Desertification as social-ecological trap: How does it come about and what are Namibian freehold farmers doing about it?

Abstract

Direct and underlying drivers of desertification have already been subject of research for the past decades. Emphasis has been particularly placed on either natural or social drivers of desertification, although recent literature shows that desertification processes are highly complex and location specific. Accordingly, local studies are indispensable to disentangle social and ecological drivers of desertification and to detect past and current trends. The study at hand is the first attempt to frame desertification as social-ecological trap (SET) using the example of Namibia’s freehold cattle rangeland as tightly coupled social-ecological system in order to disentangle underlying processes and feedback loops and associated regime shifts in the social and ecological subsystem. To do so, we chose a mixed method approach combining remote sensing methods with literature research and semi-structured interviews. Literature on desertification in Namibia shows that over the past 100 years, external shocks like droughts, profound market changes, and new regulatory frameworks have appeared to drive social and ecological changes on freehold cattle farms repeatedly forcing farmers to apply short-term risk coping and long-term risk mitigation strategies to maintain their farming business. Results revealed that poor grass availability coming along with income deficits play a key role in inducing rangeland desertification through self-reinforcing feedbacks. Only a sustainable change in dominant feedback loops through transformative management options as well as on- and off-farm income diversification can avoid or mitigate effects of ecological regime shifts and help farmers to escape the SET of desertification. These strategies provide entry points for subsequent research on effective long-term mitigation strategies to keep further rangeland desertification at bay and to secure farmers’ livelihoods.