
Lindsay C StringerUniversity of York · Environment Department
Lindsay C Stringer
BSc, MSc, PhD
I rarely log in to Researchgate so best to contact me via email
About
298
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Introduction
My research focuses on human-environment relationships, particularly:
The links between livelihoods and environmental change; science, policy and environmental governance; and the practical and policy mechanisms that can advance sustainable development. I take an interdisciplinary approach, grounded in systems thinking, using theories and both qualitative and quantitative methods from the natural and social sciences.
Additional affiliations
September 2007 - present
July 2005 - September 2007
September 2004 - April 2005
Publications
Publications (298)
This study aims to identify and rank policy options to inform development of an enabling environment for food waste-based biogas production for energy generation in Malaysia, taking into account stakeholder perspectives. The analysis focuses on stakeholders from Malaysia whose responses are analysed using the analytic hierarchy process. Literature...
Efforts of national governments and international agencies aimed at alleviating hunger and poverty are often undermined by lack of long-term adoption of agricultural innovations. Studies commonly explain farmers’ adoption decisions using household general determinants, yet decision-making, particularly for under-resourced smallholder farmers in sub...
In sub-Saharan Africa, development and dissemination of perceived new agricultural innovations dominate the development agenda yet hunger and poverty remain widespread. A conducive policy environment is essential to support these efforts. Despite that national policies are a critical component in the functioning of an agricultural innovation system...
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlights the urgent need to operationalise Climate Resilient Development Pathways (CRDP), adopting mitigation and adaptation measures to secure a safe climate, meet human needs under a changing climate and enable sustainable development. Analyses have not yet compared different vulnerable geographies...
The Amazon, a global biodiversity hotspot and home to ~30 million inhabitants, including numerous Indigenous ethnies, is increasingly vulnerable to climate impacts. Despite global evidence of climate-related disasters, the Brazilian Amazon's exposure remains underexplored. This study elucidates the spatiotemporal dynamics of socioeconomic vulnerabi...
Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) serves as a credible mechanism to simultaneously address food security, climate change, and agricultural productivity. Despite the widespread adoption of CSA approaches across West Africa, many countries have still not been able to resolve the problems of food insecurity and rural poverty. This systematic review eval...
Traditional approaches to coastal defence often struggle to reduce the risks of accelerated climate change. Incorporating nature-based components into coastal defences may enhance adaptation to climate change with added benefits, but we need to compare their performance against conventional hard measures. We conduct a meta-analysis that compares th...
Most emissions scenarios suggest temperature and precipitation regimes will change dramatically across the globe over the next 500 years. These changes will have large impacts on the biosphere, with species forced to migrate to follow their preferred environmental conditions, therefore moving and fragmenting ecosystems. However, most projections of...
Rising gold prices have led artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) operations to proliferate in sub-Saharan Africa, extending into agricultural areas. Little is known about the interactions between agriculture and mining in these new frontiers. This study aimed to investigate the impacts of ASGM on natural and physical livelihood capitals, AS...
Six years remain to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite some progress, institutional effectiveness for SDG achievement has not been delivered at a national level. Identification and establishment of an institutional framework to operationalise the 2030 Agenda within national plans, giving science-based coordination of SDG impl...
The escalating impacts of climate change on the movement and immobility of people, coupled with false but influential narratives of mobility, highlight an urgent need for nuanced and synthetic research around climate mobility. Synthesis of evidence and gaps across the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report highligh...
China has one of the largest dryland areas worldwide, covering 6.6 million km ² and supporting approximately 580 million people. Conflicting findings showing a drier China’s drylands with increasing aridity and observed greenness indicate the complexity of environmental processes, highlighting a pressing research need to improve understanding of ho...
Drylands are important carbon pools and are highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly in the context of increasing aridity. However, there has been limited research on the effects of aridification on soil total carbon including soil organic carbon and soil inorganic carbon, which hinders comprehensive understanding and projection of soil ca...
The Paris Agreement rests on voluntary emissions reduction pledges but does not mandate that pledges are sufficiently ambitious to collectively limit warming to acceptable levels. Instead, it relies on the “ratcheting mechanism” of the Global Stocktake. As the world falls further from emissions trajectories compatible with the Paris Agreement, a sa...
Grassland ecosystem functions are affected by global climate change and increasing aridity. Belowground components of soil and vegetation, such as specific root length, belowground biomass and soil organic carbon are important for maintaining these functions. However, aridity affects these components in different ways. This research evaluates chang...
Degradation of ecosystems can occur when certain ecological thresholds are passed below which ecosystem responses remain within ‘safe ecological limits’. Ecosystems such as drylands are sensitive to both aridification and grazing, but the combined effects of such factors on the emergence of ecological thresholds beyond which ecosystem degradation o...
Driven by the goal of reversing desertification and recovering degraded lands, a wide range of vegetation restoration practices (such as planting and fencing) have been implemented in China's drylands. It is essential to examine the effects of vegetation restoration and environmental factors on soil nutrients to optimize restoration approaches. How...
