Reconciling conservation, land use and local livelihoods

There has been much scientific debate on how to secure the food and (biomass) energy needs of a growing world population without destroying Nature further. The answer to this question can greatly vary, according to which perspective one chooses. Some perspectives prioritise protecting Nature, understood as an entity fully separated from humans, and favour strict conservation approaches that keep people and their activities out of protected areas. Critics of this approach denounce the increasing trends towards Fortress Conservation and argue that Nature should be conceived as a system that includes people and is co-produced by people. Examples for this are cultural landscapes and agrobiodiversity, which are intricately associated with specific forms of farming and conservation management.

Related questions are: how should we use land and natural resources, for which purposes and who is to decide?

For some, the purpose of agriculture should primarily be to feed populations in local and regional food circuits, for others to produce vast quantities of multi-purpose agricultural commodities to be sold (or even speculated upon) on global markets.

The way we conceptualize Nature and Agriculture strongly influences the way land is used. Further, the way we design and manage our agricultural systems enhances or restricts our capacity to protect surroundings ecosystems. Thus, agroecological coffee gardens and diversified systems allow more biodiversity than conventional tree plantations or agroindustrial monocultures of cereals and oil seeds.

Certification standards can foster more environmentally friendly agricultural systems. However, the global agricultural market is not favourable to peasant farmers, who can hardly negotiate the terms under which they sell their crops. More often than not, peasant farmers cannot make a decent living out of their activity, and at worse may lose control over their land and labour. Producer cooperatives can play a substantial role in pushing peasant farmers’ agendas and local rural development, but they face many internal and external challenges that can lead them to bankruptcy.

Key challenges are:

• to re-valorise peasant agriculture socially, culturally and economically
• to truly include social and environmental externalities in the costs of agroindustrial production
• to profoundly transform the current balance of power in agricultural and food systems towards peasant communities.