Ole Mertz
Biographic Data
| ID | 630024 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ole Mertz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ole |
| FAMILY NAME | Mertz |
| SIGNATURE | MERTZ O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3876-6779 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 716 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Why Target Communities Remain Subjects Rather than Partners of Development Agencies in Integrated Conservation and Development Projects in Latin America
Despite repeated calls for locally anchored Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), the decision-making authority of targeted Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) remains limited. This paper is grounded on an Institutional Logics perspective to examine the role of major development agencies—the World Bank (WB), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), …
Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions
Shifting cultivation remains an important land system in many tropical landscapes, but transitions away from shifting cultivation are increasingly common. So far, our knowledge on the social–economic and environmental drivers and consequences of such shifting cultivation transitions is incomplete, focusing on certain transitions, drivers, consequences or regions. Here, we use an archetype approach, validated through systematically identified lite…
Ten facts about land systems for sustainability
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, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in la…
Adaptive approaches to Redd+ are needed for countries with high forest cover and low deforestation rates
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) aims to maintain forest carbon stocks above benchmark reference levels through financial compensation. However, countries with high forest cover and low deforestation (HFLD) are unlikely to be compensated fairly if REDD+ initiatives fail to conserve existing forests and to incentivize low deforestation rates. Here we analyze the submissions of forest reference levels (FRLs) of f…
How are institutions included in Integrated Conservation and Development Projects? Developing and testing a diagnostic approach on the World Bank’s Forest and Community project in Salta, Argentina
The opportunities and challenges of ensuring participation and success of Integrated Conservation and\nDevelopment Projects (ICDPs) have been fairly studied. However, it is not often well-established which\ninstitutional mechanisms explain the failure in meeting participatory and project goals. To fill this gap,\nwe develop a telecoupling-inspired diagnostic approach to assess the level of institutional distance and\nopportunity for collective de…
Ecosystem Service Provision by Secondary Forests in Shifting Cultivation Areas Remains Poorly Understood
Large Differences in Livelihood Responses and Outcomes to Increased Conservation Enforcement in a Protected Area
Harmonization of global land use change and management for the period 850–2100 (LUH2) for CMIP6
Human land use activities have resulted in large changes to the biogeochemical and biophysical properties of the Earth's surface, with consequences for climate and other ecosystem services. In the future, land use activities are likely to expand and/or intensify further to meet growing demands for food, fiber, and energy. As part of the World Climate Research Program Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), the international community has d…
Ecosystem services and nature’s contribution to people: Negotiating diverse values and trade-offs in land systems
Land is increasingly managed to serve multiple societal demands. Beyond food, fiber, habitation, and recreation, land is now being called on to meet demands for carbon sequestration, water purification, biodiversity conservation, and many others. Meeting these multiple demands requires negotiating trade-offs among the choices and differing values placed on them by diverse stakeholders and institutions. Here, we review recent advances in understan…
Social-ecological outcomes of agricultural intensification
Closing global knowledge gaps: Producing generalized knowledge from case studies of social-ecological systems
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 significance of changes in social-ecological systems, or ‘generalized knowledge claims’ (GKCs), are ge…
Geographic overlaps between priority areas for forest carbon-storage efforts and those for delivering peacebuilding programs: Implications for policy design
Of the countries considering national-level policies for incentivizing reductions in forest-based greenhouse gas emissions (REDD+), some 25 are experiencing (or are emerging from) armed-conflicts. It has been hypothesized that the outcomes of the interactions between carbon-storage and peacebuilding efforts could result in either improved or worsened forest conservation and likewise increased or decreased conflict. Hence, for this study we explor…
The impact of swidden decline on livelihoods and ecosystem services in Southeast Asia: A review of the evidence from 1990 to 2015
Global economic change and policy interventions are driving transitions from long-fallow swidden (LFS) systems to alternative land uses in Southeast Asia's uplands. This study presents a systematic review of how these transitions impact upon livelihoods and ecosystem services in the region. Over 17 000 studies published between 1950 and 2015 were narrowed, based on relevance and quality, to 93 studies for further analysis. Our analysis of land-us…
