The Kite Framework. Source: (Campbell and Olson 1991). 

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... framework for environmental reporting that has been used in Europe and by the UN is DPSIR (Figure 2), which was developed in the early 1970s. It was originally designed for assessing the relationship between three types of “indicators”—environmental pressures (the human activity leading to a problem), the state of the environment (the physical condition affected by the pressure) and responses (policies adopted to resolve the problem). It was later refined to include ...

Context 2

... research has provided a wealth of case studies of land use change spatial patterns and driving forces. IGBP compilations of case studies have produced analyses of spatial and temporal patterns, and typologies of the causes of those changes (Lambin et al. 2001; Geist and Lambin 2002; Lambin, Geist, and Lepers 2003). They have identified complex drivers and patterns of society-environment change. Temporal aspects of the drivers include long-term processes, such as population increases or economic development, and shocks such as policy mandates or drought that trigger new directions or rates of change. Theories or conceptual frameworks have been applied to explain the drivers from different starting points, such as rural communities adapting their land use system to environmental conditions, or high human population densities acting as a stimulant for agricultural intensification, or colonialism or globalisation leading to increased land and labour devoted to commercial agriculture and forestry. Agricultural economists and others have explained land use change as due individuals responding to market opportunities affecting the potential value of the land’s production. These approaches place varying emphasis on the role of individual actors versus the broader socio-economic context (structure versus agency), the importance of population dynamics or technology versus policy or other factors, and the effect of differential power and access to resources (Boserup 1965; Turner, Hyden, and Kates 1993; Cleaver and Schreiber 1994; Tiffin, Mortimore, and Gichugi 1994; Biot et al. 1995; Peet and Watts 1996; Scherr and Yadav 1996; Barbier 1997; Ewel 2001). No matter what the researcher’s disciplinary or theoretical perspective, however, drivers are often site-specific – a driver at point A may act differently at point B – which makes generalizing and up-scaling difficult. There has not yet developed, therefore, a universal theory “explaining” land use change. Rather, a common methodological approach to empirically identify the causes, or driving forces, of land use change has evolved (Lambin et al. 1999; Lambin, Geist, and Lepers 2003). This has been labelled pattern to process (Nagendra, Munroe, and Southworth 2004). The approach differentiates proximate drivers that directly affect land use, such as in-migration, road construction or logging, and underlying or root causes that affect land use via the proximate causes, such as land tenure policies or the international timber market. A causal “chain of explanation” is developed for each case that follows factors from the local land manager to the world economy (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987). Statistical analyses of driving forces of land use change in studies from around the world have resulted in identification of common drivers (Geist and Lambin 2001; Lambin et al. 2001; Geist and Lambin 2002; Lambin, Geist, and Lepers 2003). The causes of land use change are usually multiple and there are feedback mechanisms between the drivers, and between the drivers and land use change. Identifying the significant drivers and their interactions, therefore, can be challenging. The most common proximate driver of deforestation, for example, is agricultural expansion (ranching and/or cultivation), often combined with transportation infrastructure development and timber extraction. By far the most frequent root cause is economic factors, followed by institutional factors such as land policies, technological factors, cultural factors, and finally demographic factors (that tend to be inter-linked with other forces). Identifying specific drivers of land use change leading to land degradation is difficult since land degradation is the result of human combined with natural factors, and occurs at the farm or field level as well as at the landscape scale. It can be associated with agricultural land management, or occur on quasi-natural ecosystems such as grazing land. Developing a common framework to direct LULCC land degradation root causes analysis is thus critical for research results to be comparable across sites and to permit generalization and up-scaling of findings. The LUCID Project selected political ecology as its conceptual framework to assist in identifying the causes of land use change associated with land degradation and change in biodiversity (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Campbell and Olson 1991; Zimmerer 1994; Peet and Watts 1996; Rocheleau, Thomas, and Wangari 1996; Olson 1998; McCusker and Weiner 2003; Zimmerer and Bassett 2003; Robbins 2004). Political ecologists use tools of critical theory to shape the process of developing hypotheses and research questions to detect the causes of environmental change. Political ecology is appropriate to the questions posed by LUCID in that its contribution has been to explicitly include the important policy and power dimensions, as well as economic and other factors, that affect different groups and their land use. A frequent starting point of political ecology studies is how rural communities manage and adapt within the changing political and economic system. It was originally articulated as an approach to better understand societal factors leading to land degradation; according to Blaikie and Brookfield (1987:17), “the phrase ‘political ecology’ combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy. Together they encompass the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself.” The parameters of the approach emphasize that land use change results from interactions between society, reflecting economic, social and political processes, and the physical environment. These interactions occur between different scales, and over time and space (the “Kite”, Figure 2) (Campbell and Olson 1991). While LUCID’s socio-economic analyses were based on the interactions represented in the Kite diagram, LUCID’s biophysical research expanded the Kite’s environmental corner to include biological (especially vegetation, wildlife), soil and climatic factors at various scales (Maitima et al. 2004). The conceptualisation of society-environment interaction reflected in the Kite incorporates the following ...