Meals in the melting-pot: Immigration and dietary change in diversifying cities.

Changes in diets and food practices have implications for personal and planetary health. As these implications have become more apparent, dietary change interventions that seek to promote healthy and sustainable transitions have proliferated, and the processes and drivers of dietary change have come under increasing scrutiny. In particular, dietary acculturation has been recognised as a driver of dietary change in the context of immigration to expanding, cosmopolitan cities. However, research has largely focused on changes in the diets of immigrants and ethnic minorities. In contrast, this study contributes to our understanding of the process of dietary acculturation among the largest population groups in Vancouver, Canada - Chinese- and European-Canadians - in the context of the rapid diversification of the population and food environments in this city. This is done through the analysis of descriptive and contextualised interview and observational data, and a focus on social practices. These data show that food practices, particularly in cosmopolitan urban contexts, are constantly in flux, as diverse ethnic groups come into contact, and new generations develop their own hybrid food cultures. By demonstrating and theorising this process of dietary acculturation, this research offers insights how cultural interactions relate to dietary transitions. It presents an exploratory model for considering how food practices change through dietary acculturation, which is relevant to the design of interventions that aim to support healthier and more sustainable dietary transitions.

Indigenous uses of wild and tended plant biodiversity maintain ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes of the Terai Plains of Nepal.

BACKGROUND: Despite a rapidly accumulating evidence base quantifying ecosystem services, the role of biodiversity in the maintenance of ecosystem services in shared human-nature environments is still understudied, as is how indigenous and agriculturally dependent communities perceive, use, and manage biodiversity. The present study aims to document traditional ethnobotanical knowledge of the ecosystem service benefits derived from wild and tended plants in rice-cultivated agroecosystems, compare this to botanical surveys, and analyze the extent to which ecosystem services contribute social-ecological resilience in the Terai Plains of Nepal. METHOD: Sampling was carried out in four landscapes, 22 Village District Committees, and 40 wards in the monsoon season. Data collection was based on transects walks to collect plant specimens, structured and semi-structured interviews, and participatory fieldwork in and around home gardens, farms, and production landscapes. We asked 180 farmers to free-list vernacular names and describe use-value of wild and tended plants in rice-cultivated agroecosystems. Uses were categorized into eight broad groupings, and 61 biomedical ailment classifications. We assessed if knowledge of plant species diversity and abundance differed with regard to caste, age, and gender. RESULTS: Nepalese farmers have a deep knowledge of the use and management of the 391 vascular plant specimens identified, which provide key provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem services. Altogether, plants belong to 76 distinct plant species from 49 phylogenetic families: 56 are used to cure 61 ailments, 27 for rituals, 25 for food, 20 for timber, 17 for fuel, 17 for fodder, 11 for soil enhancement, and eight for pesticides. Four caste groups have statistically different knowledge, and younger informants report a lower average number of useful plants. CONCLUSION: Agricultural landscapes in Nepal are reservoirs of biodiversity. The knowledge of the use of wild and tended plant species in and around these farms differs by the caste and age group of land manager. Conducting research on agroecosystems will contribute to a deeper understanding of how nature is perceived by locals, to more efficient management and conservation of the breadbasket of Nepal, and to the conservation of valuable, but disappearing traditional knowledge and practice.

Using traditional ecological knowledge to understand and adapt to climate and biodiversity change on the Pacific coast of North America.

We investigate the perceptions and impacts of climate change on 11 Indigenous communities in Northern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. This coastal region constitutes an extremely dynamic and resilient social-ecological system where Indigenous Peoples have been adjusting to changing climate and biodiversity for millennia. The region is a bellwether for biodiversity changes in coastal, forest, and montane environments that link the arctic to more southerly latitudes on the Pacific coast. Ninety-six Elders and resource users were interviewed to record Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and observations regarding weather, landscape, and resource changes, especially as concerns what we term Cultural Keystone Indicator Species (CKIS), which provide a unique lens into the effects of environmental change. Our findings show that Indigenous residents of these communities are aware of significant environmental changes over their lifetimes, and an acceleration in changes over the last 15-20 years, not only in weather patterns, but also in the behaviour, distributions, and availability of important plants and animals. Within a broader ecological and social context of dwelling, we suggest ways this knowledge can assist communities in responding to future environmental changes using a range of place-based adaptation modes.

Human adaptation to biodiversity change: An adaptation process approach applied to a case study from southern India.

