Building resilience into marginal agroecosystems? a global priority for socio-ecological sustainability

Abstract

A number of important risks are emerging for global agricultural ecosystems and in direct association, global socio-ecological systems. Some of these risks are associated with environmental change including climate change and ongoing resource degradation; others are associated with impacts of underdevelopment including social inequality and rural poverty; yet others are being compounded by the process of globalisation, including enhanced market and labour risks, rising input prices, agricultural homogenisation and the spread of invasive species. Of particular concern in the immediate future is that as nations’ food supplies have become increasingly interdependent, the inequalities of access to food, both between rich and poor nations and within developing societies, have also increased rapidly. The author draws from transdisciplinary agro-ecological research undertaken in Europe, Asia and Australia to argue that it is the margins that contain many of the most vulnerable communities on Earth and it is marginal socio-ecological systems that must become an immediate focus for building resilience. Where a singular modernisation paradigm could be seen to be failing to overcome malnutrition and poverty for many within those margins, an alternative, complementary human ecology development approach must be advocated and supported that incorporates the local diversity of ecosystems and the complexity of anthropogenic values and activities. Such alternative systems would not be dominated by aims of higher short-term productivity, but by goals of resilience, diversity, flexibility, risk-avoidance and longevity. Without a mainstreaming of complex local alternatives, the failures and limitations of dominant global systems in an emerging era of risk will continue to act to undermine any attempts at building a broader resilience into global society.