In recent decades the pace, scale, and impacts of land use changes have become unprecedented. In Latin America, forests have reduced by almost 10% since 1990, with an array of drivers and causes implicated in these losses, including global dietary shifts. The scale and speed of deforestation represent considerable challenges for humanity, due to implications for forest based ecosystem services and the development of socio-economic-environmental trade-offs. In light of these changes, this investigation aims to analyse the role of socio-economic, environmental, and institutional factors in Latin American and Caribbean deforestation, explore the historical trends in consumption and production patterns linked to deforestation, and outline strategies to address these changes in the future.
The complexity of studying land use changes, ecosystem conservation, rural livelihoods, and food production suggests the need for a multi-scalar and interdisciplinary methodological approach. This methodology should incorporate and analyse drivers, impacts, and trade-offs, but also allow for the identification of social, political, and economic responses to improve them or ameliorate their impacts. To address this, this investigation develops a composite index to investigate temporal and spatial patterns of forest vulnerability to socio-economic processes in Latin American and Caribbean forests. It applies mathematical goal programming to investigate, at the farm level, the manifestation of these vulnerabilities in the development of ecosystem service trade-offs, and highlights how decision-making may exacerbate these antagonistic relationships. Trend analysis is combined with participatory assessments to elucidate the historical patterns of consumption and production of protein-rich products, identify the barriers and opportunities for plant-protein production and consumption, and develop strategies to increase production and consumption of plant proteins across the European Union. Finally, a crop suitability model is implemented to investigate the potential of protein-rich crops under future European climates.
The findings evidence the benefits of analysing complex processes from distinct perspectives and scales, providing a new understanding and aiding in developing actions to address negative aspects. This thesis has outlined the temporal and spatial differentiation in forest vulnerability to socio-economic factors across Latin America and teased out the sources of recent declines. The results infer the primacy and necessity of stable institutions and governance infrastructures to reduce vulnerability. Farm-scale mathematical goal programming highlighted the antagonistic relationship between maximisation of farm income and protection of ecosystem services, indicating the substantial and overt influence of decision-making on these relationships. These results signal the complex and antagonistic environment within which contemporary policy makers and decision-makers find themselves. They also reaffirm the need for supporting governance infrastructure to assist decision-making.
Continuation of long-term global, continental, and national trends towards greater consumption and production of animal based products were observed, even in wealthier regions like the European Union. Agronomic, supply chain, and consumer awareness barriers were suggested to be preventing transitions towards plant protein consumption and production. In light of these, four robust strategies were formulated to encourage such transitions: increased research and development, elevated consumer education and awareness, improved and connected supply and value chains, and greater public policy supports. The urgency for the calls for increased research are underlined by the results of the crop modelling analysis. The results demonstrate the divergent effects of climate change upon European agriculture and the potential for novel crops like quinoa as robust protein-rich crop option under future European climates. To exploit the potential of protein-rich crops as potential animal product replacements in European agricultural systems, geographically differentiated planning, research, and breeding strategies should be implemented.
The results of this investigation offer a series of outputs that can contribute to improving the knowledge base of the interactions between land use changes, ecosystem conservation, rural livelihoods, and food production to better inform future decision-making. In particular, to improve sustainable management of forests, reduce the extent of trade-offs in agriculture-forest systems, outline options for reducing external socio-economic pressures upon forests, and derive potential policy options for achieving the aforementioned. This research has established the benefits of a novel methodological approach for analysing land-use changes and for parsing out the interactions between them and socio-economic processes. The selection and combination of previously applied methodologies in an innovative manner has provided an enhanced understanding of food production, rural livelihoods, and ecosystem conservation at multiple scales.