Diana Sietz

A new method for analysing socio-ecological patterns of vulnerability

This paper presents a method for the analysis of socio-ecological patterns of vulnerability of people being at risk of losing their livelihoods as a consequence of global environmental change. This method fills a gap in methodologies for vulnerability analysis by providing generalizations of the factors that shape vulnerability in specific socio-ecological systems and showing their spatial occurrence. The proposed method consists of four steps that include both quantitative and qualitative analyses. To start, the socio-ecological system exposed to global environmental changes that will be studied needs to be determined. This could, for example, be farmers in drylands, urban populations in coastal areas and forest-dependent people in the tropics. Next, the core dimensions that shape vulnerability in the socio-ecological system of interest need to be defined. Subsequently, a set of spatially explicit indicators that reflect these core dimensions is selected. Cluster analysis is used for grouping the indicator data. The clusters found, referred to as vulnerability profiles, describe different typical groupings of conditions and processes that create vulnerability in the socio-ecological system under study, and their spatial distribution is provided. Interpretation and verification of these profiles is the last step in the analysis. We illustrate the application of this method by analysing the patterns of vulnerability of (smallholder) farmers in drylands. We identify eight distinct vulnerability profiles in drylands that together provide a global overview of different processes taking place and sub-national detail of their distribution. By overlaying the spatial distribution of these profiles with specific outcome indicators such as conflict occurrence or migration, the method can also be used to understand these phenomena better. Analysis of vulnerability profiles will in a next step be used as a basis for identifying responses to reduce vulnerability, for example, to facilitate the transfer of best practices to reduce vulnerability between different places.

Armed conflict distribution in global drylands through the lens of a typology of socio-ecological vulnerability

Motivated by an inconclusive debate over implications of resource scarcity for violent conflict, and common reliance on national data and linear models, we investigate the relationship between socio-ecological vulnerability and armed conflict in global drylands on a subnational level. Our study emanates from a global typology of smallholder farmers’ vulnerability to environmental and socioeconomic stresses in drylands. This typology is composed of eight typical value combinations of variables indicating environmental scarcities, resource overuse, and poverty-related factors in a widely subnational spatial resolution. We investigate the relationships between the spatial distribution of these combinations, or vulnerability profiles, and geocoded armed conflicts, and find that conflicts are heterogeneously distributed according to these profiles. Four profiles distributed across low- and middle-income countries comprise all drylands conflicts. Comparing models for conflict incidence using logit regression and receiver operator characteristic analysis based on (1) the set of all seven indicators as independent variables and (2) a single, only vulnerability profile-based variable proves that the nonlinear typology-based variable is the better explanans for conflict incidence. Inspection of the profiles’ value combinations makes this understandable: A systematic explanation of conflict incidence and absence across all degrees of natural resource endowments is only reached through varying importance of poverty and resource overuse depending on the level of endowment. These are nonlinear interactions between the explaining variables. Conflict does not generally increase with resource scarcity or overuse. Comparison with conflict case studies showed both good agreement with our results and promise in expanding the set of indicators. Based on our findings and supporting literature, we argue that part of the debate over implications of resource scarcity for violent conflict in drylands may be resolved by acknowledging and accounting for nonlinear processes.

Resilience in the rural Andes: critical dynamics, constraints and emerging opportunities

The Andes present an ideal learning space to draw lessons on existing and emerging resilience challenges and opportunities. Andean people and societies have coevolved with the unique high-mountain contexts in which they live, sometimes in altitudes of more than 3800 m. The high-mountain topography, related altitudinal gradients and geomorphologic heterogeneity create highly diverse microclimatic zones, ecosystems and landscape niches which Andean farmers use in complementary ways to produce crops and raise livestock (Murra 1975; Troll 1968; Stadel 2008; Sietz et al. 2012). In particular, the Andes are the centre of origin of potatoes and a hotspot of agrobiodiversity where Andean farmers manage and maintain a multitude of potato, maize, root and tuber varieties (Zimmerer 1991; De Haan and Juarez 2010). Differing strongly in agro-ecological requirements and stress resistance, this diversity of crops allows farmers to distribute efficiently harvest failure risks caused by local weather extremes, pests and diseases. Complex knowledge systems, social coping mechanisms involving complementarity and reciprocity, such as ayni and minka, and highland–lowland interactions further highlight Andean people’s capacity to prepare for and survive perturbations (Mayer 2002). Although historical achievements including irrigation systems, domestication of cameloids (llama and alpaca) and crop preservation techniques facilitated the development of ancient civilisations in the Andes (Troll 1943; Erickson 1992; Dillehay and Kolata 2004), modern Andean people face serious challenges in achieving food security and wellbeing (CIESIN 2005; Sietz et al. 2011, 2012; FAO 2013; Kok et al. 2016). Compared with the surrounding lowlands, the Andes are more strongly affected by climate variability, which is closely tied to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (Vuille et al. 2000; Garreaud and Aceituno 2001), and climate change as indicated by the widespread melting of glaciers and hydrological changes observed in recent decades (Magrin et al. 2014). In addition, rural Andean communities are often marginalised (Forero and Ezpeleta 2007; Feola et al. 2015) and, as such, excluded from decision-making processes that mainly take place in national capital cities, reflecting widespread rural–urban disparities. Physical remoteness, together with cultural, social, political and economic marginality, often promoted by urban elites, not only results in poor access to information or financial and technical resources; it also leads to limited accessibility to these communities during emergencies caused by natural disasters. Ongoing climate change and economic globalisation will further aggravate existing constraints and inequalities in the future (CAN et al. 2007; Sillmann et al. 2013; Kaenzig and Piguet 2014; Neukom et al. 2015), such that socio-ecological systems in the Andes are likely to face growing challenges at a possibly unprecedented pace (Perez et al. 2010). In addition, the Andes have become ensnared between neoliberal development policies on the one hand and the experiments of autonomous development alternatives on the other. Since the 1970s neoliberal development policies, including trade liberalisation, have been implemented at & Diana Sietz diana.sietz@wur.nl

Archetypes of Climate Vulnerability: a Mixed-method Approach Applied in the Peruvian Andes

Farm household systems (FHSs) in the Andes handle climate-related hazards such as frost and droughts with risk-coping and risk-management strategies based on the adaptive capital available to them. Nevertheless, a higher frequency of climatic stressors observed during the last few decades is challenging their capacity to adapt at a pace fast enough to keep up with the changes in external conditions. This increases the demand on the scientific community from policy and decision makers to investigate climate impacts and propose viable adaptation pathways at the local and regional scales. Better understanding heterogeneity in climate vulnerability is an important step towards addressing this demand. We present here a mixed-method approach to assessing archetypes or patterns of climate vulnerability that combines qualitative tools from participatory rural assessment approaches and quantitative techniques including cluster analysis. We illustrate this by looking at a case study of the Central Andes of Peru. The operationalization of the methods revealed differential factors for climate vulnerability, allowing us to categorize FHS archetypes according to the differences in those underlying factors. The archetypes differed mainly according to farm area, agro-ecological zones, irrigation, off-farm employment and climate-related damages. The results suggest that the approach is useful for explaining vulnerability as a function of recurrent internal and external determinants of vulnerability and developing related adaptive strategies.