Climate smart agriculture (CSA) has been promoted by governments and international development institutions as an intervention to address climate change and deliver triple wins. Yet, the trade-offs and synergies associated with CSA practices have not been explored. This study develops composite indices for prioritizing CSA practices to better infor...
Dryland soils are nutrient-poor and prone to degradation due to aridity, grazing and enclosure. It is essential to examine the effects of grazing and enclosure on aridity-induced soil degradation in dryland ecosystems to optimize land management practices in response to climate change. However, quantitative evaluation on this topic is scarce due to...
Priorities and programmes in the City of Cape Town's Integrated Development Plan (2022-2027) demonstrate progress towards operationalising local level planning for climate-resilient development. These developments provide lessons of process and focus on transformative outcomes for cities seeking equitable and just development while implementing cli...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the region most vulnerable to climate change and related hydro-meteorological risks. These risks are exacerbated in rapidly expanding urban areas due to the loss and degradation of green and blue spaces with their regulating ecosystem services. The potential of nature-based solutions (NBSs) to mitigate hydro-meteorologic...
Agriculture is the largest single source of environmental degradation, responsible for over 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 70% of freshwater use and 80% of land conversion: it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss (Foley JA, Science 309:570–574, 2005, Nature 478:337–342, 2011; IPBES. Global assessment report on biodiversi...
Participatory mapping is increasingly used to map spatial variation in people's perceptions about ecosystem services. It has growing use in the identification of locations where places perceived to be important converge. Few recommendations have been published to navigate decisions about sampling effort in participatory mapping research when polygo...
Rapid urbanisation is affecting people in different ways, with some becoming more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Africa’s cities are projected to be home to nearly 60% of the continent’s population by 2050. In conjunction with climate change, these cities are experiencing critical environmental challenges, including changes in the urb...
Values are the motivational goals that underpin individual and group decisions, attitudes, and behaviours, and often influence the success of conservation. Existing studies have provided insight into the perceptions and attitudes of stakeholders towards forest conservation values. However, there are still contentions among different stakeholders re...
This chapter examines the scientific understanding of how climate change impacts land degradation, and vice versa, with a focus on non-drylands. Land degradation of drylands is covered in Chapter 3. After providing definitions and the context (Section 4.1) we proceed with a theoretical explanation of the different processes of land degradation and...
Increasing global demand for animal protein combined with an urgent need to advance towards global sustainability, as enshrined within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has spurred the development of insects as a protein source in animal and fish feed. The acceptance and feasibility of these advances are nevertheless poorly understood. This...
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Report on Adaptation, Impacts and Vulnerability identifies the urgent need to embark upon Climate Resilient Development Pathways. Climate Resilient Development acknowledges that adaptation needs to be undertaken together with mitigation and development, in joined-up, inclusive, j...
Change in mangrove extent and condition has potential consequences for social disparity in terms of who can adapt to change in ecosystem services and places perceived important for providing them. Participatory GIS can elicit spatial variation in the importance attached to ecosystem service places, but disaggregated research that can reveal differe...
Robotics and autonomous systems are reshaping the world, changing healthcare, food production and biodiversity management. While they will play a fundamental role in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals, associated opportunities and threats are yet to be considered systematically. We report on a horizon scan evaluating robotics and auton...
Given that about 40% of the total food produced globally is lost or wasted, there is an urgent need to understand what, where, why and how much food waste is generated. In this study, we collected the much-needed primary empirical data from the restaurants, hotels and caterers of Lahore, Pakistan through surveys and live tracking/diaries. Specifica...
In 2013, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) established a science–policy interface (SPI) to address Parties’ need for demand-driven, timely, interdisciplinary science and technical knowledge to tackle problems of desertification, land degradation and drought. Since then, a comprehensive assessment of the SPI’s impacts o...
Tropical peat swamp forests retain large carbon stocks and support unique biodiversity, but clearance and drainage for agriculture have resulted in fires, carbon emissions and biodiversity losses. Initiatives to re‐wet cultivated peatlands may benefit biodiversity if this protects remaining forests from fire and agricultural encroachment, but there...
Currently, remote sensing platforms provide state-of-the-art data for multiple purposes including applications related to coastal wetlands. Mangrove above-ground biomass (MAGB) together with its extent is considered well correlated with the habitats’ environmental and economic values. Above-ground biomass can be estimated by models that integrate r...
Malaysia's renewable energy policies do not cover production from waste, including the generation of biogas from palm oil mill effluent. This paper combines life cycle cost-benefit analysis (LCCBA) and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to provide new insights into costs and benefits of technologies over the life cycles, and on the basis of thi...
Over a quarter of the world's land surface is grazed by cattle and other livestock, which are replacing wild herbivores, potentially impairing ecosystem structure, and functions. Previous research suggests that cattle at moderate stocking rates can functionally replace wild herbivores in shaping understory communities. However, it is uncertain whet...
Over a quarter of the world’s land surface is grazed by cattle and other livestock, which are replacing wild herbivores and widely regarded as drivers of global biodiversity declines. The effects of livestock presence versus absence on wild herbivores are well documented. However, the environmental context-specific effects of cattle stocking rate o...
