Introduction
Background
The necessity of a transformation of sustainable intensification of agriculture
The way forward: transforming sustainable intensification of agriculture
Planetary boundary process | Proposed boundary level (range of uncertainty) | Current level | Politically agreed/proposed boundary | Implication for SIA
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Climate change | 350 ppm CO2 (350–450 ppm) <1 W m2 (<1–1.5 W m−2) | 396.5 ppm | Keep global average temperature rise <2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels Corresponding to ~400 ppm CO2
Translates to 1000 Gt CO2 remaining global carbon budget from 2011 onwards | 50–80% reduction of CO2 emissions from energy use by 2050 (compared to 1990); Transform agriculture from world’s single largest carbon source to major carbon sink in soils | |
Land-use change | Global | Maintain >75 % forest cover for critical Earth system regulating forest systems | 62 % | REDD+ | Drastically reduced, and in most regions zero expansion of agricultural land |
Regional | Maintain 85 % rainforest, 85 % temperate forest: 50 % boreal forest | Aichi targets (17 % land ecosystems set aside as protected areas) Proposed SDG goals on halting biodiversity loss | |||
Global freshwater use | Global | Maximum 4000 km3 year1 of consumptive use | 2600 km3 year1
| 50 % increase in water productivity by 2030 | |
Regional | Secure minimum volumes of environmental water flows in rivers 25–55 % maximum withdrawals of blue water in rivers (25–85 %) | River basin plans | Limit to runoff withdrawals in rivers | ||
Biosphere integrity | Global | Genetic diversity: keep extinction rate <10 E/MSY | 100–1000 E/MSY | Aichi targets Proposed SDG goal No 15 aimed at halting biodiversity loss | Zero loss of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes Adopt watershed and catchment management practices that build ecological landscape resilience |
Regional | Functional diversity: Biosphere integrity index >90 (90–30 %) | Aichi targets | |||
Interference N/P cycles | P Global Oceans
| P flows from land to oceans <11 Tg P year1 (11–100 Tg P year1) | ~22 Tg P year1
| Close nutrient loops; not increase overall P use, Raise N and P use per ha in developing countries; reduce in developed countries | |
P Regional freshwater
| P flows from fertilizers to erodible soils <3.72 Tg year1 (3.72–4.84 Tg year1)—Global average but regional distribution is critical for impacts | ~14 Tg P year1
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N Global | Industrial and agricultural biological fixation of N < 44 Tg N year1 (44–62 Tg N year1) | ~150 Tg N year1
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Novel entities | Reduce loading of novel, anthropogenic chemical compounds in the biosphere | Minimze leakage of agricultural chemicals |
Nature-based solutions for sustainable intensification of agriculture to build prosperity and resilience
China is experiencing some of the world’s most extreme challenges of environment and human development. There is now open recognition, at the highest levels of government, that environmental security is vital to national security and economic prosperity (Daily et al. 2013). In the spring of 2013, the National Development and Reform Commission declared China’s Dream: “to become the Ecological Civilization of the 21st Century.” The backdrop to China’s Dream is that ecologically vulnerable areas account for more than 60 % of the country and cannot sustain current human impacts. Agricultural security—and ecological security more generally—is at high risk, with severe biodiversity loss, soil erosion, flooding, sandstorms, and water and air pollution. With the world’s largest population (over 1.35 billion), the second largest land area, and the second largest economy, the stakes are high. |
In support of China’s Dream, leaders are fostering intense policy innovation, pioneering new mechanisms for achieving the twin goals of securing the environment and human wellbeing. What is learned in China will have relevance everywhere. |
Ecosystem Function Conservation Areas (EFCAs) are a new system of zoning land so as to focus conservation and restoration in places with highest return-on-investment for public benefit, to halt and reverse degradation of vital ecosystems and their life-support services, especially to poor and vulnerable people (NRDC 2013; CCICED 2014). The zoning is also meant to help secure people from flooding, improve drinking and irrigation water supply, maintain efficient hydropower production, protect biodiversity, stabilize climate, reduce sand storms and soil loss, and create more sustainable agricultural systems (see below figure).
