Impact of forest landscape restoration in combating soil erosion in the Lake Abaya catchment, Southern Ethiopia.

As an effect of forest degradation, soil erosion is among Ethiopia's most pressing environmental challenges and a major threat to food security where it could potentially compromise the ecosystem functions and services. As the effects of soil erosion intensify, the landscape's capacity to support ecosystem functions and services is compromised. Exploring the ecological implications of soil erosion is crucial. This study investigated the soil loss and land degradation in the Lake Abaya catchment to explore forest landscape restoration (FLR) implementation as a possible countermeasure to the effects. The study used a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) to determine the potential annual soil loss and develop an erosion risk map. Results show that 13% of the catchment, which accounts for approximately 110,000 ha, is under high erosion risk of exceeding the average annual tolerable soil loss of 10 t/ha/year. Allocation of land on steep slopes to crop production is the major reason for the calculated high erosion risk in the catchment. A scenario-based analysis was implemented following the slope-based land-use allocation proposal indicated in the Rural Land Use Proclamation 456/2005 of Ethiopia. The scenario analysis resulted in a reversal erosion effect whereby an estimated 3000 t/ha/year of soil loss in the catchment. Thus, FLR activities hold great potential for minimizing soil loss and contributing to supporting functioning and providing ecosystem services. Tree-based agroforestry systems are among the key FLR measures championed in highly degraded landscapes in Ethiopia. This study helps policymakers and FLR implementors identify erosion risk areas for future FLR activities. Thereby, it contributes to achieving the country's restoration commitment.

Shaping farmers' beliefs, risk perception and adaptation response through Construct Level Theory in the southwest Iran.

Due to the severe effects of climate change on the agricultural sector, urgent action is required on the part of farmers and is, indeed, critical to reducing climate change impacts. However, reports globally revealed farmers' engagement in climate change adaptation is still insufficient, ambivalent, and inconsistent and farmers do not consider adaptation to be urgent. Researchers have argued that this issue is rooted in psychological biases beside other factors. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate how psychological distance determines climate change beliefs, risk perception and adaptation strategies among Iranian farmers. A cross-sectional paper-based survey was conducted in the Dasht-e Azadegan county of Khuzestan province in southwest Iran. The study sample consisted of 250 farmers selected through a multi-stage random sampling process. An expert panel review and a pilot study were conducted to confirm convergent validity and reliability of the scales. The results confirm that all four dimensions of psychological distance influence water management adaptation strategies and non-farm activities. Moreover, all psychological dimensions, except the temporal dimension, affect adaptation in farming management. Thus, making climate change more proximal to decision makers could be a strategic way of encouraging individuals to take adaptive actions. This study emphasizes that concepts of psychological distance can be applied to help organizations (e.g., agriculture extension services) to understand farmers' risk perceptions and responses to climate change impacts and improve risk communication to better engage farmers in climate action.

Future-proofing ecosystem restoration through enhancing adaptive capacity.

Social-ecological ecosystem restoration involves interacting challenges, including climate change, resource overexploitation and political instability. To prepare for these and other emerging threats, we synthesized key restoration and social-ecological systems literature and derived three guiding themes that can help to enhance the adaptive capacity of restoration sites: (i) work with the existing system, (ii) create self-sustaining, adaptive systems, and (iii) foster diversity and participation. We propose a two-step approach and provide an example from Rwanda detailing the application of these principles. While site-specific activities have to be designed and implemented by local practitioners, our synthesis can guide forward-thinking restoration practice.

Personal and Professional Mitigation Behavioral Intentions of Agricultural Experts to Address Climate Change.

