Food security at the forest-agriculture interface: A complex systems analysis of ecosystem services trade-offs and tipping points

Addressing the sustainability of natural resource management and rural livelihoods requires integrated thinking across disciplines. This Partnership and Project Development project brought together expertise in anthropology and the social sciences, economics, ecology, risk management, spatial planning, climate change and complexity sciences to design and integrate new and existing models and methods to analyse how dynamic stocks and flows of ecological services at the landscape scale translate to local-level nutrition and welfare.

A key focus of the study was to examine the link between ecosystem services and impacts on nutritional and socio-economic status and maternal and child health outcomes. Activities were primarily focused around three workshops, held in the UK, Malawi and Colombia. The workshops brought together the partners, and other stakeholders, including local communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and policy-makers to design a new integrating framework to be tested in two local case study areas in Amazonia and Africa. These areas are characterised by mosaics of forests and agricultural lands. The framework aimed to explore the uncertainty, volatility, trade-offs and tipping points associated with managing these dynamic landscapes under climate change and social-economic change. This Partnership and Project Development grant resulted in the development of the ASSETS project – Attaining Sustainable Services from Ecosystems through Trade-off Scenarios (NE/J002267/1).