Abstract
Contemporary issues in agriculture and natural resource management (AGNR) span a wide spectrum of challenges and scales—from global climate change to resiliency in national and regional food systems to the sustainability of livelihoods of small-holder farmers—all of which may be characterized as complex problems. With rapid development of tools and technologies over the previous half century (e.g., computer simulation), a plethora of disciplines have developed methods to address individual components of these multifaceted, complex problems, oftentimes neglecting unintended consequences to other systems. A systems thinking approach is needed to (1) address these contemporary AGNR issues given their multi- and interdisciplinary aspects; (2) utilize a holistic perspective to accommodate all of the elements of the problem; and (3) include qualitative and quantitative techniques to incorporate “soft” and “hard” elements into the analyses. System dynamics (SD) methodology is uniquely suited to investigate AGNR given their inherently complex behaviors. In this paper, we review applications of SD to AGNR and discuss the potential contributions and roles of SD in addressing emergent problems of the 21st century. We identified numerous SD cases applied to water, soil, food systems, and smallholder issues. More importantly, several case studies are shown illustrating the tradeoffs between short-term and long-term strategies and the pitfalls of relying on quick fixes to AGNR problems (known as “fixes that backfire” and “shifting the burden”, well-known, commonly occurring, systemic structures—or archetypes—observed across numerous management situations [Senge, P.M. The Fifth Discipline, 1st ed.; Doubleday: New York, NY, USA, 1990.]). We conclude that common attempts to alleviate AGNR problems, across continents and regardless of the type of resources involved, have suffered from reliance on short-term management strategies. To effectively address AGNR problems, longer-term thinking and strategies aimed at fundamental solutions will be needed to better identify and minimize the often delayed, and unintended, consequences arising from feedback between management interventions and AGNR systems.
Highlights
IntroductionContemporary agriculture and natural resource (AGNR) problems are becoming increasingly evident and affect the livelihoods of people and resources globally, such as local or global changes in climate (e.g., drought frequency and intensity; [1,2,3,4]), hydrological or water resource management issues (e.g., water security; agricultural water management; [5,6,7,8]), land resource issues (e.g., land transformation, soil quality and soil erosion, urbanization; [9,10,11,12]), biodiversity resource conservation [13,14,15], agriculture and food system challenges (e.g., food security, human health; [16,17,18,19,20]), and/or rural economic conditions and small-holder development
Contemporary agriculture and natural resource (AGNR) problems are becoming increasingly evident and affect the livelihoods of people and resources globally, such as local or global changes in climate, hydrological or water resource management issues, land resource issues, biodiversity resource conservation [13,14,15], agriculture and food system challenges, and/or rural economic conditions and small-holder development
We have described a variety of agriculture and natural resource management (AGNR) problems occurring globally
Summary
Contemporary agriculture and natural resource (AGNR) problems are becoming increasingly evident and affect the livelihoods of people and resources globally, such as local or global changes in climate (e.g., drought frequency and intensity; [1,2,3,4]), hydrological or water resource management issues (e.g., water security; agricultural water management; [5,6,7,8]), land resource issues (e.g., land transformation, soil quality and soil erosion, urbanization; [9,10,11,12]), biodiversity resource conservation [13,14,15], agriculture and food system challenges (e.g., food security, human health; [16,17,18,19,20]), and/or rural economic conditions and small-holder development In many circumstances, these problems could be characterized as complex, as they have many interacting and overlapping feedbacks, where a systems approach to problem solving has been increasingly promoted, including strategies for enhancing ecosystem services [21], agricultural intensification [22], manipulation of multiple leverage points [23], and improving systems and resources integration [24]. Mental models are dynamic in the sense that they can change as the stakeholder learns new or forgets old information, adopts or discards systems of belief, can change with changing perceptions about the system or problem of interest, and are always incomplete [25,27,28]
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