Peter Messerli

Universität Bern | UniBe · Wyss Academy for Nature

Many social-ecological systems are in an unsustainable state. Bringing together disjunct published findings on complex interactions in social-ecological systems may enable the identification of leverage points for transformations towards sustainability. However, such interdisciplinary synthesis studies on specific regional social-ecological systems...

Over the past few decades, increasingly intensive maize farming by smallholders in the uplands of northern Thailand has produced a maize boom that has fed the country’s livestock industry. Despite continuously high demand for feed maize, its cultivation has declined unexpectedly over the past decade, pointing to a major land use transition in the u...

Forest-frontier landscapes in the humid tropics display distinct land use change dynamics compared to other world regions, providing useful examples of current global environmental and development challenges. In northwestern Laos, part of the former Golden Triangle region, investments in value chains for commercial crops—mainly to fulfill Chinese m...

Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effective...

Tropical forest frontier areas support the well‐being of local populations in myriad ways. Not only do they provide the material basis for people's livelihoods, they also sustain socio‐cultural foundations through relational values. They host some of the most biodiverse ecosystems and largest carbon stocks on the planet, and are thus a focus of glo...

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, gene...

Large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) transform land use systems worldwide. There is, however, limited understanding about how the common global drivers of land use change induce different forms of agricultural investment and produce different impacts on the ground. This article provides a crosscountry comparative analysis of how differences...

During a civil war and its aftermath, rival powerholders frequently engage in decision-making over land use, for example, via land acquisitions or legal reforms. This paper explores how powerholders influence land use decision-making and what their engagement implies for territorial control. We analyse three cases of land use changes in Myanmar’s s...

Land acquisitions are transforming land-use systems globally, and their characteristics and impacts on human well-being have been extensively analysed through local case studies and regional or global inventories. However, national-level analysis that is crucial for national policy on sustainable agricultural investments and land use is still lacki...

Tropical mountain forest frontier landscapes are increasingly target of protected areas (PAs) implementation, in many cases to secure the supply of globally demanded ecosystem services (ES). However, whether PAs manage to achieve their objectives is not always clear, nor are the implications of PA establishment for the supply of ES relevant for loc...

Sustainable land governance in a telecoupled world is currently a challenge. Distant actors, institutions, and interactions shape local land uses and are assumed to affect sustainable development in critical ways as they exert new and often additional claims on land and trigger adverse local impacts like displacement. Action towards achieving the S...

Five years after adoption of the 2030 Agenda, there is a general lack of progress in reaching its Sustainable Development Goals—be it on national, regional, or global scales. Scientists attribute this above all to insufficient understanding and addressing of interactions between goals and targets. This study aims to contribute to the methodological...

Available empirical evidence about the impacts of large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) in low-income countries is skewed towards the assessment of economic benefits. How LAIs affect land use and the environment is less understood. This study assesses how small-scale farmers living close to an LAI perceive the changes LAI's inflict on land us...

The concept of planetary health in the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission 1 is based on the understanding that human health and human civilisation depend on flourishing and balanced natural systems and the wise stewardship of those ecosystems. How to deploy the planetary health approach in the EU, particularly in relation to the new growth st...

This paper contributes to debates on the implications of land-based investments on local livelihoods in the Global South. Drawing on a comprehensive national dataset on land concessions in Laos, and 2005 and 2015 village-level poverty rates, we examine the association between land-based investments and poverty at the village level in Lao rural area...

The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate on the role of research in sustainable management of water and related resources, based on experiences in the Upper Ewaso Ng'iro and Pangani river basins in East Africa. Both basins are characterised by humid, resource-rich highlands and extensive semi-arid lowlands, by growing demand fo...

Developed to be interconnected by design, the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets have attracted a growing scientific community committed to exploring the systemic interactions inherent to the 2030 Agenda. Understanding which SDGs influence one another (positively or negatively) is critical to prioritize and implement poli...

El objetivo de esta investigación transdisciplinaria fue establecer las bases para una interfaz ciencia-gestión-sociedad para la conservación ambiental y el desarrollo sostenible en Madre de Dios, Perú mediante: (1) la identificación y la caracterización de los actores de la conservación de la biodiversidad y el bienestar humano; (2) el análisis de...