Mitigation activities, whether at the personal level relating to lifestyle or on the professional level, especially in the agriculture sector, are widely encouraged by scientists and policymakers. This research empirically analyses the association between agricultural experts' perceptions about climate change and their intention to implement climate change mitigation. Based on survey data, individuals' reported intention to implement personal and professional mitigation behavior is explained using a conceptual model. The structural equation modeling results suggest that the new ecological paradigm (NEP), institutional trust, and risk salience indirectly influence climate change mitigation intentions. The findings indicate that risk perception, personal efficacy, responsibility, belief in climate change occurring, and low psychological distance trigger a significantly greater intention to support personal and professional mitigation behaviors. However, the research framework is much stronger at predicting the intention to mitigate climate change in professional affairs compared to personal activities. The findings suggest that hypothetical distance factors only have a moderating effect on the relationship between higher climate change environmental values, institutional trust, risk salience, and mitigation intention. This paper analytically explores the regulating role of risk perception, hypothetical distance, personal efficacy, and responsibility between institutional trust, risk salience, and the NEP as independent concepts and intention to personal and professional mitigation behaviors as dependent variables. The findings of the study have important implications for encouraging personal and professional mitigation behaviors.

Governing COVID-19: analyzing the effects of policy responses on food systems in Tanzania.

Background: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic increased debates on global public health concerns. From early 2020 to 2022, globally, life was upended in the wake of the pandemic. Industries of all kinds were forced to rapidly changed how they work, including agriculture. Particularly for smallholder farmers in developing countries, the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with climate change effects, negatively affected their livelihoods. Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 is unrealistic if immediate efforts are not made to address the existential threats facing smallholder farmers. This study analyzes COVID-19 governance and policy responses, examining its effects on smallholder farmers in the south and east of Tanzania using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Results: Findings show that mobility restrictions imposed by other countries and fears of the Tanzanian people leading to voluntary isolation resulted in an amended structure of farmers' markets: Reductions in exports, imports and in the purchasing power of the local people followed. Food security was diminished as food availability on the market level was reduced due to mobility restrictions. The impact of COVID-19 resulted in more than 85% of smallholder farmers experiencing an income reduction, thus also increasing the pre-existing vulnerability of these communities. Findings show that farms producing non-exported crops had less severe income reductions and could cope better. The results indicate that only 20% of smallholder farmers started using digital information technology to gather information since physical movements were restricted. Access to technology remained limited in rural areas. Even during the COVID-19 crises, farmers' concerns about the vulnerability of their food systems include non-COVID-19 causes, such as climate change. Conclusions: Although Tanzania did not impose a total lockdown, the country was affected by COVID-19, partly via policies of other countries. Impacts included: (i) a decline in local markets as smallholder farmers had fewer trading partners from neighboring states; (ii) a loss of employment opportunities due to the absence of both local and external trade; (iii) reductions of farm output and income; (iv) a lack of agricultural inputs (fertilizer etc.) that are usually imported; (v) fear to continue farming activities due to news about COVID-19 spreading; and (vi) reduction of work efficiency because of a lack of social gathering due to voluntary isolation.While COVID-19 compelled policymakers to make urgent decisions to ensure stable food supply chains, the fundamental task is to address these immediate disruptions while also investing in the long-term goal of a resilient, sustainable, and productive global food system. This can be achieved by adopting a policy package that includes investments in technological development, access to small long-term loans, and regulatory reforms, with which governments can create conditions supporting productive, sustainable, and resilient food systems that can withstand future shocks.

Understanding systemic land use dynamics in conflict-affected territories: The cases of Cesar and Caquetá, Colombia.

In the Colombian context, disputes over natural resources, mainly over land, and poor governance are intertwined with armed conflict. Although efforts to address this situation, including the 2016 peace agreement signed between Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, by Spanish acronym) are underway, these disputes continue, affecting land use dynamics. Understanding the complexity and trends in land use conflicts, as well as the specific regional characteristics underlying differing land use changes across regions, is critical. This article aims to systematically understand land use dynamics in two contrasting and conflict-affected territories in Colombia, Caquetá and Cesar, thus identifying entry points to address land-use conflicts at the regional level. To address the complexity of each regional case, we apply a methodology based on system thinking to capture the interconnections between socio-economic and environmental system components and their land use dynamics. Results depicted through causal loop diagrams not just show the cascade of environmental, social, and economic failures resulting from land use changes in these two conflict-affected territories but also suggest that land tenure systems innovations and the promotion of sustainable land use interventions at the regional level can reverse the consequences of the land use changes. Thus, future actions addressing land use conflicts must be context-dependent, tackling the root and structural causes.

