Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-6 (section)

=== 6.1.2 Framing social challenges and acknowledging enabling factors ===

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In this section we outline the approach used in assessing the evidence for interactions between response options to deliver climate mitigation and adaptation, to prevent desertification and land degradation, and to enhance food security. Overall, while defining and presenting the response options to meet these goals is the primary goal of this chapter, we note that these options must not be considered only as technological interventions, or one-off actions. Rather, they need to be understood as responses to socio- ecological challenges whose success will largely depend on external enabling factors. There have been many previous efforts at compiling positive response options that meet numerous SDGs, but which have not resulted in major shifts in implementation; for example, online databases of multiple response options for sustainable land management (SLM), adaptation, and other objectives have been compiled by many donor agencies, including World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT), Climate Adapt, and the Adaptation Knowledge Portal (Schwilch et al. 2012b <sup>[[#fn:r1|1]]</sup> ). <sup>[[#fn:3|3]]</sup> Yet, clearly barriers to adoption remain, or these actions would have been more widely used by now. Much of the scientific literature on barriers to implementing response options focuses on the individual and household level, and discusses limits to adoption, often primarily identified as economic factors (Nigussie et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r2|2]]</sup> ; Dallimer et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r3|3]]</sup> ). While a useful approach, such studies are often unable to account for the larger enabling factors that might assist in more wide-scale implementation (Chapter 7 discusses these governance factors and associated barriers in more detail).

Instead, this chapter proposes that each response option identified and assessed needs to be understood as an intervention within complex socio-ecological systems (SES) (introduced in Chapter 1). In this understanding, physical changes affect human decision-making over land and risk management options, as do economics, policies, and cultural factors, which in turn may drive additional ecological change (Rawlins and Morris 2010 <sup>[[#fn:r3|3]]</sup> ). This co-evolution of responses within an SES provides a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics between drivers of change and impacts of interventions. Thus, in discussions of the 40 specific response options in this chapter, it must be kept in mind that all need to be contextualised within the specific SES in which they are deployed (Figure 6.1). Framing response options within SESs also recognises the interactions ''between'' different response options. However, a major problem within SESs is that the choice and use of different response options requires knowledge of the problems they are aimed at solving, which may be unclear, contested, or not shared equally among stakeholders (Carmenta et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r4|4]]</sup> ). Drivers of environmental change often have primarily social or economic, rather than technological roots, which requires acknowledgement that the response options not aimed at reducing the drivers of change may thus be less successful (Schwilch et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r5|5]]</sup> ).

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'''Figure 6.1'''

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'''Model to represent a social-ecological system of one of the integrated response options in this chapter, using restoration and reduced impact of peatlands as an example.The boxes show systems (ecosystem, social system), external and internal drivers of change and the management response – here enacting the response option. Unless included in the ‘internal drivers of […]'''
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[[File:3b5c24289461ead4cbab04bc687170fe Figure-6.1-1024x699.jpg]]

Model to represent a social-ecological system of one of the integrated response options in this chapter, using restoration and reduced impact of peatlands as an example.The boxes show systems (ecosystem, social system), external and internal drivers of change and the management response – here enacting the response option. Unless included in the ‘internal drivers of change’ box, all other drivers of change are external (e.g., climate, policy, markets, anthropogenic land pressures). The arrows represent how the systems can influence each other, with key drivers of impact written in the arrow in the direction of effect.

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Response options must also account for the uneven distribution of impacts among populations of both environmental change and intervention responses to this change. Understanding the integrated response options available in a given context requires an understanding of the specificities of social vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and institutional support to assist communities, households and regions to reach their capabilities and achievement of the SDG and other social and land management goals. Vulnerability reflects how assets are distributed within and among communities, shaped by factors that are not easily overcome with technical solutions, including inequality and marginalisation, poverty, and access to resources (Adger et al. 2004 <sup>[[#fn:r6|6]]</sup> ; Hallegate et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r7|7]]</sup> ). Understanding why some people are vulnerable, and what structural factors perpetuate this vulnerability requires attention to both micro and meso scales (Tschakert et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r8|8]]</sup> ). These vulnerabilities create barriers to adoption of even low- cost high-return response options, such as soil carbon management, that may seem obviously beneficial to implement (Mutoko et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r9|9]]</sup> ; Cavanagh et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r10|10]]</sup> ). Thus, assessment of the differentiated vulnerabilities that may prevent the adoption of a response option need to be considered as part of any package of interventions.

