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Sustainability science and sustainable development of agriculture in developing countries in the context of multiple global challenges

The agriculture sector is increasingly being affected by multiple global changes in the world (Tilman et al., 2002). The risk of food insecurity is growing as the population size has been predicted to reach nine billion by 2050 in the world (FAO, 2014, Fischer et al., 2014). It has also been estimated that about ten percent of agricultural productive capacity in developing countries will be declined by 2080 due to global warming (Cline, 2007). In this situation, there is a great challenge of producing enough food to meet the food demand and secure the food for the insecure population. Over the past decades, different scientific approaches have been emerged and used to develop to improve the agriculture sector. For instance, ‘science push, market-driven, and ‘diffusion of innovation approaches’ of agricultural development (see.Arnold and Bell, 2001, World Bank, 2006). In these approaches, the role of both basic and applied sciences has been considered as the main way to solve the agric
Recent posts

Land Degradation in Ethiopia: Two Theoretical Eyes

Hoben (1996) clearly reflects his theoretical position on his writing as a political ecologist relating the land degradation issues to history, power and individual property rights. He presents a historically grounded culturally constructed paradigm which was rooted form the narrative. He gives the thick descriptions of traditional Ethiopian context and indigenous agricultural society as well as an effect of highly authoritarian and military ruling society on indigenous practice. Later on, he describes the acceptance of neo-Malthusian environmental narrative by state, development aid agencies and other international environmental conservation institutions. He also explains that, the poor performance and failure of those involved agents in Ethiopian environmental reclamation; mainly the top-down approach of large programs food-for-work (FFW) that supported to the farmer that helps to plant trees and make terraces was became counterproductive. But Munro et al. (2008) present the issue

Women-Environment Discourse and its Implication in Environment Conservation

Introduction: According to Neumann (2005), both women and men have different rights and responsibilities over the environment due to the complex way of role in household, community, and society. Those are socio-culturally understood as gender roles and relations  (OverÃ¥, 2016) . It often becomes an issue of academic discourse that, do women have a distinct relationship with the environment than men? Or do women use the environment in a more sustainable way than men? Various myths and fables related to women and environmental relationships have emerged in the different time periods. This writing presents the common narrative in regards to women-environment discourse as well as their consequences on the implementation and outcomes of environmental conservation projects. The eco-feminist narrative in women-environment discourse Women-environment discourses have been served by echoing ideas or myths about gender and their relationship with environment and development. Several popu

Himalayan Environmental Degradation Narrative

Introduction Narratives are often characterized as stories or arguments that tell about scenarios and revolves around the chain of events (Roe, 1991) . Events in the narrative start with the normal situation in which local people are living without problems having a good relationship with the environment. Then problems or changes arise in the existing situations and the effects of such problems are assessed focusing on causal explanation. In addition, narratives are normative than ideology and explicitly programmatic (ibid:288) . These are also encoded by many researchers as “received wisdom” (Leach and Mearns, 1996:443) which enables policymakers and other donor agencies. Often their intervention action gets a heroic position in the local communities (Hoben et al., 1996) although, their truth-value is in question. On the basis of this theoretical justification, this essay presents the narrative of Himalayan environmental degradation and argument about it. Himalayan Environme