Filtern
Dokumenttyp
- Dissertation (9)
- Bachelorarbeit (1)
Schlagworte
- Landwirtschaft (4)
- Agriculture (2)
- Ethiopia (2)
- Äthiopien (2)
- Agrarsystem (1)
- Baum (1)
- Bee (1)
- Bestäuber (1)
- Biene (1)
- Biodiversity (1)
Wood-pastures have been present in Europe for thousands of years. This form of grazed landscape, combining herbaceous vegetation with trees and shrubs, has often co-evolved with its human users into complex social-ecological systems (SES). Wood-pastures are associated with high cultural and biodiversity values and are an example of the sustainable use of resources. However, due to their often relatively labour-intensive management and low productivity, large areas of wood-pastures have been lost over the last century. The loss of these areas means not only the loss of biodiversity on both local and landscape scales, but also the loss of traditional farming and cultural heritage in some regions. Across the European Union, wood-pastures are facing different problems and are embedded in different social systems and ecological environments. Yet they are all affected by global change and common European policies. To understand the challenges for wood-pastures in a changing world, a holistic approach combining different disciplines is needed. This dissertation therefore is analyzing wood-pastures across Europe as a Social-ecological System, combining ecology and social science with the aim to identify the barriers and drivers for wood-pastures persistence into the future.
Traditional farming landscapes typically support exceptional biodiversity. They evolved as tightly coupled social-ecological systems, in which traditional human land-use shaped highly heterogeneous landscapes. However, these landscapes are under severe threats of land-use change which potentially pose direct threats to biodiversity, in particular through land-use intensification and land abandonment. Navigating biodiversity conservation in such changing landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the drivers that maintain the social-ecological system. This dissertation aimed to identify system properties that facilitate biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscape, focusing specifically on birds and large carnivores in the rapidly changing traditional farmland region of Southern Transylvania, Romania. In order to identify these properties, I first examined the effects of local and landscape scale land-use patterns on birds and large carnivores and how they may be affected by future land-use change (Chapters II-V). Second, to gauge the role of particular traditional land-use elements for biodiversity I focused on the conservation value of traditional wood pastures (Chapters VI-VIII). Third, I took a social-ecological systems approach to understand how links between the social and ecological parts of the system affect human-bear coexistence (Chapters IV and IX). Bird diversity was supported by the broad gradients of woody vegetation cover and compositional heterogeneity. Land-use intensification, and hence the loss of woody vegetation cover and homogenization of land covers, would thus negatively affect biodiversity. This was especially evident from predictions on the distribution of the corncrake (Crex crex) in response to potential future land cover homogenization. Here, a moderate reduction of land cover diversity could drastically reduce the extent of corncrake habitat. Further results showed that the brown bear (Ursus arctos) would mainly be affected by land-use change through the fragmentation of large forest blocks, especially if land-use change would reduce habitat connectivity to the presumed source population in the Carpathian Mountains. Moreover, this dissertation revealed that large carnivores (brown bear and wolf, Canis lupus) may have important and often ignored roles in structuring the ecosystem of traditional farming landscapes by limiting herbivores. Wood pastures were found to have a high conservation value. The combination of low-intensity used grasslands with old scattered trees provided important supplementary habitat for different forest species such as woodpeckers and the brown bear. Worryingly, current management of wood pastures differed from traditional techniques in several aspects, which may threaten their persistence in the landscape. The majority of people had a positive perception on human-bear coexistence. The use of traditional sheep herding techniques combined with the tolerance of some shepherds to occasional livestock predation facilitated coexistence in a region where both carnivores and livestock are present. More generally, the genuine links between people and their environment were important drivers of people´s positive views on coexistence. However, perceived failures of top-down managing institutions could potentially erode these links and reduce people´s tolerance towards bears. Through the consideration of two different animal taxa, this dissertation revealed six important system properties facilitating biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscapes. Similar proportions of the main land-use types (arable land, grassland, and forests) support species richness at the regional scale possible through habitat connectivity and continuous spill-over between land-use types. Heterogeneous landscapes can further support biodiversity through complementation and supplementation of habitat at the landscape scale. Gradients of woody vegetation cover and heterogeneity, supported biodiversity at both local and landscape scales possibly through the provision of a wide range of resources. The heterogeneous character of the landscape is tightly linked to traditional land-use practices, which also maintain specific traditional land-use elements and facilitate human-carnivore coexistence. Top-down limitation of large carnivores on herbivores possibly enhances vegetation growth and tree regeneration. The genuine links between humans and nature support human-bear coexistence, and these links may form the core of people´s values and sustainable use of natural resources.
