Adaptation to Social-Ecological Change in Northwestern Pakistan: Household Strategies and Decision-making Processes.

Values are important factors shaping people's perceptions of social-ecological changes and the associated impacts, acceptable risk, and successful adaptation to various changes; however, little empirical work has examined how values interact to influence adaptation decision-making. We drew on 25 semi-structured interviews with community leaders, farmers, fisherfolk, and individuals in the tourism industry in northwestern Pakistan to identify types of adaptations employed by households and explore what values were present in these households' adaptation decisions. Our results show that households frequently employed environmental management and livelihood diversification to adapt to a wide range of social-ecological change. We found that multiple values influenced household adaptation and that employing an adaptation strategy often involved a tradeoff of values. We also found that household adaptations were embedded in multi-scalar social, cultural, economic, and political processes that could constrain or conflict with such adaptations. Overall, our research illustrates the complex influence of values on household adaptation decisions and highlights the need to further understand how adaptations are aligned, or misaligned, with stakeholders' diverse values in order to inform more equitable adaptation to social-ecological change.

Agricultural intensification and changes in cultivated areas, 1970-2005.

Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared land make it impossible to investigate fully the hypothesized causal chain from agricultural intensification to declines in cultivated areas and then to increases in spared land. We analyze the historical circumstances in which rising yields have been accompanied by declines in cultivated areas, thereby leading to land-sparing. We use national-level United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization data on trends in cropland from 1970-2005, with particular emphasis on the 1990-2005 period, for 10 major crop types. Cropland has increased more slowly than population during this period, but paired increases in yields and declines in cropland occurred infrequently, both globally and nationally. Agricultural intensification was not generally accompanied by decline or stasis in cropland area at a national scale during this time period, except in countries with grain imports and conservation set-aside programs. Future projections of cropland abandonment and ensuing environmental services cannot be assumed without explicit policy intervention.