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Figure showing China’s new Ecosystem Function Conservation Areas (EFCAs), zoned to protect nationally critical biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to alleviate poverty, now span 49 % of the country. The Natural Capital Project’s InVEST models were co-developed with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and are used to define the locations of EFCAs. China has invested over US$150 billion in restoring natural capital since 2000, through a suite of pioneering initiatives. Now entering a new phase of investment, over 200 million people are being paid to perform restoration and conservation activities. Figure courtesy of H. Zheng and Z. Ouyang, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (MEP & CAS 1998; State Council of China 2010). |
EFCAs are also a way of focusing poverty alleviation efforts in places where the stakes are highest, both for local residents and for distant beneficiaries of ecosystem services. EFCAs encompass rural areas in deep poverty that face great challenges in harmonizing people and nature. The government aims to change the economic structure of these regions to increase local household income while making local households’ rural livelihoods more sustainable. |
Implementing EFCAs involves new, experimental compensation mechanisms, whereby regional beneficiaries—for example, Beijing—invest in the transformation to more sustainable livelihoods and improvements in wellbeing among the landholders producing the ecosystem services. EFCAs are expanding in both biophysical and financial terms. They spanned 27 % of the country in 2008, 40 % in 2010, and grew to 49 % of the country in 2015. Financial transfer payments increased from 6 billion Yuan RMB (to 221 counties) in 2008 to 48 billion Yuan RMB (to 512 counties) in 2014, for a total of 200 billion Yuan RMB (USD 32 billion) since inception. |
While EFCA initiatives are driving massive scientific and policy shifts, there is still little understanding of their local costs of implementation, their success in reversing environmental degradation, or their effects on poor and vulnerable populations. The initiatives represent a new paradigm for integrating conservation and human development, in China and potentially elsewhere. Success hinges on careful testing, evaluation, and refinement. |
Further, while the idea of a green GDP has been discussed for decades, China is the first nation to implement it. In March 2014, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China approved reporting Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) alongside Gross Domestic Product at all levels of government, from local to national. GEP is the total value of final ecosystem goods and services to human welfare, including production of agricultural goods, as well as generation of regulating services and cultural values (Ouyang et al. 2013). The objective of GEP accounting is to determine the total economic value of ecosystem contributions to human wellbeing, to build the links between ecosystem service providers and beneficiaries, and to assess the achievements of ecological protection and government management, instead of only GDP. |
In Karnataka, southwest India, the local electric company is required to buy back surplus solar power from farmers—similar to programs in parts of Germany, Japan, and the United States. The buyback policy, signed by Karnataka’s governor in September 2014, is consistent with recommendations to treat solar power as a ‘cash crop.’ The rationale is that if farmers can make money by selling excess power, they then will have an economic incentive to irrigate their crops efficiently, thus helping to conserve groundwater and energy use. |
Despite inheriting the world’s largest canal irrigation network built during British colonial rule, India has become the biggest groundwater irrigation economy, with nearly 20 million electric and diesel pumps irrigating more than 67 million hectares of land a year. Heavily subsidized pumps have driven groundwater depletion in western India and other parts of the country. An unreliable electric grid, bankrupted utilities, and power theft have contributed to the problem. |
India’s National Solar Mission, which aspires to develop 22 gigawatts of solar power by 2020, largely by constructing massive solar power plants. However, India could achieve its solar goal with 2 million solar irrigation pumps instead and “put cash in farmers’ hands” in the process. The approach that is being promoted in Karnataka is presented. This approach of selling excess electricity back into the national grid could be used elsewhere in developing and emerging economies to drive significant decreases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels used to pump groundwater, a shift to more sustainable utilization of groundwater, as well as enhanced food security.
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Figure addressing the challenge of over-exploited groundwater reserves in India through the co-generation of power from solar panels for pump sets to pump water for irrigation and satisfy national energy requirements in India |
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Plan and implement farm-level practices in the context of cross-scale interactions with catchments, biomes, and the landscape as a whole. Maximize farm-level productivity by maximizing ecological functions, from moisture feedback to disease abatement, across scales.
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Integrate ecosystem-based strategies with practical farm practices, where natural capital (soil, biodiversity, nutrients, water) and multi-functional ecosystems are used as tools to develop productive and resilient farming systems.
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Develop system-based farming practices that integrate land, water, nutrient, livestock, and crop management.
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Utilize crop varieties and livestock breeds with a high ratio of productivity to use of externally and internally derived inputs.