Loss of natural and semi-natural habitat due to increasing human land use for agriculture and housing has led to widespread declines in bee pollinator diversity and abundance, which raised global concerns about the stability of pollination services. Bee population dynamics depend on floral resource diversity and availability in the surrounding landscape, and loss of plant biodiversity may thus directly impair the fitness of individual bee species. However, whether and how plant and resource diversity and availability affect foraging patterns, resource intake, resource quantity and nutrient quality and ultimately fitness of generalist social bees remains unclear. In this thesis, we placed hives of the Australian eusocial stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae, Meliponini) in natural habitat (subtropical forests) and two landscapes differently altered by humans (suburban gardens and macadamia plantations), varying in plant species richness, resource abundance and respective habitat patch size. Foraging patterns and resource intake were compared between landscapes in different seasons and colony growth and fitness were monitored over two and a half years. Bee foraging activity, pollen and sugar intake, diversity of collected pollen and resin resources, resource quantity (colony food stores), colony fitness (brood volume, queenand worker reproduction) and colony growth overwhelmingly increased with plant species richness in the surrounding habitat. However, plant species richness and thus bee fitness was highest in gardens, not in natural forests, as bees in gardens benefited from the continuous floral resource availability of both natural and exotic plants across seasons. In contrast, foraging rates and success, forager orientation and consequently colony fitness was largely reduced in plantations. While bees maximized diversity of collected resources, collecting more diverse resources did however not increase resource functionality and nutritional quality, which appeared to be primarily driven by the surrounding plant community in our study. Conversely, individual worker fitness (body fat and size) was not affected by available resource diversity and abundance, showing that colonies seem not to increase the nutritional investment in single workers, but in overall worker population size. This thesis consequently revealed the outstanding role of plant biodiversity as a key driver of (social) bee fitness by providing more foraging resources, even when only small but florally diverse patches are available.
Tropical ecosystems are critical for biodiversity conservation and local people’s livelihood sustenance. However, these ecosystems are under high pressure from land-use and land cover (LULC) change, which is further projected to intensify and increase rapidly, thereby affecting biodiversity and the provisioning of vital ecosystem services (ES). It is thus important to understand how LULC might change in the future and how such changes could affect biodiversity and ES provisioning in a given landscape of tropical ecosystems. Scenario planning has become an increasingly popular tool and technique to produce narrative scenarios of the future landscape change. Thus, quantifying changes under different land-use scenarios could be a means to elucidate the synergies and trade-offs within the scenarios. In this dissertation, the author examines the future of biodiversity and ES provisioning for different plausible land-use scenarios in southwestern Ethiopia. First, he translates four future plausible narrative social-ecological land-use scenarios ("Gain over grain", "Coffee and conservation", "Mining green gold" and "Food first") developed for southwestern Ethiopia by participatory scenario planning into spatially explicit LULC scenario maps. Results showed distinct LULC changes under each scenario. Second, the author investigates the impact of these land-use scenarios on biodiversity by specifically modelling woody plant species richness in farmland and forest. Both indicators of human disturbance and environmental conditions were used. Third, he also investigates the effect of these land-use scenarios on woody plant-based ES provisioning by combining woody plant species with household surveys on how woody plants were used by the local community. He models and predicts the current and future availability of woody plant-based ES under the four scenarios of landscape change. Overall, the findings of this dissertation show the importance of integrating future land-use mapping with participatory, narrative-based scenarios to assess the social-ecological outcomes of alternative futures. The spatially explicit maps of LULC change, biodiversity and ES (at different scales) could be used as a valuable input to support stakeholders and decision-makers to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different development trajectories on ecosystems and human well-being and to avoid or minimize future undesirable consequences. To this end, apart from the benefits of coffee production under "Mining green gold" and crop production under "Food first" scenarios, the findings under these scenarios of large-scale agricultural intensification point to a potentially high loss of biodiversity and ES. These two scenarios could have a negative long-term impact on ecosystems and human well-being. Finally, the "Coffee and conservation" scenario, which involves the creation of a new biosphere reserve, appears to be the most sustainable scenario. This scenario could result in a sustainably managed, diversified landscape which could make major contributions to biodiversity conservation and human well-being in the region and beyond.