Competition over land is at the core of many sustainable development challenges in Myanmar: villagers, companies, governments, ethnic minority groups, civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations from local to the international level claim access to and decision-making power over the use of land. Therefore, this article investigat...

Global change processes are increasing their pace and reach, leading to telecoupled situations, where distant factors come to outpace local determinants of land use change. Often, these dynamics drive agricultural intensification processes, with as yet unclear implications for the well-being of human populations living in the areas affected. This s...

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development stresses the fundamental role science should play in implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals endorsed by the global community. But how can and should researchers respond to this societal demand on science? We argue that answering this question requires systematic engagement with the fundament...

Dominant research modes are not enough to guide the societal transformations necessary to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Researchers, practitioners, decision makers, funders and civil society should work together to achieve universally accessible and mutually beneficial sustainability science.

Archetypes are increasingly used as a methodological approach to understand recurrent patterns in variables and processes that shape the sustainability of social-ecological systems. The rapid growth and diversification of archetype analyses has generated variations, inconsistencies, and confusion about the meanings, potentials, and limitations of a...

Science-based initiatives generate particular changes towards sustainable development. But why and how does this work? Theories of change (ToCs) can help in understanding the theoretical assumptions and modes of knowledge production associated with these initiatives: ToCs trigger debate among the stakeholders and evaluators of an initiative regardi...

Implementing the 2030 Agenda may well translate into competing claims on scarce land resources. Thus, there is a call for a better linkage of science, policy, and practice to navigate development trade-offs and use co-benefits. We found that since 2015, scientists formally associated as members to the Global Land Programme (GLP)have mainly research...

Global environmental change (GEC) and sustainability science (SS) communities’ science is increasingly challenged to inform transformations to sustainability. Recognizing this, the Global Land Programme (GLP), a network of the international land system science community, is developing, testing, and launching new network infrastructures, science–pol...

Land is at the core of our planet’s sustainable development challenges. Different actors have contesting claims on ecosystem services provided by local land systems. Land-use changes therefore always entail trade-offs in terms of ecosystem service provision. The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development offers a normative frame for la...

In north-eastern Madagascar, maintenance of biodiversity competes with expansion of land for agriculture and mining. The concept of “telecoupling” provides a framework for analysis of distant actors and institutions that influence local land use decisions. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the extent of telecoupling of land governance...

Pursuing integrated research and decision-making to advance action on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) fundamentally depends on understanding interactions between the SDGs, both negative ones (“trade-offs”) and positive ones (“co-benefits”). This quest, triggered by the 2030 Agenda, has however pointed to a gap in current research and polic...

Myanmar has experienced profound transformations of land use and land governance, often at the expense of smallholders. Empirical evidence on the agency of actors included and excluded in land use decision-making remains scarce. This study analyses who influences land use decision-making, how they do this, and under what circumstances smallholders...

Dans l’imaginaire de la population mondiale, l’île de Madagascar est synonyme de forêts tropicales luxuriantes peuplées d’animaux exotiques comme les lémuriens, qui ne vivent que là. Les habitants de l’île, le peuple malgache, sont souvent absents de cette vision étrangère. Ils dépendent largement de l’agriculture à petite échelle et sont tributair...

Concerns over rapid widespread changes in social-ecological systems and their consequences for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, food security, and human livelihoods are driving demands for globally comprehensive knowledge to support decision-making and policy development. Claims of regional or global knowledge about the patterns, causes, and si...

Recent advances in land system science and in institutional analysis provide complementary, but still largely disconnected perspectives on land use change, governance, and sustainability in social-ecological systems, which are interconnected across distance. In this paper we bring together the emerging concept of telecoupled land systems and the es...

The drivers of deforestation have been changing in the last decades from smallholder’s cropland expansion to the increase of industrial agricultural and livestock production spurred by international demand for commodities produced in the world’s tropical regions. However, in the biodiversity hotspot of north-eastern Madagascar small-scale farmers a...

Through ongoing deforestation in the tropics, forest-related ecosystem services are declining, while ecosystem services provided by agricultural land uses are on the increase. Land system science provides a framework for analysing the links between land use change and the resulting socio-environmental trade-offs. However, the evidence base to suppo...

