2014, Sietz, D.

Global analyses of vulnerability reveal generic insights into the relation between socio-ecological systems and the stress impacting upon them including climate and market variability. They thus provide a valuable basis for better understanding and comparing the evolution of socio-ecological systems from a broad perspective. However, even when reflecting sub-national differences, global assessments necessarily aggregate regional variations in the underlying conditions of vulnerability. Refinements are therefore necessary to better accommodate context-specific processes and hence facilitate vulnerability reduction. This study presents a novel methodology to refining global insights into vulnerability at a regional scale. It is based on a spatially explicit link between broad patterns of vulnerability and modelled regional smallholder development. Its application in order to better represent the drylands of Northeast Brazil reveals specific facets of smallholders' vulnerability at the municipio level, reflecting non-linear dynamics. The results show that smallholders' vulnerability was widely exacerbated in the most vulnerable areas. One key mechanism causing such a vulnerability increase involved intensifying resource degradation and the related potential for impoverishment as modelled at the regional scale. In addition, by subsequently re-orienting their livelihoods towards off-farm activities, smallholders became more sensitive to fluctuations and competition in the labour market. In contrast to these critical trends, living and environmental conditions improved in only some areas, thus indicating a decrease in vulnerability. Altogether, in differentiating the heterogeneity of resource management and smallholders' livelihoods, the regional refinement presented in this study indicates necessary adjustments to generic strategies for vulnerability reduction gained at the global scale.

2018, Cholo, T.C., Fleskens, L., Sietz, D., Peerlings, J.

Land fragmentation is high and increasing in the Gamo Highlands of southwest Ethiopia. We postulate that this substantial land fragmentation is obstructing the adoption of sustainable land management practices as climate adaptation measures. To explore this, a mixed method study was conducted with emphasis on a multivariate probit model. The results indicate that farmers adapt to climate change and variability they perceive. According to the probit model, there is no clear answer to the question whether land fragmentation facilitates or obstructs adoption of sustainable land management practices. Yet, a qualitative analysis found that farmers perceive land fragmentation as an obstacle to land improvement as adaptation strategy. Moreover, farmers invest more in land improvement on plots close to their homestead than in remote plots. However, the higher land fragmentation also promoted crop diversification, manure application and terracing. Although exogenous to farmers, we therefore suggest that land fragmentation can be deployed in climate change adaptation planning. This can be done through voluntary assembling of small neighboring plots in clusters of different microclimates to encourage investment in remote fields and to collectively optimize the benefits of fragmentation to adaptation.