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Adopt circular approaches to managing natural resources (e.g., nutrient recycling) and mixing organic and inorganic sources of nutrients.
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Harness agro-ecological processes such as nutrient cycling, biological nitrogen fixation, allelopathy, predation, and parasitism.
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Assist farmers in overcoming immediate SIA adoption barriers and build incentives for their sustained adoption, rendering the ecological approach profitable in the long run (See Box 2).
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Build robust institutions of small farmers, led especially by women, which enable an equitable interface with both markets and government.
Sustainable intensification can deliver more food, better ecosystems, and improved livelihoods
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The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (2007) showed that there is a large untapped potential in upgrading rainfed agriculture in savannah regions (covering 40 % of the Earth’s surface) by enhancing rainwater harvesting. As an example, in semi-arid areas of Niger and Burkina Faso, small-scale farmers use planting pits to harvest rain water and rehabilitate degraded land for the cultivation of millet and sorghum. In Burkina Faso alone, these practices have helped rehabilitate up to 300 000 hectares of land and produce an additional 80 000 tons of food per year (Reij et al. 2009). In addition, in southern Niger, farmers are innovatively regenerating and multiplying valuable trees on their lands, and this has improved about 5 million hectares while producing more than 500 000 additional tons of food per year resulting in improved food security for about 3 million people. Other ecosystem benefits registered included reduced wind speed and evaporation (Reij et al. 2009), and incomes for women from different products of baobab up to $210 per household per year.
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In Ethiopia, farmers capture flood water and runoff from ephemeral rivers, roadsides, and hillsides using temporary stone and earth embankments, to irrigate crops and pasture. In the central and western part of the country, total irrigated land is approximately 65 500 ha, and some 344 000 (approximately 90 %) of the households have benefited from doubling of sorghum yields as well as 75 % sustainable expansion production of pepper, onions, and tomatoes (Binyam and Desale 2015). Other ecosystem benefits have included improved moisture and fertility in the cultivated fields and reduction of downstream flooding (Awulachew 2010; Liniger et al. 2011).
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In Brazil, conservation agriculture (CA) which is practiced on over 25 million ha (accounting for over 25.5 % of arable land) is defeating erosion and drought. For example, severe drought in 2008–2009 caused an average yield loss of 50 % among conventional maize producers; producers who applied CA, however, experienced smaller losses of around 20 %, demonstrating greater resilience of the latter system (Altieri et al. 2012).
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Too often, agro-ecosystems have been considered as separate from other natural ecosystems and insufficient attention has been paid to the way in which services can flow to and from the agro-ecosystem to surrounding ecosystems. Recent research (Poppy et al. 2014) illustrates that an ecosystem services approach to food security using a case study from the Zomba district of Malawi allows key issues in food security/environmental stability to be addressed, including scale, the identity of beneficiaries, trade-offs, and the winners and losers from management and mitigation strategies. The study illustrates the power of an ecosystem services approach to strategic land-use planning and implementation.
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Science and innovation that strengthens sustainability, while improving productivity and on-farm profits, is possible. Such systems have been developed in Australia (Williams and McKenzie 2008a, b) and elsewhere and have been adopted by grain growers who are moving increasingly to conservation farming techniques, such as no-till farming—improved agronomy through more sophisticated crop rotations to minimize nutrient leakage and maximize nutrient cycling, interfaced with integrated weed and pest management options that rely less on chemicals.
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In the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, a million farmers have come together, in an FAO-supported project, to restore depleted groundwater tables, adopting an approach to governing the commons delineated by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom (World Bank 2010). Food security is increased, utilizing ecosystem services, without exhausting the endangered resource.
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Rehabilitating degraded landscapes in the Highlands is a high-priority of the Ethiopian government and its partners. Research by CGIAR Centers and programs working with national partners has helped lay the groundwork. An ICRISAT-led activity is promoting integrated watershed management in the Yewol watershed in the Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia. By strengthening local capacity, facilitating collective action, using research to identify niches for integration of technologies at farm and landscape scales, and introducing system compatible technologies, the project has led to improved productivity, crop diversification, improved downstream water availability, and strengthened livelihoods for an estimated 15 000 beneficiaries (Evaluation of WLE 2016, p. 52).