Adaptive capacity relates to the ability of institutions or people to modify or change characteristics or behaviour so as to cope better with existing or anticipated external stresses (Moss et al. 2001 <sup>[[#fn:r11|11]]</sup> ; Brenkert and Malone 2005 <sup>[[#fn:r12|12]]</sup> ; Brooks et al. 2005 <sup>[[#fn:r13|13]]</sup> ). Adaptive capacity reflects institutional and policy support networks, and has often been associated at the national level with strong developments in the fields of economics, education, health, and governance and political rights (Smit et al. 2001 <sup>[[#fn:r14|14]]</sup> ). Areas with low adaptive capacity, as reflected in low Human Development Index scores, might constrain the ability of communities to implement response options (Section 6.4.4.1 and Figure 6.7).

Further, while environmental changes like land degradation have obvious social and cultural impacts, (as discussed in the preceding chapters), so do response options. Therefore, careful thought is needed about what impacts are expected and what trade-offs are acceptable. One potential way to assess the impact of response interventions relates to the idea of capabilities, a concept first 6 proposed by economist Amartya Sen (Sen 1992 <sup>[[#fn:r15|15]]</sup> ). Understanding capability as the ‘freedom to achieve well-being’ frames a problem as being a matter of facilitating what people aspire to do and be, rather than telling them to achieve a standardised or predetermined outcome (Nussbaum and Sen 1993 <sup>[[#fn:r16|16]]</sup> ). Thus a capability approach is generally a more flexible and multi-purpose framework, appropriate to an SES understanding because of its open-ended approach (Bockstael and Berkes 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r17|17]]</sup> ). Thus, one question for any decision- maker approaching schematics of response options is to determine which response options lead to increased or decreased capabilities for the stakeholders who are the objects of the interventions, given the context of the SES in which the response option will be implemented.

Section 6.4.3 examines some of the capabilities that are reflected in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as gender equality and education, and assesses how each of the 40 response options may affect those goals, either positively or negatively, through a review of the available literature.

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==== 6.1.2.1 Enabling conditions ====

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Response options are not implemented in a vacuum and rely on knowledge production and socio-economic and cultural strategies and approaches embedded within them to be successful. For example, it is well known that “Weak grassroots institutions characterised by low capacity, failure to exploit collective capital and poor knowledge sharing and access to information, are common barriers to sustainable land management and improved food security” (Oloo and Omondi 2017). Achieving broad goals such as reduced poverty or sustainable land management requires conducive enabling conditions, such as attention to gender issues and the involvement of stakeholders, such as indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as attention to governance, including adaptive governance, stakeholder engagement, and institutional facilitation (Section 6.4.4.3). These enabling conditions – such as gender- sensitive programming or community-based solutions – are not categorised as individual response options in subsequent sections of this chapter because they are conditions that can potentially help improve all response options when used in tandem to produce more sustainable outcomes. Chapter 7 picks up on these themes and discusses the ways various policies to implement response options have tried to minimise unwanted social and economic impacts on participants in more depth, through deeper analysis of concepts such as citizen science and adaptive governance. Here we simply note the importance of assessing the contexts in which response options will be delivered, as no two situations are the same, and no single response option is likely to be a ‘silver bullet’ to solve all land– climate problems; each option comes with potential challenges and trade-offs (Section 6.2), barriers to implementation (Section 6.4.1), interactions with other sectors of society (Section 6.4.3), and potential environmental limitations (Section 6.4.4).

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