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Over 25 years after the UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, agriculture in the European Union (EU) has below the line not come much closer to being sustainable. By now, efforts to promote sustainability in agriculture have predominantly been based on “mainstream science”. This has resulted in strategies directed mainly at agricultural production, measures targeted at individual farms, and a major focus on technology-centered solutions. Yet, there have been many claims emphasizing that such approaches are insufficient to deal with wicked, sustainability-related problems. Rather, it has been argued, we need to question the governance of sustainability issues, i.e. who makes which decisions in which way. A central aspect of sustainability governance is collaboration, which has been lauded for its benefits but also criticized for its challenges. The potential benefits of collaboration have apparently been recognized also in the context of EU agriculture. Yet, there has been a lack of holistic consideration of how collaboration can be systematically integrated and promoted in the governance of EU agriculture. Sustainable agriculture cannot only be encouraged through changes in the overall governance system but also through the support of existing and emerging small-scale collaborative initiatives for sustainable agriculture. Indeed, there has been substantial research on the conditions that influence success of similar collaborative initiatives. However, the knowledge resulting from this research remains rather scattered and does not allow for the identification of overall patterns. Additionally, little of this research specifically focuses on sustainable agriculture. What is more, the promotion of collaboration for sustainable agriculture is further complicated by the lack of clarity of the meaning of sustainable agriculture, which is an inherently ambiguous and contested concept. This cumulative dissertation aims to address these gaps by contributing to a better understanding of how collaboration can be facilitated and designed as a means to govern for and advance sustainable agriculture. For this purpose, the dissertation addresses three sub-aims: 1) Advancing the understanding of the concept of sustainable agriculture; 2) scrutinizing the current governance system regarding its potential to facilitate or hamper collaboration; 3) assessing conceptually and empirically how actor collaboration can be facilitated as a means to govern for sustainable agriculture, both from a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. In doing so, this dissertation focuses on EU agriculture and applies a mix of methods, ranging from qualitative to quantitative dominant. The findings of this dissertation highlight that collaboration has been underappreciated and even hampered as an approach to governing for sustainable agriculture. In contrast, this dissertation argues that collaboration offers one promising way to promoting and realizing agriculture and emphasizes the need to integrate different approaches to collaboration and to sustainable agriculture. Thus, the findings of this dissertation encourage and justify more research, discussion, and action around collaboration in the context of sustainable agriculture. Additionally, the dissertation provides first tangible insights both on principles for systemic change to promote governance for sustainable agriculture and on factors that are crucial for the successful management of small-scale collaborative initiatives. Most importantly, this dissertation advocates an ‘integrative attitude’ among and between scientists and practitioners which could enable more collegial, collaborative and hopefully more constructive research, discussion and action for sustainable agriculture.
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, I focus 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 that are addressed in separate chapters. The research questions are: (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, I 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 I view 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. Food crops such as maize, teff, sorghum, and in smaller quantities – barley and wheat, were primarily produced for subsistence. Cash crops namely coffee and khat were primarily produced for the market. Based on our analyses, we 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. For example, the livelihood strategy with the most number of crops had more access to a wider range of capital assets. They had larger aggregate farm field size, and were more involved in learning with other farmers through informal exchange of information and knowledge. 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, in this case, the combination of diverse food crops and cash crops. 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 that raided their crops and attacked their livestock. Lack of cash was also common and this was associated with an inability to access goods and services that households needed to address other problems. For example, lack of cash prevented households from buying fertilizers or replacing the oxen they lost to diseases. Confronted with multiple and simultaneous challenges, households coped by drawing on more readily accessible capital assets in order to address a lack. This process is here referred to as capital asset substitution. The findings indicate that when households liquidate a physical asset in order to gain cash which they then use to address other challenges, the common outcome is an erosion of their capital asset base. Many households reported having to sell their livestock to buy fertilizers, as required by the government, without seeing an increase in their harvest. The same process of liquidating capital asset to purchase food particularly during the lean season, also led to erosion of capital assets. On the other hand, when households drew on their social capital to address the challenges, they tended to maintain their capital asset base. The local didaro system is one such example in which farming households with adjacent farm fields synchronize their cropping timing and pool their labor together to address the problem of wild animal pests. 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 amongst people. Gender is an axis of social differentiation on which many of the differences are based. Since the coming into power of the currently ruling Ethiopian political coalition, important policy reforms have been put in place to empower women. This includes the formal requirement that wives’ names are included in land certificates. Local residents reported notable changes related to gender in the last ten years. To make sense of the changes, we adapted the leverage points concept which identifies places to intervene in a system with different depths and effectiveness for changing the trajectory of a system. Using this concept, we classified the reported changes as belonging to the domains of visible gaps, social structures, and attitudes. Importantly, changes within these domains interacted, suggesting that changes facilitate further changes. 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. For instance, daughters in southwest Ethiopia continued to be excluded from land inheritance because of long-standing patrilineal inheritance practices. This impacted on women’s abilities to engage in smallholder farming in equal footing as men. 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. Landless men also faced distinct disadvantages in sharecropping arrangements where people involved often have unequal socioeconomic status. Processes that facilitate critical local reflections are needed to begin to change unequal social norms and transform smallholder farming to becoming more inclusive and egalitarian spheres. 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. Because the livelihoods-food security nexus depend on people’s agency in their livelihoods, this dissertation concludes that livelihoods should be recast as critical spheres for expanding human agency and that conceptual development as well as formulation of suitable tools of measurement be pursued.