Diese Arbeit stellt eine Pionierarbeit zum Thema Keyline Design als ganzheitliches Gestaltungskonzept für landwirtschaftliche Betriebe im deutschsprachigen Raum dar und ist aus der Zusammenarbeit mit Akteuren der Gemeinschaft Schloss Tempelhof in Süddeutschland entstanden. Keyline Design hat zum Ziel, durch systematische Planung von landwirtschaftlicher Flächennutzung und Tiefenlockerung in einem topographieabhängigen Kultivierungsmuster, die Bodenfruchtbarkeit zu steigern sowie Wasserfluss auf Landschaften kontrolliert zu nutzen und gleichmäßig zu verteilen. Vor dem Hintergrund von Bodendegradation durch landwirtschaftliche Praktiken und sich verändernde klimatische Bedingungen, stellen divers gestaltete Landschaften eine wichtige Anpassungsstrategie zum Schutz gegen Extremwetterereignisse dar. Keyline Design hat bisher innerhalb dieses Diskurses in Zentral- und Nordeuropa wenig Beachtung erfahren. Für die transdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit wurde innerhalb dieser Arbeit eine Vorgehensweise zur Erstellung eines Keyline Entwicklungsszenarios entwickelt: Mithilfe eines transdisziplinären Arbeitstreffens und einem online Fragebogen wurden die Ziele und Entwicklungswünsche der 140 Personen umfassenden Gemeinschaft Schloss Tempelhof erfasst und auf Basis eines Keyline Kultivierungsmusters ein Entwicklungsszenario für die landwirtschaftliche Flächennutzung erstellt. Keyline Design wurde als Planungskonzept für die topographieabhängige Integration von Agroforstsystemen, wie Pufferzonen, Waldweiden und Alley Cropping, sowie für die Platzierung von Wasserkörpern genutzt. Die Ergebnisse des Entwicklungsszenarios zeigen, dass das erarbeitete Kultivierungsmuster von der Topographie abhängig ist, die Ausgestaltung des Szenarios jedoch vor allem vom Kontext der Akteure.
Conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services
(2012)
The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services: (1) global justice between different people of the present generation ("intragenerational justice"); (2) justice between people of different generations ("intergenerational justice"). International sustainability policy attaches equal normative importance to both objectives of justice. Accordingly, environmental philosophers ethically justify that people living today and people living in the future have equal rights to certain basic goods, including ecosystems and their services (e.g. Feinberg 1981, Visser’t Hooft 2007). Whereas ideal theories of sustainability and justice do not recognize interdependencies between intragenerational and intergenerational justice, conflicts in attaining the justices possibly arise in policy implementation. Identifying and preventing such conflicts is fundamental to devise an ethically legitimate, politically consistent and actually effective sustainability policy. This dissertation systematically investigates conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services. Human wellbeing depends on the services provided by ecosystems. Yet, humans substantially degrade world’s ecosystems, and therewith cause the loss of important ecosystem services (MEA 2005: 26ff.). The idea of sustainability demands to use ecosystem services in accordance with the two objectives of intragenerational justice and intergenerational justice. Reality, however, is far from attaining these objectives: Both today’s global poor and future persons are, resp. will be, disproportionately affected by the loss of vital ecosystem services (MEA 2005: 62, 85). Especially severe affected are the rural poor who directly depend on local ecosystem services for food, income and health. The political discourse on the relationship between the objectives of intra- and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services (‘justice-relationship’) is blurred. Further, the political discourse lacks a common understanding of justice in ecosystem-use and a systematic reflection on the actual ‘justice-relationship’, such as on the factors that cause conflicts between the two justices. In this dissertation, I investigate the ‘justice-relationship’ along three central questions: • What conception(s) of justice can adequately address the distribution of access rights to ecosystem services? • How must sustainability policy be designed to enhance both intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services? • (How) Can economics be helpful for characterizing and assessing trade-offs between the two justices? I approach these questions both generally and by the example of a case study, the MASIPAG farmer network in the Philippines. Methodologically, I combine a normative and a positive analysis of the relationship between intra- and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services: The normative analysis serves the explication, justification and reflection of the norms underlying the ‘justice-relationship’; the positive analysis serves the description of the ‘justice-relationship’ in the sustainability discourse and in practical contexts, as well as the provision of explanations on the determinants of the ‘justice-relationship’. As methodological approach, I apply the “comprehensive multi-level approach” as developed by Baumgärtner et al. (2008) – investigating the ‘justice-relationship’ simultaneously on the three levels of (i) concept, (ii) model and (iii) case study.
Tropical forests worldwide support high biodiversity and contribute to the sustenance of local people’s livelihoods. However, the conservation and sustainability of these forests are threatened by land-use changes and a rapidly increasing human population. This dissertation, therefore, aimed to characterize biodiversity patterns in the moist Afromontane forests of southwestern Ethiopia and to examine how biodiversity patterns are affected by land-use and land-use changes (mediated by coffee management intensity, landscape attributes and housing development) in a context of a rapidly growing rural population. To achieve this goal, the author takes an interdisciplinary approach where, first, she examined the effects of coffee management intensity on diversity patterns of woody plants and birds, spanning a gradient of site-level disturbance from nearly undisturbed forest interior to highly managed shade coffee forests. Results showed that specialized species of woody plants (forest specialists) and birds (forest specialists, insectivores and frugivores) were affected by coffee management intensity. The richness of forest specialist trees and the richness and/or abundance of insectivores, frugivores and forest specialist birds decrease with increasing levels of disturbance. Second, the author investigated the effects of landscape context on woody plants, birds and mammals. Community composition and specialist species of woody plants and birds were sensitive to landscape context, where woody plants responded positively to gradients of edge-interior and birds to gradients of edge-interior and forest cover. Further results showed that a diverse mammal community, with 26 species, occurs at the forest edge of shade coffee forests and that the leopard, an apex predator in the region depended on large areas of natural forest. A closer examination of leopard activity patterns revealed a shift in the diel activity as a response to human disturbance inside the forest, further highlighting the importance of natural undisturbed forests for leopards in the region. Together, these findings demonstrate the value of low managed shade coffee forests for biodiversity, and importantly, emphasize the irreplaceable value of undisturbed natural forests for biodiversity. Third, the researcher investigated the effects of prospective rural population growth (mediated by housing development) on the forest mammal community. Here, population growth was projected to negatively influence several mammal species, including the leopard. Housing development that encroached the forest entailed worse outcomes for biodiversity than a combination of prioritized development in already developed areas and coffee forest protection. Fourth, to understand the motivations behind high human fertility rates in the region, she examined the determinants of women fertility preferences, including their perceptions on social and biophysical stressors affecting local livelihoods such as food insecurity and environmental degradation. Fertility preferences were influenced by underlying social norms and mindsets, a perceived utilitarian value of children and male dominance within the household, and were only marginally affected by perceptions of social and biophysical stressors. The findings suggest the need for new deliberative and culturally sensitive approaches that engage with pervasive social norms to slow down population growth. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the key value of moist Afromontane forests in southwestern Ethiopia for biodiversity conservation. It indicates the need to promote coffee management practices that reduce forest degradation and highlights that high priority should be given to the conservation of undisturbed natural forests. It also suggests the need to integrate conservation goals with housing development in landscape planning. A promising approach to achieve the above conservation priorities would be the creation of a Biosphere Reserve and to promote the ecological connectivity between the larger forest remnants in the region. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of placed-based holistic approaches in conservation that consider both proximate and distal drivers of forest biodiversity decline.