Rapid urbanisation and climate change are two major trends in Africa in need of further investigation. In this paper, the urban thermal environment and vegetation abundance in four East African cities (Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Kampala and Dar es Salaam) were characterised, providing new insights into the role and potentials of blue green infrastructu...
In the context of rapid urbanization and regional development worldwide, the efficient and rational spatial distribution of transportation networks is vitally important in achieving sustainable development. In this study, we used an adjusted three-dimensional ecological footprint model (EF3D) to assess regional sustainable development. We explored...
Development processes and action on climate change are closely interlinked. This is recognised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fifth assessment report, which reports on climate-resilient pathways, understood as development trajectories towards sustainable development which include adaptation and mitigation. The upcomi...
Climate change and desertification continue to threaten livelihoods in drylands across the globe. This study explores the relative importance of Sustainable Livelihoods Framework components in explaining variation in the adaptive capacity of agricultural households in three districts in the drylands of south Punjab, Pakistan, and to identify spatia...
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in Namibia was formally introduced in 2007. However, little EIA related research has been undertaken and the system has not been formally reviewed. This paper evaluates the performance and effectiveness of the EIA system in Namibia. The criteria used for the evaluation were obtained from several sources in the...
Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthe...
China has 6.6 million km² of drylands that support approximately 580 million people. These drylands are at risk of desertification. In this Review, the changes observed in China’s drylands are synthesized, with a focus on their drivers and the effects of 13 large-scale land conservation and restoration programmes aimed at mitigating them, including...
Anthropogenic activity is changing Earth's climate and ecosystems in ways that are potentially dangerous and disruptive to humans. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise, ensuring that these changes will be felt for centuries beyond 2100, the current benchmark for projection. Estimating the effects of past, current, and po...
The crucial roles of biodiversity in agriculture - a necessary understanding if agirculture is to become more sustainable.
The linkages between agriculture and biodiversity - an imperative for understanding sustainable food production
Effective knowledge sharing and community engagement can be major enablers in the pursuit of socially relevant benefits from ecological restoration and rehabilitation. Focusing on two ecological restoration and rehabilitation practitioner organizations and their workers, this paper evaluates perceptions of the extent to which short-term knowledge e...
This best practice training manual was produced as part of an international collaboration between Bayero University Kano (BUK), Nigeria, and Universities of Leeds and York, UK. The collaboration, funded by the UK PACT Green Recovery Challenge Fund, aims to develop innovative training to support cost-effective irrigation-free indigenous tree restora...
Human attitudes and behaviours have been linked to the degradation of global biodiversity, particularly forest ecosystems. Indeed, effective conservation actions require that the attitudes and behaviours of affected individuals and communities are taken into account. While several studies have examined how human attitudes and behaviours affect cons...
Due to the combined effects of urban growth and climate change, rapid urbanisation is particularly challenging in African cities. Areas that will house a large proportion of the urban population in the future coincide with where natural hazards are expected to occur, and where hazard risk management institutions, knowledge, and capacity are often l...
Climate change impacts on water security in global drylands
One Earth In Press, Corrected Proof Published online: June 11, 2021
Lindsay C. Stringer Alisher Mirzabaev Tor A. Benjaminsen Rebecca M.B. Harris Mostafa Jafari Tabea K. Lissner and others
Water scarcity affects 1–2 billion people globally, most of whom live in drylands. Under projected climate change, millions more people will be living under conditions of severe water stress in the coming decades. This review examines observed and projected climate change impacts on water security across the world's drylands to the year 2100. We fi...
Complexity of African agrarian systems necessitates that agricultural research and development transition to agricultural innovation system [AIS] approaches. While AIS perspectives are embraced across sub-Saharan Africa, engagement of stakeholders in agricultural research and development processes as espoused in AIS paradigm remains limited. This p...
Due to the combination of climate change and the rapid growth in urban populations in Africa, many urban areas are encountering exacerbated urban heat island (UHI) effects. It is important to understand UHI effects in order to develop suitable adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, little work has been done in this regard in Africa. In this...
The Indonesian government committed to restoring over 2 million ha of degraded peatland by the end of 2020, mainly to reduce peat fires and greenhouse gas emissions. Although it is unlikely the government will meet this target, restoration projects are still underway. One restoration strategy involves blocking peatland drainage canals, but the cons...
The importance of equity has been emphasised in climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and ecosystem restoration. However, equity implications are rarely considered explicitly in restoration projects. Although the role of equity has been studied in the context of biodiversity conservation and environmental governance, environmental var...
The importance of extension services in helping smallholder farmers to address the many challenges of agricultural production cannot be over-emphasized. However, relatively few studies have been conducted that investigate how the capacities of agricultural extension agents can be built to more effectively assist smallholder farmers in managing clim...
Cattle and other livestock graze more than a quarter of the world's terrestrial area and are widely regarded to be drivers of global biodiversity declines. Studies often compare the effects of livestock presence/absence but, to our knowledge, no studies have tested for interactive effects between large wild herbivores and livestock at varying stock...