Collaborative governance is a promising approach to address the difficult challenges of sustainability through global public and private partnerships between diverse actors of state, market and civil society. The textile and clothing industry is an excellent example where a variety of such initiatives have evolved to address the wicked sustainability challenges. However, the question arises whether collaborative governance actually leads to transformation. In this dissertation, the author therefore questions whether and how collaborative governance in the textile sector provides space for, or pathways to, sustainability transformation. In three scientific articles and this framework paper, the author uses a mixed-methods research approach and follows scholars of sustainability science towards transformation research. First, he conducts a systematic literature review on inter-organizational and governance partnerships before diving into a critical case study on an interactive collaborative governance initiative, the German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles (Textiles Partnership). The multi-stakeholder initiative (MSIs) was initiated by the German government in 2015 and brings together more than 130 organizations and companies from seven stakeholder groups. It aims at improving working conditions and reducing environmental impacts in global textile and clothing supply chains. In two empirical articles, the author then explores learning spaces in the partnership and the ways in which governance actors navigate the complex governance landscape. For the former, he uses a quantitative and qualitative social network analysis based on annual reports and qualitative interviews with diverse actors from the partnership. Then, he uses qualitative content analysis of the interviews, policy documents and conducts a focus group discussion to validate assumptions about the broader empirical governance landscape and the social interactions within. Finally, in this framework paper, he uses theories of transformation to distinguish forms of change and personal, political and practical spheres of transformation, and reflects on the findings of the three articles in this cumulative dissertation.
This doctoral dissertation aims to contribute to clarification of the potential of learning for water governance. The goal is to trace and understand the environmental impacts of learning through participation (research aim 1) and adaptive management (research aim 2), and the effect of learning on participation as a governance mode (research aim 3). For this goal, the researcher engages in a predominantly qualitative research design following the case study method. For every specific research aim cases are selected and analysed qualitatively according to conceptual categories and mechanisms which are defined beforehand. Quantitative studies are used to corroborate the results for research aim 1 and 2 in a mixed-method approach to enhance the validity of results. The empirical research context is European water governance, the implementation of the EU Water Framework and EU Floods Directive (WFD, FD) specifically. Eight cases of participatory decision-making across three European countries and five cases of adaptive management in Northern Germany for WFD implementation are examined to identify whether learning in these processes enhanced environmental outcomes. To detect whether governance learning by public officials occurred, the design of participatory processes for FD implementation in ten German federal states is assessed. The findings of research aim 1, understanding learning through participation and its effects on water governance, reveal that participatory planning led to learning through improved understandings at an individual and group level. Learning did, however, hardly shape effective outcomes. In the AM cases (research aim 2) managers and participants of implementing networks improved their knowledge as well as capacities, and spread the results. Nonetheless, environmental improvement was not necessarily linked to ecological learning. Regarding learning about participation as a governance mode (research aim 3) all interviewed public officials in German federal states reported some degree of governance learning, which emerged not systematically but primarily drawing on own experiences and intuition. These findings are condensed into three overarching lessons for learning in water governance: (1) Interactive communication seems to form the overall frame for participant and group learning. Framing of learning experiences turned out to play an important and potentially distorting role, for which professional facilitation and structured knowledge aggregation methods might be an im-portant counterbalance. (2) Learning did not automatically enhance environmental outcomes. It may thus not be an explanatory variable for policy outcomes, but a conditioning or intervening variable related to collective action, motivation for participation, and situating the issue at hand at wider societal levels. (3) The concepts of puzzling and powering might help understand learning as a source for effectiveness in the long-term when complemented with interest-based debates for creat-ing sufficient political agency of policy issues. Learning seen as puzzling processes might instruct acceptance and legitimization for new powering efforts. The perpetuation of learning in systematic ways and structures appears to characterize an alternative to this reflexive and strategic interplay, for which the water-related EU directives provide the basis.
