ID57: Science-based pathways to sustainability in mountains

Abstract ID 919 | Date: 2022-09-13 16:11 – 16:22 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room SR2 |

Anicama Diaz, Jahir (1,2); Uson, Tomas (4); Muñoz Asmat, Randy (2,3)

The aim of the systematic review was to categorize and analyze the evaluation methods and the necessary conditions for the application of planning based on participatory scenarios in mountain ecosystems. The design of this review is divided into three central stages: search for articles in specialized scientific databases and on the Internet in the case of gray literature, selection of relevant articles for the study, and analysis of the selected articles. First, the study focuses on articles and reports that have worked with future planning methodologies, which includes works related to scenarios, modeling, forecasting, planning, and adaptation that seek to articulate visions of the future at a descriptive, evaluative and/or normative level. Second, the study focuses exclusively on methodologies that have considered participatory work approaches at their different levels and involvement, which can include consultative participation to the involvement of different actors that range from the definition of objectives and methodologies to the analysis and validation of results. Finally, the study contemplates only works that have been developed in mountain areas. For the definition of such zones, the K2 characterization is taken as a basis (Sayre et al. 2018), for this part we used the Global Mountain Explorer. Our results show us the following bullet points:

• The search in the four databases (Scopus, Web of Science, Jstor, and Scielo) yielded a result of 3,416 articles after having removed the duplicates. Of those, 334 were selected through a blind review of titles and abstracts, a figure that was reduced to 59 through content review. In addition to the peer-reviewed scientific articles, 13 reports and gray literature reports (mostly corresponding to the Peruvian case) were selected from an initial database of 167 articles, which were obtained by consulting experts and peers. This led to a total of 72 articles considered for analysis.
• Regarding the areas of study, 35% correspond to work carried out in the American continent, 34% to the European continent, 28% to the Asian continent, and only 3% to the African continent, which would explain why the three The former concentrate the main mountain ranges in the world.
• Almost 80% of the articles make explicit mention of some highly relevant body of water for the study area and that plays a relevant role in the work carried out.
• Most have been coordinated exclusively by researchers from universities (54%), non-academic research centers (12%), and NGOs or foundations (11%, mainly gray literature).

Abstract ID 138 | Date: 2022-09-13 16:22 – 16:33 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room SR2 |

Girard, Sabine

The agroecological transition involves a paradigm shift both in terms of the production and transmission of knowledge and the support professions: it is no longer a question of advising, but of supporting farmers who design and manage their own systems. Thus, new forms of cooperation between farmers and other actors are emerging, in order to exchange and co-produce knowledge in agroecology. They are characterized by: the diversity of partners (farmers, researchers, etc.); labile forms of commitment; new visions of knowledge (systemic approaches, non-linear thinking, knowledge produced in and through practice); the importance of reflection and learning processes; and their place-based dimension. They develop multiple activities: meetings between peers, practical exercises, farm experiments, etc.

How do these new forms of knowledge co-production contribute to the agroecological transition? What transformations do they allow at the level of individuals, groups and local agri-food systems? How can these forms of co-production be accompanied and supported?

To answer these questions, we mobilize the conceptual frameworks of social learning to better understand what is learned, by whom and how and of the transformative potential of social innovations to explore the effects of knowledge co-production processes.

We compare 3 cases of co-production of agroecological knowledge in the Drôme (France) : (1) on goat and sheep phyto-aromatherapy, (2) on animal health in outdoor pig farming, (3) on simplified working techniques soil and plant cover. They bring together breeders and farmers, rural development agents, researchers in biotechnology and social sciences, veterinarians and pharmacists.

After having characterized these new forms of cooperation and their activities, we highlight four learning mechanisms: by vertical or horizontal transmission of knowledge; through pragmatic inquiries (experiments and experiences); through deliberative processes (on normative orientations); through reflexive and critical processes (conditions of production and application of knowledge).

We then highlight four support tools used, which can be symbolized by: a toolbox (provision of knowledge and means); a compass (creating and guaranteeing “meaning” between individual and collective projects); a mirror (stimulating reflexivity); a hub (putting people in touch with each other).

Finally, we discuss some processual and contextual conditions that favour the transformative capacities of these initiatives: the quality of the dialogue between a diversity of actors; the explanation and sharing of values ​​and normative objectives, the ability to address internal and external political issues; and the capacity for territorial anchoring and networking over time.

Abstract ID 500 | Date: 2022-09-13 16:33 – 16:44 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room SR2 |

Lutz, Arthur (1); Smolenaars, Wouter (2); Dhaubanjar, Sanita (1,3); Jamil, Khalid (2,4); Biemans, Hester (2); Ludwig, Fulco (2); Immerzeel, Walter (1)

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a powerful concept to drive action towards a more sustainable future. However, the SDGs are formulated in a qualitative and generic way whereas specific and quantitative definitions of targets are required to steer policy and practice.

The Indus river basin is the most mountain water dependent river basin on Earth, and is a global hotspot for future climate change and socioeconomic development. The basin has the largest continuous irrigation scheme in the world, and hydropower is developing rapidly with a large hydropower potential still untapped. Therefore, water, food and energy are strongly interlinked in the basin’s water-food-energy nexus. The basin already faces insecurity of water, food and energy in the present situation, and with strong projected climate and socioeconomic change, achieving the SDGs for these three resources in the basin will be challenging.

Here we present a novel approach to translate the global SDGs for water, food and energy (SDGs 2, 6 and 7) to quantitative targets specified for the Indus river basin. Our approach is based on a resource accounting framework operating at sub-basin scale and monthly time step, combining spatially distributed models for cryosphere-hydrology in the upstream and crop-hydrology in the downstream. The approach uses ensembles of downscaled projections for three climate change scenarios driving water availability and three sets of downscaled projections of socioeconomic drivers, including population and GDP, as main drivers for the demand for water, food and energy. The accounting framework considers dependencies between the three resources and represents scenario-specific exchange of resources between sub-basins in this transboundary river basin. The approach results in scenario-specific quantitative targets for water, food and energy to be realized to achieve the three related SDGs at the river basin scale.

Abstract ID 874 | Date: 2022-09-13 16:44 – 16:55 | Type: Oral Presentation | Place: SOWI – Seminar room SR2 |

Rey, Pierre-Louis (1); Vittoz, Pascal (1); Petitpierre, Blaise (1); Adde, Antoine (1); Guisan, Antoine (1,2)

While conservation ecology was highlighted by the creation of the IUCN redlist in the 1960s, it was in the 1990s that conservationists and economists decided to integrate the services provided by nature to humans to increase motivations to conserve our environment, later renamed Nature’s contributions to people (NCP). Yet, conservation planning has been largely focused so far on landscape units (e.g. landuse, landcover, specific habitats) for their valuations rather than looking at the species composing them. Here, we wanted to fill this gap by assessing how much we could highlight the relationship between Biodiversity – here species – and NCPs. With this prospect, we used literature and expert knowledge to build an innovative contingency table between more of two thousand species (1818 tracheophytes’ species and 250 vertebrates observed into our study area Rechalp) and up to 17 NCPs (17 NCPs for tracheophytes and 9 NCPs for vertebrates’ species), this way offering a key tool to express direct and indirect linkages between species and NCPs. Based on that, we can predict and map NCPs from species and this way fuel conservation planning with crucially missing ecological information.