This dissertation examines how smallholder farming livelihoods may be more effectively leveraged to address food security. It is based on empirical research in three woredas (districts) in the Jimma Zone of southwestern Ethiopia. Findings in the chapters that follow draw on quantitative and qualitative data. In this research, the author focuses on local actors to investigate how they can be better supported in their roles as agents who have the ability to improve their livelihoods and achieve food security. This general aim is operationalized through three research questions: (i) How do livelihood strategies influence food security?; (ii) What livelihood challenges are common and how do households cope with these?; and (iii) How do social institutions, in which livelihoods are embedded, influence people's abilities to undertake livelihoods and be food secure? Using quantitative data from a survey of randomly selected households, the author applied a number of multivariate statistical analysis to determine types of livelihood strategies and to establish how these strategies are associated with capital assets and food security. Here she views livelihood strategies as a portfolio of livelihood activities that households undertake to make a living. The predominant livelihood in the study area was diversified smallholder farming involving mainly the production of crops. Based on their analyses, the authors found five types of livelihood strategies to be present along a gradient of crop diversity. Food security generally decreased with less crops being part of the livelihood strategy. The livelihood strategies were associated with households' capital assets. The status of food (in)security of each household during the lean season was measured using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). A generalized linear model established that the type of livelihood strategy a household undertook significantly influenced their food security. Other significant variables were educational attainment and gender of household head. The findings contribute evidence to the benefits of diversified livelihoods for food security. Smallholder farming in southwest Ethiopia is beset with process-related and outcome-related challenges. Here, a process-related challenge pertains to the lack of different types of capital assets that people need to be able to undertake their livelihoods, while an outcome-related challenge pertains to lack of food. The most frequently mentioned process-related challenges were associated with the natural capital either as lack in necessary ecosystem services or high levels of ecosystem disservices. Farming households typically faced the combined challenges of decreasing soil fertility, land scarcity, die-off of oxen due to diseases, and wild animal pests. Lack of cash was also common. The findings indicate that when households liquidate a physical asset in order to gain cash, the common outcome is an erosion of their capital asset base. On the other hand, when households drew on their social capital, they tended to maintain their capital asset base. Human capital, for example, in the form of available labor was also important for coping. Protecting and enhancing natural capital is needed to strengthen the basis of livelihoods in the study area, and maintaining social and human capitals is important to enable farming households to cope with challenges without eroding their capital asset base. Smallholder farming in southwest Ethiopia is embedded in a social context that creates differentiated challenges and opportunities. Gender is an axis of social differentiation on which many of the differences are based. The currently ruling Ethiopian political coalition has put important policy reforms in place to empower women. Local residents reported notable changes related to gender in the last ten years. To make sense of the changes, the authors adapted the leverage points concept. Using this concept, the authors classified the reported changes as belonging to the domains of visible gaps, social structures, and attitudes. Importantly, changes within these domains interacted. The most prominent driver of the changes observed was the government's emphasis on empowering women and government-organized interventions including gender sensitization trainings. The changes toward more egalitarian relationships at the household level were perceived by local residents to lead to better implementation of livelihoods, and better ability to be food secure. The study offers the insight that while changing deep, underlying drivers (e. g. attitudes) of systemic inequalities is critical, other leverage points such as formal institutional change and closing of certain visible gaps can facilitate deeper changes (e. g. attitudes) through interaction between different leverage points. This can inform gender transformative approaches. While positive gender-related changes have been observed, highly unequal gender norms still persist that lead to women as well as poor men being disadvantaged. Social norms which provide the basis for collective understanding of acceptable attitudes and behaviors are entrenched in people's ways of being and doing and can therefore significantly lag behind formal institutional changes. Norms influenced practices around access and control of capital assets, decision-making, and allocation of activities with important implications for who gets to participate, how, and who gets to benefit. To more effectively leverage smallholder farming for a food secure future, this dissertation closes with four key insights namely: (1) Diversified livelihoods combining food and cash crops result in better food security; (2) Enhancing natural and social capital is a requisite for viable smallholder farming; (3) Social and gender equality are strategically important in improving livelihoods and food security; and (4) Institutions particularly social norms are key to achieving gender and social equality.