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) have become a major concern for land use sustainability at a global scale. A considerable body of case studies has shown that the livelihood outcomes of LSLAs vary, but the understanding of factors and processes that generate these livelihood outcomes remains controversial and fragmented in terms of cases, cont...

This study examines the validity of the assumption that international large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) is motivated by the desire to secure control over water resources, which is commonly referred to as 'water grabbing'. This assumption was repeatedly expressed in recent years, ascribing the said motivation to the Gulf States in particular. Howe...

Regression analysis for the water risk indices (WRIs) of investor and host country categories. This file contains a table showing statistical data for the regression analysis of the WRIs of investor country categories (WRIinv) and host country categories (WRIhost). (XLSX)

Pearson’s correlation coefficient for the water risk indices (WRIs) of investor and host country categories. This file contains a table showing Pearson’s correlation coefficients for the WRIs of investor country categories (WRIinv) and host country categories (WRIhost), weighted by the area of investment. (XLSX)

Supplementary data on large-scale land acquisition and its effects on the water balance. This Excel file contains key figures characterizing the 475 large-scale land acquisitions analysed in this paper and their water consumption. (XLSX)

Water consumption induced by large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), by host country. This Excel file contains various key figures characterizing water consumption induced by the 475 large-scale land acquisitions examined in this paper, as well as the water risk index, for each of the 59 host countries. (XLSX)

Water consumption induced by large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), by investor country. This Excel file contains various key figures characterizing water consumption induced by the 475 large-scale land acquisitions examined in this paper, as well as the water risk index, for each of the 54 investor countries. (XLSX)

This paper examines how the geospatial accuracy of samples and sample size influence conclusions from geospatial analyses. It does so using the example of a study investigating the global phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions and the socio-ecological characteristics of the areas they target. First, we analysed land deal datasets of varying ge...

This paper explores how meta-studies can support the development of process-based land change models (LCMs) that can be applied across locations and scales. We describe a multi-step framework for model development and provide descriptions and examples of how meta-studies can be used in each step. We conclude that meta-studies best support the conce...

Healthy soils are critical to agriculture, and both are essential to enabling food security. Soil-related challenges include using soils and other natural resources sustainably, combating land and soil degradation, avoiding further reduction of soil-related ecosystem services, and ensuring that all agricultural land is managed sustainably. Agricult...

In land systems, equitably managing trade-offs between planetary boundaries and human development needs represents a grand challenge in sustainability oriented initiatives. Informing such initiatives requires knowledge about the nexus between land use, poverty, and environment. This paper presents results from Lao PDR, where we combined nationwide...

The north-eastern escarpment of Madagascar harbours the island’s last remaining large-scale humid forest massifs surrounded by a small-scale agricultural mosaic. There is high deforestation, commonly thought to be caused by shifting cultivation practiced by local land users to produce upland rice. However, little is known about the dynamics between...

This chapter aims to overcome the gap existing between case study research, which typically provides qualitative and process-based insights, and national or global inventories that typically offer spatially explicit and quantitative analysis of broader patterns, and thus to present adequate evidence for policymaking regarding large-scale land acqui...

Despite the increasing acknowledgment of scholars and practitioners that many large-scale agricultural land acquisitions in developing countries fail or never materialize, empirical evidence about how and why they fail to date is still scarce. Too often, land deals are portrayed as straightforward investments and their success is taken for granted....

This paper analyses local geographical contexts targeted by transnational large-scale land acquisitions (>200 ha per deal) in order to understand how emerging patterns of socio-ecological characteristics can be related to processes of large-scale foreign investment in land. Using a sample of 139 land deals georeferenced with high spatial accuracy,...

Land systems are increasingly influenced by distal connections: the externalities and unintended consequences of social and ecological processes which occur in distant locations, and the feedback mechanisms that lead to new institutional developments and governance arrangements. Economic globalization and urbanization accentuate these novel telecou...

International experts examine the effects of urbanization and economic globalization on land use and offer new insights to advance understanding and sustainable practice. Today, global land use is affected by a variety of factors, including urbanization and the growing interconnectedness of economies and markets. This book examines the challenges a...

Rural livelihoods in developing countries can be enhanced by improving access to natural resources, services, and markets. In remote rural areas of the humid or semihumid tropics, forests represent an important resource for livelihoods. In countries like Laos, where most primary forest has been converted to secondary forest, and where an intricate...