Abstract
Restoring interlocking forest-agricultural landscapes—forest-agricscapes—to sustainably supply ecosystem services for socio-ecological well-being is one of Malawi’s priorities. Engaging local farmers is crucial in implementing restoration schemes. While farmers’ land-use decisions shape land-use/cover and changes (LUCC) and ecological conditions, why and how they decide to embrace restoration activities is poorly understood and neglected in forest-agricscape restoration. We analyze the nature of farmers’ restoration decisions, both individually and collectively, in Central Malawi using a mixed-method analysis. We characterize, qualitatively and quantitatively, the underlying contextual rationales, motives, benefits, and incentives. Identified decision-making rules reflect diverse and nuanced goal frames of relative importance that are featured in various combinations. We categorize the decision-making rules as: problem-solving oriented, resource/material-constrained, benefits-oriented, incentive-based, peers/leaders-influenced, knowledge/skill-dependent, altruistic-oriented, rules/norms-constrained, economic capacity-dependent, awareness-dependent, and risk averse-oriented. We link them with the corresponding vegetation- and non-vegetation-based restoration practices to depict the overall decision-making processes. Findings advance the representation of farmers’ decision rules and behavioral responses in computational agent-based modeling (ABM), through the decomposition of empirical data. The approach used can inform other modeling works attempting to better capture social actors’ decision rules. Such LUCC-ABMs are valuable for exploring spatially explicit outcomes of restoration investments by modeling such decision-making processes and policy scenarios.
Highlights
Restoring forest-agricscapes to address various environmental threats such as land degradation, deforestation, climate change, and to sustainably supply ecosystem services for socio-ecological well-being is increasingly embraced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
This study sought to analyze the nature of the decisions to engage in forest-agricscape restoration through individual and collective actions in Central Malawi using a mixed-method approach to data collection and analysis
The study uncovers local farmers’ perceptions of forest-agricscape restoration, and the nature of the influential factors considered when deciding to engage in restoration efforts
Summary
Researchers stress that engaging local farmers and landowners is necessary for a successful implementation of forest-agricscape restoration schemes [1]. There is evidence of a low take-up of forest and land restoration by farmers [2,3,4]. This renders efforts in promoting restoration technologies and practices inefficient, even though these remain a means to boosting restoration. While farmers’ land-use decisions contribute to shaping the associated environmental and ecological conditions [5], the role of their decision making on forest-agricscapes restoration remain overlooked [6]
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