Though the loss of biological diversity is an ecological phenomenon, it also has a social dimension. This makes the study of the social landscape, encompassing the multitude of perspectives and aspirations by different stakeholders, highly relevant for better navigating trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and other land use objectives. Engaging with and addressing contextual understandings of biodiversity is vital to develop socially palatable solutions for biodiversity loss. This dissertation, therefore, takes a place-based approach to studying biodiversity conservation trade-offs and seeks to understand how the perspectives and aspirations of different stakeholders shape them. First, it aims to identify shared viewpoints as ensembles of perceptions and meanings about human-nature relations and biodiversity. Second, it aims to understand how biodiversity is valued and constructed in stakeholders’ aspirations towards their landscape. To this end, a convergent mixed methods approach and case study design are used. Two cases were selected that face different underlying drivers of land-use change, resulting in loss of biodiversity. The Muttama Creek Catchment area is a farming landscape in south-eastern Australia where the ongoing intensification of agricultural production threatens native biodiversity. In the Spreewald Biosphere Reserve in north-eastern Germany, land abandonment and the resulting loss of the biodiversity-rich wet meadows presents a key challenge for biodiversity conservation. Narratives and discourses provide conceptual lenses through which the author studies biodiversity conservation trade-offs. Drawing on Q-methodology, this dissertation identifies biodiversity-production discourses for the first case study and cultural landscape narratives for the second case study. Moreover, based on a participatory futures approach, the Three Horizons Framework, it elicits narratives of change that highlight opportunities for biodiversity conservation in farming landscapes. The findings highlight that despite some overlap in how stakeholders perceive biodiversity, contrasting problem framings and different biodiversity priorities present hindrances to concerted action to protect biodiversity and for collaboration. The findings also identify shared values among stakeholders. However, there is polarity and contestation around the role and importance of biodiversity in rural development.
Global climate change and environmental degradation are largely caused by human activity, thus progress towards a sustainable future will require large-scale changes to human behavior. Human-nature connectedness (HNC) - a measure of cognitive, emotional, spiritual and biophysical linkages to natural places - has been identified as a positive predictor of sustainability attitudes and behaviors. While calls to "reconnect to nature" in order to foster sustainability outcomes have become common across science, policy and practice, there remains a great deal of uncertainty, speculation, and conceptual vagueness around how this ought to be implemented. The overarching aim of this thesis is to advance conceptual and empirical understandings of HNC as a leverage point for pro-environmental outcomes and sustainability transformation. In particular, the thesis attempts to assess the nuances of the HNC-PEB (pro-environmental behavior) relationship by investigating the scalar relationships between where someone feels connected to nature and where someone acts pro-environmentally. This research was conducted through conceptual exploration, systematic literature reviews using hierarchical cluster analysis, and empirical case studies relying on structural equation modeling and two-step cluster analysis. The relationship between HNC and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors was investigated in a small microregion of Transylvania, Romania, where traditional relationships with the land and changing socio-economic characteristics provided an interesting case study in which to explore these connections. The key findings can be organized into three sections: Section A, which addresses HNC and its potential for sustainability transformation; Section B, which addresses HNC as a determinant of PEB outcomes, and Section C, which explores the relationships between human-nature connectedness and energy conservation norms, attitudes, and behaviors. Results cumulatively suggest that HNC is a multidimensional construct that requires greater integration across heterogeneous disciplinary and methodological boundaries in order to reach its potential for meaningful sustainability transformation. Results also highlight the critical need to adopt systemic approaches to understanding how interactions between human-nature connections, norms, attitudes, and behaviors are hindering or promoting sustainability outcomes.