Ways to Liberalization: A report on an ongoing research project

The talk presents the theoretical approach, the design of the data collection and some preliminary results of an ongoing research project on economic liberalization in mature democracies. Starting from findings of an analysis of austerity policies, I show that there is hardly the choice to avoid liberalization, but there are several ways of liberalization. Negotiated liberalization is feasible if problem pressures are low and actors have incentives to negotiate. These incentives are outcomes of politico-institutional configurations.

From the initial interest in ‘Why do people often communicate in very "strange" ways on Social Media?’ to a research project on CMC

This presentation is about the inside story of the PhD project El malagueño real, mental y virtual. Configuración de los significados sociales de una variedad urbana in Hispanic Linguistics. That is, the production and perception of the Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga and used on the social network sites Facebook and Tuenti by users from Malaga is analysed. Actually, the southern Spanish variety in question is quite distinct from the national standard in terms of its phonetic features, its prestige, and the attitudes to it. Thus, the project started with the initial interest in «Why do people often communicate in very “strange” ways on social media» which then slightly changed to the final research interest in «What do the different non-standard variants mean in virtual (and real) malagueño?». This long – sometimes hazardous, yet mostly fun – process is exposed in more detail by looking at the research questions, the methods and results. Lastly, the presentation concludes with some lessons learnt and an outlook on possibilities and necessities for further investigation.

Desertification mitigation and water harvesting based on sustainable land management

Traditionally, desertification research has focused on degradation assessments, whereas prevention and mitigation strategies have not sufficiently been emphasised, although the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) is increasingly being acknowledged. SLM strategies are interventions at the local to regional scale aiming at increasing productivity, protecting the natural resource base, and improving livelihoods. The global WOCAT initiative and its partners have developed harmonized frameworks to compile, evaluate and analyse the impact of SLM practices around the globe. Recent studies within the EU research project DESIRE developed a methodological framework that combines a collective learning and decision-making approach with use of best practices from the WOCAT database. In-depth assessment of 30 technologies and 8 approaches from 17 desertification sites enabled an evaluation of how SLM addresses prevalent dryland threats such as water scarcity, soil and vegetation degradation, low production, climate change, resource use conflicts and migration. Among the impacts attributed to the documented technologies, those mentioned most were diversified and enhanced production and better management of water and soil degradation, whether through water harvesting, improving soil moisture, or reducing runoff. Water harvesting offers under-exploited opportunities for the drylands and the predominantly rainfed farming systems of the developing world. Recently compiled guidelines introduce the concepts behind water harvesting and propose a harmonised classification system, followed by an assessment of suitability, adoption and up-scaling of practices. Case studies go from large-scale floodwater spreading that make alluvial plains cultivable, to systems that boost cereal production in small farms, as well as practices that collect and store water from household compounds. Once contextualized and set in appropriate institutional frameworks, they can form part of an overall adaptation strategy for land users. More field research is needed to reinforce expert assessments of SLM impacts and provide the necessary evidence-based rationale for investing in SLM. This includes developing methods to quantify and value ecosystem services, both on-site and off-site, and assess the resilience of SLM practices, as currently aimed at within the new EU CASCADE project.

Ethnography of a Land Grab and Gendered Coping Strategies in Northern Sierra Leone

Despite an increased scientific interest in the relatively new phenomenon of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA), data on the implementation of such projects and their impacts on the heterogeneous group of project-affected people are still sparse and superficial. Our ethnographic in-depth research on a Swiss-based bioenergy project in Sierra Leone generates well-documented data and provides insights into gendered access to land and wage employment. In the area where the project is located, customary land tenure applies. Thereby, women are structurally discriminated since they are not entitled to own land. However, user rights grant women and non-landowning men access to land and associated resources. Following the investing development banks’ guidelines, the company considered the local customary law when implementing its project. Nevertheless, the company only consulted and compensated landowners although women and non-landowning men could previously benefit from acquired land as well. Moreover, the company’s policy to enhance employment possibilities for women is barely implemented, and only few local women are hired. In order to cope with the transformed situation some women and non-landowning men continue to engage in subsistence farming on a reduced area of land. Others are involved in informal petty-trade or cooking food for the labourers whereby they subsidize the capitalist production of the company. In one village, women resisted additional land takes of the company. Acting within the framework of a specific power constellation on community level and simultaneously accommodating their claims within policy paradigms on transnational level, they were able to force a landowner to refuse leasing land to the company.

Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective

Land systems are the result of human interactions with the natural environment. Understanding the drivers, state, trends and impacts of different land systems on social and natural processes helps to reveal how changes in the land system affect the functioning of the socio-ecological system as a whole and the tradeoff these changes may represent. The Global Land Project has led advances by synthesizing land systems research across different scales and providing concepts to further understand the feedbacks between social-and environmental systems, between urban and rural environments and between distant world regions. Land system science has moved from a focus on observation of change and understanding the drivers of these changes to a focus on using this understanding to design sustainable transformations through stakeholder engagement and through the concept of land governance. As land use can be seen as the largest geo-engineering project in which mankind has engaged, land system science can act as a platform for integration of insights from different disciplines and for translation of knowledge into action.

Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks

The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites), to infer long-term records of past land-cover from pollen data, (3) to present a new project (LANDCLIM: LAND cover – CLIMate interactions in NW Europe during the Holocene) currently underway, and show preliminary results of REVEALS reconstructions of the regional land-cover in the Czech Republic for five selected time windows of the Holocene, and (4) to discuss the implications and future directions in climate and vegetation/land-cover modeling, and in the assessment of the effects of human-induced changes in land-cover on the regional climate through altered feedbacks. The existing ALCC scenarios show large discrepancies between them, and few cover time periods older than AD 800. When these scenarios are used to assess the impact of human land-use on climate, contrasting results are obtained. It emphasizes the need for methods such as the REVEALS model-based land-cover reconstructions. They might help to fine-tune descriptions of past land-cover and lead to a better understanding of how long-term changes in ALCC might have influenced climate. The REVEALS model is demonstrated to provide better estimates of the regional vegetation/land-cover changes than the traditional use of pollen percentages. This will achieve a robust assessment of land cover at regional- to continental-spatial scale throughout the Holocene. We present maps of REVEALS estimates for the percentage cover of 10 plant functional types (PFTs) at 200 BP and 6000 BP, and of the two open-land PFTs "grassland" and "agricultural land" at five time-windows from 6000 BP to recent time. The LANDCLIM results are expected to provide crucial data to reassess ALCC estimates for a better understanding of the land suface-atmosphere interactions.

Knowledge Management and Decision Support for Sustainable Land Management

Much research has focused on desertification and land degradation assessments without putting sufficient emphasis on prevention and mitigation, although the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) is increasingly being acknowledged. A variety of SLM measures have already been applied at the local level, but they are rarely adequately recognised, evaluated, shared or used for decision support. WOCAT (World Overview of Technologies and Approaches) has developed an internationally recognised, standardised methodology to document and evaluate SLM technologies and approaches, including spatial distribution, allowing the sharing of SLM knowledge worldwide. The recent methodological integration into a participatory process allows now analysing and using this knowledge for decision support at the local and national level. The use of the WOCAT tools stimulates evaluation (self-evaluation as well as learning from comparing experiences) within SLM initiatives where all too often there is not only insufficient monitoring but also a lack of critical analysis. The comprehensive questionnaires and database system facilitate to document, evaluate and disseminate local experiences of SLM technologies and their implementation approaches. This evaluation process - in a team of experts and together with land users - greatly enhances understanding of the reasons behind successful (or failed) local practices. It has now been integrated into a new methodology for appraising and selecting SLM options. The methodology combines a local collective learning and decision approach with the use of the evaluated global best practices from WOCAT in a concise three step process: i) identifying land degradation and locally applied solutions in a stakeholder learning workshop; ii) assessing local solutions with the standardised WOCAT tool; iii) jointly selecting promising strategies for implementation with the help of a decision support tool. The methodology has been implemented in various countries and study sites around the world mainly within the FAO LADA (Land Degradation Assessment Project) and the EU-funded DESIRE project. Investments in SLM must be carefully assessed and planned on the basis of properly documented experiences and evaluated impacts and benefits: concerted efforts are needed and sufficient resources must be mobilised to tap the wealth of knowledge and learn from SLM successes.