Adaptation to environmental change, including biodiversity change, is both a new imperative in the face of global climate change and the oldest problem in human history. Humans have evolved a wide range of adaptation strategies in response to localised environmental changes, which have contributed strongly to both biological and cultural diversity. The evolving set of locally driven, 'bottom-up' responses to environmental change is collectively termed 'autonomous adaptation,' while its obverse, 'planned adaptation,' refers to 'top-down' (from without, e.g. State-driven) responses. After reviewing the dominant vulnerability, risk, and pathway approaches to adaptation, this paper applies an alternative framework for understanding human adaptation processes and responding more robustly to future adaptation needs. This adaptation processes-to-pathways framework is then deployed to consider human responses to biodiversity change caused by an aggressive 'invasive' plant, Lantana camara L., in several agri-forest communities of southern India. The results show that a variety of adaptation processes are developing to make Lantana less disruptive and more useable-from avoidance through mobility strategies to utilizing the plant for economic diversification. However, there is currently no clear synergy or policy support to connect them to a successful long-term adaptation pathway. These results are evaluated in relation to broader trends in adaptation analysis and governance to suggest ways of improving our understanding and support for human adaptation to biodiversity change at the household, community, and regional livelisystem levels, especially in societies highly dependent on local biodiversity for their livelihoods.

Applying the robust adaptation planning (RAP) framework to Ghana's agricultural climate change adaptation regime.

This paper introduces a five-step framework, namely the Robust Adaptation Planning (RAP) framework, to plan and respond to the 'grand challenge' of climate change. RAP combines, under a unified framework, elements from robust action, participatory planning and network theory to capture the different motives, perception, and roles of actors that are important for climate change adaptation. RAP leverages existing structures and networks and involves diverse actors to plan, sequence and time strategies across multiple levels (i.e. from local to national). Actors identify adaptation interventions and important actor relations to develop wide networks, highlighting potential pathways for connecting action from central policy to local implementation (and vice versa). Comparing these proposed participatory structures with existing structures reveals actors deemed important for delivering adaptation, as well as gaps and overlaps in their relations. The end result is a robust plan covering many perspectives and local realities for both relieving immediate and adapting to longer-term consequences of climate change. We applied the RAP framework in Ghana's agricultural climate change adaptation regime to demonstrate its usefulness as a means of planning adaptation interventions in a climate-vulnerable, multi-actor and multi-level setting. The application of the RAP framework in this paper highlights how it can: (1) visualise the adaptation space (and its different components), and reduce the complexity of implementing adaptation responses; (2) offer a shared space to actors from all administrative levels to think and create collective narratives for adaptation without demanding explicit consensus and; (3) identify key actors and actions through a collaborative planning process, and allocate responsibility for the smooth delivery of adaptation interventions.

Global environmental change: local perceptions, understandings, and explanations.

Global environmental change (GEC) is an increasingly discussed phenomenon in the scientific literature as evidence of its presence and impacts continues to grow. Yet, while the documentation of GEC is becoming more readily available, local perceptions of GEC- particularly in small-scale societies-and preferences about how to deal with it, are still largely overlooked. Local knowledge and perceptions of GEC are important in that agents make decisions (including on natural resource management) based on individual perceptions. We carried out a systematic literature review that aims to provide an exhaustive state-of-the-art of the degree to and manner in which the study of local perceptions of change are being addressed in GEC research. We reviewed 126 articles found in peer-reviewed journals (between 1998 and 2014) that address local perceptions of GEC. We used three particular lenses of analysis that are known to influence local perceptions, namely (i) cognition, (ii) culture and knowledge, and (iii) possibilities for adaptation.We present our findings on the geographical distribution of the current research, the most common changes reported, perceived drivers and impacts of change, and local explanations and evaluations of change and impacts. Overall, we found the studies to be geographically biased, lacking methodological reporting, mostly theory based with little primary data, and lacking of indepth analysis of the psychological and ontological influences in perception and implications for adaptation. We provide recommendations for future GEC research and propose the development of a "meta-language" around adaptation, perception, and mediation to encourage a greater appreciation and understanding of the diversity around these phenomena across multiple scales, and improved codesign and facilitation of locally relevant adaptation and mitigation strategies.

A battle lost? Report on two centuries of invasion and management of Lantana camara L. in Australia, India and South Africa.

Recent discussion on invasive species has invigorated the debate on strategies to manage these species. Lantana camara L., a shrub native to the American tropics, has become one of the worst weeds in recorded history. In Australia, India and South Africa, Lantana has become very widespread occupying millions of hectares of land. Here, we examine historical records to reconstruct invasion and management of Lantana over two centuries and ask: Can we fight the spread of invasive species or do we need to develop strategies for their adaptive management? We carried out extensive research of historical records constituting over 75% of records on invasion and management of this species in the three countries. The records indicate that governments in Australia, India and South Africa have taken aggressive measures to eradicate Lantana over the last two centuries, but these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. We found that despite control measures, the invasion trajectory of Lantana has continued upwards and that post-war land-use change might have been a possible trigger for this spread. A large majority of studies on invasive species address timescales of less than one year; and even fewer address timescales of >10 years. An understanding of species invasions over long time-scales is of paramount importance. While archival records may give only a partial picture of the spread and management of invasive species, in the absence of any other long-term dataset on the ecology of Lantana, our study provides an important insight into its invasion, spread and management over two centuries and across three continents. While the established paradigm is to expend available resources on attempting to eradicate invasive species, our findings suggest that in the future, conservationists will need to develop strategies for their adaptive management rather than fighting a losing battle.