From April 28 - May 31, 2014 the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog will feature blog posts that focus on key resilience concepts in agricultural systems.
What is a themed month?
The Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog, sponsored by WLE, has grown into a platform for sharing opinions and sparking discussions on a diverse set of issues.
The Agriculture and Ecosystems blog’s prior themed months were successful in engaging partners in discussion and providing clarity to the topics at hand: Ecosystem Services and Restoring Landscapes. Monthly readership has doubled since the start of our themed month series, discussions have flourished, and the themes have strengthened and expanded the WLE network and partners’ visibility.
The purpose of a thematic focus is to create a clearer understanding amongst our readers of the concepts that we engage in, and of the work of CGIAR, WLE and partners. It will open a discussion space for readers to debate, discuss, and share ideas with the intention of feeding these ideas and discussions back into research.
The third themed month, A Month on Resilience, began in the end of April 2014.
This theme is being launched in association with two events: Resilience and Development: Mobilizing for Transformation in Montpellier, France May 4 - 7 and Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia May 15 - 17.
WLE and partners are hosting dialog sessions at each of these conferences. This blog month is an opportunity to take these discussions and debates to a wider audience.
Blogs will relate to sub-themes:
- Resilience under natural resource scarcity
- Resilience linked to climate variability
- Resilience to reduce poverty and raise income
- Resilience and gender
- Ecological resilience
- Social resilience
What does this mean for WLE?
The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) Director, Andrew Noble, introduces the month-long theme in this blog post:
WLE is embarking on this challenge, and is guided by two areas of thought. The first is that an ecosystem-based approach is a prerequisite to ensuring sustainable food production systems that can increase yields through more ecosystems based solutions.
Second, agriculture production operates in a dynamic and complex environment where multiple interests often collide. Thus, there is a need to ensure that issues related to gender and equity are taken into consideration so that decisions do not exclude marginalized groups including women and youth.
Increasing the resilience of agricultural ecosystems to shocks and changes will improve the likelihood of achieving global goals of feeding a growing global population, while recognizing the supporting role of healthy ecosystems to human livelihoods.
What is new and different about resilience thinking is an explicit recognition that we are coupled with natural systems (socio-ecological), and that our survival as a species depends on working with, rather than against, ecosystems.
Definition: Resilience, or socio-ecological resilience, is the capacity to persist through, adapt to, or to transform into a different kind of system when faced with external changes, or otherwise cope with the consequences.
Throughout this month WLE has invited partners and researchers to take a practical look at resilience to better understand how resilience is evolving from a research concept to development options and interventions that support sustainable development.
Join us:
If you are interested in submitting a blog post, please make sure it relates to one of the above topics and consult our blog guidelines. Send submissions to a.waldorf(at)cgiar.org.
We encourage you to comment on posts this month. See the tag resiliencemonth for related posts.
Read Resilience Blog Posts:
ResilienceMonth
Related contents
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Related publications
Mining the gaps:using machine learning to map a million data points from agricultural research from the global south
Porciello, J.; Lipper, L.; Bourne, T.; Ivanina, M.; Lin, S.; Langleben, S. 2021. Mining the gaps:using machine learning to map a million data points from agricultural research from the global south. Colombo, Sri Lanka: CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). 22p.
How can economic incentives designed for environmental conservation support a transition to sustainable and equitable agriculture?
Moros, L.; Puerto, S.; Monroy, D.; Achaval-Torre, J.; Rueda, X. 2022. How can economic incentives designed for environmental conservation support a transition to sustainable and equitable agriculture? Colombo, Sri Lanka: Commission on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification. 42p.
Annual report 2021: CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems
CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). 2022. CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems 2021 Annual Report: Connected Thinking, Compelling Solutions. Colombo, Sri Lanka: CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). 79p.Integrated rice and fish systems
Dubois, M.; Akester, M.; Ou, P.; Freed, S.; Leemans, K.; Mam, K.; de Silva, Sanjiv; Smith, B.; Teoh, S.J.; Aung, H.M.; Beveridge, M.C.M.; Marwaha, N.; Phillips, M. 2021. Integrated rice and fish systems. Penang, Malaysia: CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems.Program Brief: FISH-2021-14
Unlocking the potential of flood farming to reduce flood risks and boost dryland production in Ethiopia
Desta, Gizaw; Legesse, Gizachew; Amede, Tilahun; van F.Rooyen, Andre; Whitbread, Anthony. 2021. Unlocking the potential of flood farming to reduce flood risks and boost dryland production in Ethiopia. Colombo, Sri Lanka: CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). 10p.