Investigating the Adoption of Precautionary Behaviors Among Young Rural Adults in South Iran During COVID-19.

COVID-19 is an unprecedented challenge for public health worldwide. Reducing the incidence of the disease requires protective measures to prevent virus transmission. Understanding those factors influencing preventive behavior is the first step in preventing the spread of the disease. This study investigates factors affecting youth intention and preventive behaviors in the face of COVID-19 through the health belief model by using a cross-sectional survey collected through an online questionnaire. The sample comprises 304 rural youth in South Iran who were selected through a random sampling technique. The results reveal that perceived severity, perceived benefits, public health beliefs, perceived self-efficacy, and the cue to act positively and significantly affect preventive behaviors. The model explains 59% of variance changes in rural youth preventive behaviors during COVID-19. Cue to action is the strongest and self-efficacy was the weakest determinant of youth's preventive behavior. This study confirms that the HBM framework has appropriate predictive power and is an effective tool for investigating preventive behaviors during COVID-19. These results provide important policy implications for the development of policies that aim to avoid the further spread of COVID-19 between young citizens.

Analyzing influencing factors to scale up agroforestry systems in Colombia: A comparative ex-ante assessment of cacao farming and cattle ranching in two regions.

Agroforestry systems (AFS) are proved to enhance sustainable land management. Thus, there is increasing demand for effective ways to scale up AFS so that more people can benefit. Consequently, this study assesses the scaling-up potential of agroforestry systems (AFS) using cacao farming and cattle ranching in Caquetá and Cesar, Colombia, as examples. An ex-ante assessment using the ScalA tool is conducted through interviews with AFS experts from institutions promoting AFS. Using a comparative approach, results reveal that AFS have different scaling-up potential depending on the type of farming system and location characteristics. In our case, it is slightly higher for cacao farming than for cattle ranching in both regions and it is higher in Caquetá than in Cesar for both systems. Factors hindering the scaling-up potential for both regions are economic conditions at the local and regional levels since there is a lack of stable and differentiated markets to absorb AFS products. In contrast, the scaling-up potential in both regions is increased by the factors related to the capacity of the organizations that promote AFS and the attitudes of local communities toward them. The study generates information about factors that may hinder or foster AFS scaling-up, including not just the capacities and mechanisms to promote them but also the enabling conditions. This contributes to prioritizing AFS interventions and better allocating their resources to increase their chances of successful scaling-up. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10457-022-00730-1.

Assessing impacts of COVID-19 and their responses among smallholder farmers in Brazil, Madagascar and Tanzania.

This study investigates the impacts of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on smallholder farmers and their coping strategies in three contrasting Low- and Middle-Income Countries. The case studies include Brazil (South region), Madagascar (Atsimo Atsinanana region), and Tanzania (Morogoro/Eastern Tanzania). These countries were chosen because i) the economies are strongly influenced by the agricultural sector; ii) their national food security is strongly affected by smallholder production, and, iii) they represent a set of contrasting government responses to COVID-19 including the denial of the pandemic. Data were collected through semi-structured household interviews in all three countries in rural areas. COVID-19 induced effects were found in all three countries, including in Brazil and Tanzania where both national governments initially neglected the existence of COVID-19 and introduced few containment measures only. Here, mobility and trade restrictions of other countries impact also on agricultural trade and production in countries in which governments took less action to COVID-19 and also people remained home and practiced social distancing even if no official government policy was issued. The findings in all three countries suggest that the COVID-19 crisis had negatively affected smallholders' agricultural production, leading to a vicious cycle of low production, low incomes, and higher food insecurity. Results of this study raise the thorny issue of how best to balance containment of pandemic and future shocks against the well-being of the vulnerable rural population in lower- and middle-income countries; especially considering also the degree of global interconnected and the potential of polices to effect people beyond the national scale.

Factors affecting smallholder farmers' technical and non-technical adaptation responses to drought in Iran.