Wild food collection and nutrition under commercial agriculture expansion in agriculture-forest landscapes
Wild food constitutes a substantial part of household food consumption around the world, but rapid land use changes influence the availability of wild foods, which has implications for smallholders' food and nutrient intake. With increasing commercial agriculture and biodiversity conservation efforts in forested tropical regions, many shifting cultivation systems are being intensified and their extent restricted. Studies examining the consequence…
Land Sparing and Land Sharing Policies in Developing Countries – Drivers and Linkages to Scientific Debates
From food to pest: Conversion factors determine switches between ecosystem services and disservices
Ecosystem research focuses on goods and services, thereby ascribing beneficial values to the ecosystems. Depending on the context, however, outputs from ecosystems can be both positive and negative. We examined how provisioning services of wild animals and plants can switch between being services and disservices. We studied agricultural communities in Laos to illustrate when and why these switches take place. Government restrictions on land use c…
Environmental justice research shows the importance of social feedbacks in ecosystem service trade-offs
Dawson, N. M., K. Grogan, A. Martin, O. Mertz, M. Pasgaard, and L. V. Rasmussen. 2017. Environmental justice research shows the importance of social feedbacks in ecosystem service trade-offs. Ecology and Society 22(3):12. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09481-220312
Desirable qualities of Redd+ projects not considered in decisions of project locations
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) has become a major conservation and development concept for international climate change mitigation over the past years with hundreds of so-called ‘demonstration’ or ‘pilot’ projects being planned and implemented across the Global South. Since the broad aim of such projects is to demonstrate climate benefits from reduced deforestation, as well as social co-benefits in receiving …
Challenges and opportunities for Redd: A reality check from perspectives of effectiveness, efficiency and equity
Propensity of farmers to conserve forest within Redd+ projects in areas affected by armed-conflict
Redd+ on hold: Lessons from an emerging institutional setup in Laos
The prospects of receiving funding for REDD+ have set many developing countries on a pathway of policy reforms to integrate REDD+ in national legislation. Progress has been slow partly due to the lengthy international negotiations on REDD+ but also because the policy reforms have not been backed by sufficient commitment to make REDD+ implementation feasible. To contribute to a better understanding of why policy and institutional reforms have not …
Contradictory Land Use Plans and Policies in Laos: Tenure Security and the Threat of Exclusion
Rush for cash crops and forest protection: Neither land sparing nor land sharing
Meta-studies in land use science: Current coverage and prospects
Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesize deforestation and agricultural land use change processes, while other important changes, such as u…
Improved land tenure not the driver of economic development in a Vietnamese community
During the restructuring of the Vietnamese economy in 1986, the Communist party of Vietnam (CPV) took the decision to leave central planning and build a market economy in Vietnam. In order to promote rural development and deal with deforestation, poverty and declining agricultural profitability, the government implemented the forestland allocation policies (FLA) and started a process of decentralization. This research note examines the impact of …
Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective
Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment
Swidden Change in Southeast Asia: Understanding Causes and Consequences
The Demise of Swidden in Southeast Asia? Local Realities and Regional Ambiguities
Swidden farmers throughout Southeast Asia are rapidly abandoning traditional land use practices. While these changes have been quantified in numerous local areas, no reliable region-wide data have been produced. In this article we discuss three linked issues that account for at least some of this knowledge gap. First, swidden is a diverse, complex, and dynamic land use that data gatherers find difficult to see, define and measure, and therefore o…
Who Counts? Demography of Swidden Cultivators in Southeast Asia
Swidden cultivators are often found as a distinct category of farmers in the literature, but rarely appear in population censuses or other national and regional classifications. This has led to a worldwide confusion on how many people are dependent on this form of agriculture. The most often cited number of 200-300 million dates back to the early 1970s, but the source is obscure. We assess available, published data from nine countries in Southeas…
An Assessment of Trends in the Extent of Swidden in Southeast Asia
Land System Science: Between global challenges and local realities
This issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability provides an overview of recent advances in Land System Science while at the same time setting the research agenda for the Land System Science community. Land System Science is not just representing land system changes as either a driver or a consequence of global environmental change. Land systems also offer solutions to global change through adaptation and mitigation and can play a ke…
Social-ecological outcomes of agricultural intensification
Contradictory Land Use Plans and Policies in Laos: Tenure Security and the Threat of Exclusion
Closing global knowledge gaps: Producing generalized knowledge from case studies of social-ecological systems
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 significance of changes in social-ecological systems, or ‘generalized knowledge claims’ (GKCs), are ge…
Ecosystem services and nature’s contribution to people: Negotiating diverse values and trade-offs in land systems
Land is increasingly managed to serve multiple societal demands. Beyond food, fiber, habitation, and recreation, land is now being called on to meet demands for carbon sequestration, water purification, biodiversity conservation, and many others. Meeting these multiple demands requires negotiating trade-offs among the choices and differing values placed on them by diverse stakeholders and institutions. Here, we review recent advances in understan…
Wild food collection and nutrition under commercial agriculture expansion in agriculture-forest landscapes
Wild food constitutes a substantial part of household food consumption around the world, but rapid land use changes influence the availability of wild foods, which has implications for smallholders' food and nutrient intake. With increasing commercial agriculture and biodiversity conservation efforts in forested tropical regions, many shifting cultivation systems are being intensified and their extent restricted. Studies examining the consequence…
Trends in shifting cultivation and the Redd mechanism
Importance and seasonality of vegetable consumption and marketing in Burkina Faso
The forgotten D: Challenges of addressing forest degradation in complex mosaic landscapes under Redd
International climate negotiations have stressed the importance of considering emissions from forest degradation under the planned REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation + enhancing forest carbon stocks) mechanism. However, most research, pilot-REDD+ projects and carbon certification agencies have focused on deforestation and there appears to be a gap in knowledge on complex mosaic landscapes containing degraded fores…
Researching Pacific island livelihoods: Mobility, natural resource management and nissology
Small island literature is vast in focus and aim, and is rooted in many different disciplines. The challenge is to find common grounds for researching small islands conceptually and theoretically. The aim of this article is to comment on how to research small islands, including a discussion on contemporary theories of nissology and conceptual analytical frameworks for island research. Through a review of selected case-study-based island literatur…
The Rationality of Shifting Cultivation Systems: Labor Productivity Revisited
Regime shifts limit the predictability of land-system change
Adaptation of Human Coping Strategies in a Small Island Society in the SW Pacific-50 Years of Change in the Coupled Human-Environment System on Bellona, Solomon Islands
Rush for cash crops and forest protection: Neither land sparing nor land sharing
Meta-studies in land use science: Current coverage and prospects
Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesize deforestation and agricultural land use change processes, while other important changes, such as u…
Is There a Continuing Rationale for Swidden Cultivation in the 21st Century
Slash and Burn” and “Shifting” Cultivation Systems in Forest Agriculture Frontiers from the Brazilian Amazon
We analyze changes in the extent of slash and burn cultivation (SBC) and shifting cultivation (SC) and the main drivers of change observed in the last 10 years across the Brazilian Amazon. Our results show that SC is stable in indigenous and caboclo communities from Amazonas and Acre. SBC increases along new roads, illustrating how roads shape deforestation frontiers beyond the “arc of deforestation.” In established forest frontiers, the conversi…
Challenges and opportunities for Redd: A reality check from perspectives of effectiveness, efficiency and equity
Land Sparing and Land Sharing Policies in Developing Countries – Drivers and Linkages to Scientific Debates
Land Use and Crop Diversity in Two Iban Communities, Sarawak, Malaysia
Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 97: 98–110, 1997. The difference in agricultural strategies of two Iban communities located in the hilly interior and the coastal zone of Sarawak, respectively, is studied through interviews, field measurements, and botanical collections. The diversity of crops and farming environments is very similar in both communities, the main difference being the production of wet rice with high yields in th…
Anmeldelser
Anmeldelser
Importance and seasonality of vegetable consumption and marketing in Burkina Faso
Food consumption in rural Burkina Faso
Food diaries, kept by 13 households in Burkina Faso throughout one year, showed that rural people on average consumed between 1.8 and 2.9 meals per day typically consisting of a thick porridge, made from pearl millet or red sorghum, and a sauce of leaves mainly Corchorus spp. and Adansonia digitata, calyces from Bombax costatum, or groundnuts. Spices, such as chili, Parkia biglobosa "soumbala" and dried fish were frequently added. Vegetables and …
