.