The smallholder-dominated landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia support a unique biodiversity with great importance to local livelihoods and high global conservation value. These landscapes, however, are severely threatened by deforestation, forest degradation and the adverse effects of farmland management regimes. These changes have fundamentally altered the structure of the landscapes and threaten their biodiversity and ecosystem services. Managing biodiversity and related services in such rapidly changing landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the effects of land use change and the reliance of local communities on biodiversity. This dissertation examines woody plant biodiversity patterns and services and presents several recommendations regarding biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services in smallholder-dominated landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia. Using a social-ecological systems approach, the author conducted four studies on the complex interactions of local people and woody plant diversity. First, he investigated the effects of human-induced forest degradation on woody plant species. His results suggest that forest biodiversity has been affected by the combined effects of coffee management intensity, landscape context and history at the local and landscape level. Specifically, richness of forest specialist species significantly has decreased with coffee management intensity and in secondary compared to old growth forests, but increased with current distance from forest edge in both primary and secondary forests. These findings highlight the need to maintain undisturbed forest sites to conserve forest biodiversity. Second, the author examined legacy effects of past agricultural land use on woody plant biodiversity. The results show that historical distance seems to be the most important variable affecting woody plant composition and distribution in farmland sections of the landscapes. The author found evidence for immigration credits for generalist and pioneer species but not for extinction debts for forest specialist species which might be rapidly paid off in farmland. The results suggest not only an unrecognized conservation value of old farmland but also a disturbing loss of forest specialist species. To slow this trend, it is necessary to shift to a cultural landscape development approach and to restore forest specialist species in the landscapes. Third, the author evaluated the supply of potential multiple ecosystem services and the relationships between the diversity of woody plant and ecosystem service in the three major land use types, namely forests with and without coffee management and farmland. The results revealed a high multifunctionality of landscapes and showed that ecosystem services significantly increase with woody plant diversity in all types of land use. These findings suggest that the woody plant diversity and multifunctionality in southwestern Ethiopian landscapes has to be maintained. Fourth, the author explored farmers' woody plant use to assess their dependency on and maintenance of woody plants and also considered the influence of property rights and management in this context. He found that local farmers used 95 species for eleven major purposes from all major land uses across the landscapes. He also found that most of the widely used tree species regenerated successfully throughout the landscapes, including in farmland. Local people felt, however, that their property and tree use rights were limited, especially in forests, and that some of the most widely used plant species, including important timber species, appeared to have been overharvested in forests. The results suggest that many species are important for local livelihoods, but a perceived low sense of property rights also seems to adversely affect the management of woody plants, particularly in forests. By focusing on woody plants and their ecosystem services to local people, this dissertation documents a dramatic loss of native forest biodiversity and rapid changes in the cultural landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia. Overall, the findings suggest the need for preservation of intact forest sites and for cultural landscapes development to safeguard biodiversity and multifunctionality of the landscapes in the future. This, in turn, requires holistic and integrated approaches that involve local people and recognize their basic needs of woody plants and their property rights to foster the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Maintaining primary forests in and using cultural landscape approaches to the rapidly changing rural setting of southwestern Ethiopia would also contribute to the global effort to halt biodiversity loss.