Anmeldelser
Fallow, labour and livelihood in shifting cultivation: Implications for deforestation in northern Lao PDR
Shifting cultivation is often blamed for deforestation in tropical upland areas. Based on a case study of three villages in northern Lao PDR, this paper combines household surveys with a remote sensing based analysis of forest cover, covering the period 1989–1999, in order to analyse changes in shifting cultivation practices and livelihood strategies and the impact of these on deforestation. Due to population pressure and relocation of villages, …
The Rationality of Shifting Cultivation Systems: Labor Productivity Revisited
The Demise of Swidden in Southeast Asia? Local Realities and Regional Ambiguities
Swidden farmers throughout Southeast Asia are rapidly abandoning traditional land use practices. While these changes have been quantified in numerous local areas, no reliable region-wide data have been produced. In this article we discuss three linked issues that account for at least some of this knowledge gap. First, swidden is a diverse, complex, and dynamic land use that data gatherers find difficult to see, define and measure, and therefore o…
Adaptation of Human Coping Strategies in a Small Island Society in the SW Pacific-50 Years of Change in the Coupled Human-Environment System on Bellona, Solomon Islands
Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change and Agricultural Adaptation Strategies in Rural Sahel
Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries
Trends in shifting cultivation and the Redd mechanism
Who Counts? Demography of Swidden Cultivators in Southeast Asia
Swidden cultivators are often found as a distinct category of farmers in the literature, but rarely appear in population censuses or other national and regional classifications. This has led to a worldwide confusion on how many people are dependent on this form of agriculture. The most often cited number of 200-300 million dates back to the early 1970s, but the source is obscure. We assess available, published data from nine countries in Southeas…
Swidden Change in Southeast Asia: Understanding Causes and Consequences
An Assessment of Trends in the Extent of Swidden in Southeast Asia
Continuity and change: Spatiotemporal land use dynamics on Bellona Island, Solomon Islands
Traditional agricultural land use systems in the humid tropics of the Southwest Pacific are, as elsewhere, affected by globalization processes. This paper analyzes the directions of change in the land use system of Bellona, a small outer island in the Solomon Islands. We focus on the human–environmental interaction that shapes land use patterns and practices in the context of theoretical lines of thought concerning intensification of agricultural…
Small island sustainability in the Pacific: Introduction to the special issue
Sustainable land use in Tikopia: Food production and consumption in an isolated agricultural system
The land use system on Tikopia – a Polynesian outlier in Solomon Islands – is analyzed to determine how it has developed since it was first described in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. Fieldwork included a household questionnaire survey, in‐depth interviews on farming practices and decision making, and the collection of soil samples from the major soil and garden types. The Tikopian land use system has not undergone significant changes since th…
Researching Pacific island livelihoods: Mobility, natural resource management and nissology
Small island literature is vast in focus and aim, and is rooted in many different disciplines. The challenge is to find common grounds for researching small islands conceptually and theoretically. The aim of this article is to comment on how to research small islands, including a discussion on contemporary theories of nissology and conceptual analytical frameworks for island research. Through a review of selected case-study-based island literatur…
Climate Factors Play a Limited Role for Past Adaptation Strategies in West Africa
Mertz, O., C. Mbow, J. Østergaard Nielsen, A. Maiga, D. Diallo, A. Reenberg, A. Diouf, B. Barbier, I. Bouzou Moussa, M. Zorom, I. Ouattara, and D. Dabi. 2010. Climate factors play a limited role for past adaptation strategies in West Africa. Ecology and Society 15(4): 25. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03774-150425
Challenging the Woodfuel Crisis in West African Woodlands
Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment
Climate Variability and Environmental Stress in the Sudan-Sahel Zone of West Africa
The forgotten D: Challenges of addressing forest degradation in complex mosaic landscapes under Redd
International climate negotiations have stressed the importance of considering emissions from forest degradation under the planned REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation + enhancing forest carbon stocks) mechanism. However, most research, pilot-REDD+ projects and carbon certification agencies have focused on deforestation and there appears to be a gap in knowledge on complex mosaic landscapes containing degraded fores…
Geography (51 works) · Economics (35 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (33 works) · Ecology (31 works) · Environmental Science (31 works) · Agriculture (29 works) · Environmental resource management (26 works) · Agroforestry (24 works) · Business (24 works) · Political science (20 works)