Farmers adopt a range of technical and non-technical adaptation behaviors (TANAB) to alleviate the negative effects of drought. Understanding this adaptation behavior and its determinants is essential for improving adaptation capacity and promoting sustainable agriculture. In this study, we investigated the factors affecting TANAB using the Health Belief Model (HBM) as a theoretical framework. A survey was conducted of 320 farmers in Dashtestan County, Bushehr Province, southern Iran, on the shores of Persian Gulf. We used multi-stage stratified random sampling to select the research samples and applied structural equation modeling to analyze the determinants of TANAB. The findings revealed that the self-efficacy variable is the most important predictor of TANAB. As well as self-efficacy, other determinants of technical adaptation behaviors (TAB) are perceived barriers, severity, and susceptibility. Self-efficacy and cue to action were found to determine non-technical adaptive behaviors (NAB). This study indicates the differences between the determinants of TAB and NAB and emphasizes the key role of self-efficacy. The results of this study have implications for policymakers in the agricultural sector and can help in the development of interventionist policies to improve rural development in response to environmental crises. Governments and policymakers need to reinforce capacity-building potential for agricultural extension systems and adaptation training through information and communication technologies. This investment in education is critical for sustainable agricultural development and encourages farmers to adopt appropriate drought strategies aiming reducing farmers' vulnerability.

The Impact of Livelihood Assets on the Food Security of Farmers in Southern Iran during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The impact of COVID-19 on farmers' livelihoods and food security is a key concern in rural communities. This study investigates the impacts of the livelihood assets on the food security of rural households during the COVID-19 pandemic and determines those factors related to food security. The population of this study includes rural households in Dashtestan county, Bushehr province, in southern Iran. Based on the Krejcie and Morgan sampling table, 293 households were selected using the convenience sampling method. To measure food security, the American standard index and ordinal regression are used to analyze the factors. The results of the food security situation show highly precarious and food insecure situations among the studied rural households. The regression analysis shows that the most important assets affecting the food security of rural households under COVID-19 are financial, psychological, physical, and human assets, respectively. The results can help rural development planners and policymakers to improve both livelihoods and food security in rural communities, not just during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in its aftermath.

Food Insecurity and Malnutrition in Rural Tanzania: Mapping Perceptions for Social Learning.

In Tanzania, a high level of hunger persists. Several factors compound a complex scenario of food insecurity. Contextual aspects at the community level can influence the maintenance of the vulnerable local conditions. This article aims to better understand these aspects by investigating community problem perceptions in n = 04 remote rural villages in Tanzania. Furthermore, how to include community perceptions as a pedagogical element of food security projects is discussed. The methodology consists of three steps: preparatory exploration; household survey (n = 663); and pedagogical workshops (n = 270). The main results indicate that inhabitants of the four villages identify and describe their problems differently. We discovered food insecurity's hidden factors. Community problem perceptions and local knowledge play fundamental roles in critical food security, despite the environmental conditions' effect (lack of infrastructure, water scarcity). The pedagogical process of Codification and Decoding of hunger situations can generate more effective educational programs for social learning.

Cognitive theory of stress and farmers' responses to the COVID 19 shock; a model to assess coping behaviors with stress among farmers in southern Iran.

Better understanding the capacity of farmers to react to the COVID-19 pandemic shock requires analyzing their coping mechanisms. This study investigates the relationship between coping style and coping behaviors with COVID-19, identifying the psychological factors affecting them based on the cognitive theory of stress. Perceived government support is added to the original model as a predictor for coping style and behavior. Cross sectional survey data was collected among farmers living in Dashtestan county of Bushehr province in southern Iran (N = 377). To determine the strength of the model, structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed. We find that demand appraisal and perceived collective efficacy have a positive, direct, and significant effect on coping style and an indirect effect on behaviors. Coping style and perceived government support are significantly related to behavior. The research model predicts 63% and 31% of variance changes in coping style and behavior, respectively. The results of this study provide empirical evidence on how people cope with the COVID-19 shock as well as useful information for designing and implementing health and social programs and policies in the agricultural communities.