Emmeline Topp

• Post-doctoral Research Associate at University of Kassel

Successful adaptation often involves changes to the decision context to enable new ways of thinking and acting on climate change. Using 16 adaptation initiatives the authors were engaged with, we analysed how and why decision contexts changed to identify ways to improve adaptation as a process of collective deliberation and social learning. We used...

Mangrove degradation is common in many (sub)tropical coastal areas, driven by anthropogenic activities such as overharvesting of natural resources. Additional pressures, such as increasing population, and sea level rise associated with climate change, are affecting the Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem in Bangladesh. The protection and restoration of t...

Under the effects of global agricultural structural changes, understanding the decision-making contexts of different stakeholders is crucial to inform the adaptive governance of traditional agricultural landscapes. This study focused on the dike–pond agricultural heritage landscape in the Pearl River Delta region, China. The landscape is characteri...

Relational values have become increasingly recognised within the field of social–ecological systems as an innovative and in-depth approach to uncovering the value of human–nature relationships around the world. As an emerging concept within mainstream Western academia, there is still much to learn about the potential challenges of working with rela...

The Sundarbans mangrove forest in Bangladesh underpins local livelihoods in multiple ways, but its ecological integrity is under threat. In this paper, we seek to explore how local people value the Sundarbans landscapes spatially and how the Sundarbans contributes to their sense of place. To elicit spatially distributed landscape values, we applied...

Mediterranean agriculture is increasingly threatened by soil degradation and climate change. Conservation agriculture (CA) is a farming approach characterized by reduced soil disturbance, soil cover, and crop rotation that provides agronomic, economic, and environmental benefits to farmers, but which is not yet widespread in the Mediterranean regio...

Conservation agriculture (CA) is the key agricultural soil management approach for Mediterranean rainfed systems facing extreme droughts and soil degradation. Yet, CA uptake and applicability is still marginal and disputed in the Mediterranean region, where smallholder farmers are most representative. Lack of widespread adoption of CA in the Medite...

The Mediterranean region is facing major challenges for soil conservation and sustainable agriculture. Conservation agriculture (CA), including reduced soil disturbance, can help conserve soils and improve soil fertility, but its adoption in the Mediterranean region is limited. Examining farmers’ perceptions of soil and underlying sociocultural fac...

A very severe drought, early in the growing season, engulfed Morocco this year. This is not the first, but one in a series of dry years. Many farmers already used up their financial reserves, and it remains unclear how they will cope yet again. This essay combines photography with short interviews to recognise the implications of drought for Moroc...

The Mediterranean Basin is a global biodiversity hotspot, but formal conservation approaches have not been wholly effective to halt species and ecosystem losses in this world region. There is wide agreement that maintaining traditional and diverse land-use systems is key to conserving biodiversity across the Mediterranean region. Biocultural approa...

Nature conservation on privately owned land depends on land managers’ decision-making. Interactions between values, rules and knowledge ( vrk ) underpin decision-making, thus, it is important to understand these interactions to support conservation intentions. We investigated how different sets of vrk determine the decision-making context regarding...

Despite its status as a biodiversity hotspot, the renosterveld ecosystem within the Greater Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, widely lacks the implementation of measures for biodiversity conservation in the Swartland, even though management plans exist. Though formally protected by law, most renosterveld remnants occur on privately owned agricul...

Dehesas and montados are Mediterranean agroforestry systems characterized by scattered oak trees with an understory grazed extensively by livestock and, in some cases, periodically cropped. A long history of traditional management practices has created an open woodland widely recognized for rich biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. Concern...

Aim To understand effects of fire history and landscape composition on butterfly diversity in a fragmented agricultural landscape. Location We studied critically endangered renosterveld remnants within the fynbos biome in the Swartland municipality, Western Cape, South Africa, a global biodiversity hotspot. Method We selected survey sites on reno...

Climate change poses a serious threat to South Africa's agricultural sector. Implementing adaptation strategies is thus crucial to secure future agricultural production and rural livelihoods. To support effective adaptation, it is necessary to understand how farmers, as primary land-use decision-makers, perceive and respond to climate change. We co...

Severe losses in biodiversity hotspots reduce global insect diversity. Renosterveld is a critically endangered and biologically diverse ecosystem occurring only in the fynbos biome of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR), a recognized global biodiversity hotspot. Following agricultural intensification, less than 5% natural renosterveld vegetation remain...

Knowledge of ecological patterns and processes is key to effective conservation of biodiversity hotspots under threat. Renosterveld is one of the most critically endangered habitats in the biologically unique Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. For the first time, we map and synthesize the current state of knowledge on renosterveld ecology and con...

Climate change is leading to the global loss of open montane meadows by facilitating tree and shrub encroachment at high elevations. North America’s coastal mountains are particularly vulnerable to these changes, as they are relatively low elevation compared with interior mountains and contain only small areas of alpine tundra. We compared aerial p...

The international use of tourism as a learning tool can be argued to be fundamental to the history and expansion of the industry, as the original 19 th century European tours were devised to enable experience of the cultural epicentres of the continent. It can equally be argued to be a relatively recent development, which all levels of tourism acto...