A social-ecological assessment of food security and biodiversity conservation in Ethiopia

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

We studied food security and biodiversity conservation from a social-ecological perspective in southwestern Ethiopia. Specialist tree, bird, and mammal species required large, undisturbed forest, supporting the notion of ‘land sparing’ for conservation. However, our findings also suggest that forest areas should be embedded within a multifunctional landscape matrix (i.e. ‘land sharing’), because farmland also supported many species and ecosystem services and was the basis of diversified livelihoods. Diversified livelihoods improved smallholder food security, while lack of access to capital assets and crop raiding by wild forest animals negatively influenced food security. Food and biodiversity governance lacked coordination and was strongly hierarchical, with relatively few stakeholders being highly powerful. Our study shows that issues of livelihoods, access to resources, governance and equity are central when resolving challenges around food security and biodiversity. A multi-facetted, social-ecological approach is better able to capture such complexity than the conventional, two-dimensional land sparing versus sharing framework.

OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftEcosystems and People
Jahrgang17
Ausgabenummer1
Seiten (von - bis)400-410
Anzahl der Seiten11
ISSN2639-5908
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 2021

Bibliographische Notiz

This article is part of the following collections: Celebrating 10 years of the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society

This work was supported by the FP7 People: AB was funded by H2020 Marie-Curie-Actions, project number 661780. JF was funded by the European Research Council, project number 614278. Most of the research synthesized here was funded through a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council to JF. AB was funded through a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. We thank two anonymous reviewers and the handling editor for constructive suggestions on previous drafts of this manuscript.

Diese Publikation wurde gefördert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg.

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