Ensuring food security and halting biodiversity loss are two of the most pressing global sustainability challenges. Attempts to identify pathways have been dominated with a biophysical-technical focus that provides technical solutions to the integration of food security and biodiversity conservation. The social-political dimension, however, including equity, governance, and empowerment received little to no attention. By focusing on the poorly investigated social-political dimension, this dissertation aimed to identify governance properties that facilitate and impede the integration of food security and biodiversity conservation through an empirical case study conducted in a multi-level governance setting of southwestern Ethiopia. To address the overarching goal of this dissertation, first the author examined how the existing widely discussed food security approaches and agricultural land use framework, land sparing versus land sharing unfold in the local context of southwestern Ethiopia. The finding in this dissertation indicated that the existing global framing of food security approaches as well as frameworks around agricultural land use has limited applicability in on-the-ground realities mainly because landscapes are complex systems that consist of stakeholders with multiple and (often) conflicting interests. This was evident from the finding that local land use preference was not a matter of "either/or", but instead involved mixed features exhibiting properties of both land sparing and land sharing. Moreover, in addition to the biophysical factors embedded in the existing food security approaches and land use frameworks, stakeholders preference involved social factors such as the compatibility of land use strategy with local values and traditions, which are mainly unaccounted in the existing global frameworks. Findings in this dissertation revealed that the existing reductionist analytical framings to the issues of food security and biodiversity conservation seldom address the complexity inherent within and between food security and biodiversity conservation sectors. Second, this dissertation identified governance structural and process related challenges that influence individual as well as integrated achievements of food security and biodiversity conservation goals. The result of the study showed that the governance of food security and biodiversity conservation was characterized by a strongly hierarchical system with mainly linear vertical linkages, lacking horizontal linkages between stakeholders that would transcend administrative boundaries. Furthermore, with regard to the governance process, three key and interdependent categories of governance process challenges namely, institutional misfit, the problem of interplay, and policy incoherence influenced the achievement of individual and integrated goals of food security and were identified. Given the interdependence of these governance challenges, coupled with the complexity inherent in the food security and biodiversity conservation, attempts to achieve the dual goals thus needs an integrative, flexible and adaptive governance system Third, to understand how food security and biodiversity conservation unfold in the future, the author explored future development trajectories for southwestern Ethiopia. Iterative scenario planning process produced four plausible future scenarios that distinctly differed with regard to dominating land use strategies and crops grown, actor constellations and governance mechanisms, and outcomes for food security and biodiversity conservation. Three out of the four scenarios focused on increasing economic gains through intensive and commercial agricultural production. In contrast, one scenario involved features that are widely considered as beneficial to food security and biodiversity conservation, such as agroecological production, diversification practices, and increased social-ecological resilience. In smallholder landscapes such as the one studied here, such a pathway that promises benefits for both food security and biodiversity conservation may need to be given greater emphasis. In order to ensure the integration of food security and biodiversity conservation, recognizing their interdependence and addressing the challenges in a way that fits with the local dynamics is essential. In addition, addressing the food security-biodiversity nexus requires a holistic analytical lens. Moreover, this dissertation indicated that there is a clear need to pay attention to the governance structure that accommodates the diversity of perspectives, enable participation and strong coordination across geographical boundaries, policy domains and governance levels. Finally, this dissertation revealed opportunities to integrate food security and biodiversity through the pro-active management of social-ecological interactions that produce a win-win outcome. The win-win outcome could be achieved in a system that involve properties such as diversification and modern agroecological techniques, smallholders empowerment, emphasize adaptive governance of social-ecological systems, value local knowledge, culture and traditions, and ensure smallholders participation.