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Understanding agricultural frontiers emergence in Southern and Eastern Africa: an interdisciplinary approach combining ethnography, remote sensing and decision-making models
Please register via the booking url below to receive joining instructions – in your booking confirmation, click on “View online event” for the Zoom link and passcode.
Online seminar followed by Q&A – all welcome. NB – all times given in UK time.
In this research we aim to explain the processes that condition and shape the emergence of agricultural frontiers – i.e., regions with rapid development of natural resource exploitation and land use changes – in territories considered as marginal in terms of agricultural productivity and global market connections. Our research focuses on the dry forest and woodland region of Southern and Eastern Africa, with a specific attention to Northern Mozambique. The project combines an ethnographic approach exploring the role of successive “waves” of pioneers; a remote sensing mapping of tree plantations expansion – led by foreign investors -; a spatial analysis of the effects of land use and land tenure policies on land use change dynamics; a Bayesian decision-making model based on interviews of investors and agricultural operators from the farm level to the financial decision centres (London, Amsterdam); and a theoretical economic model which formalizes the conditions of regime shift from pre-frontier characterized by semi-subsistence agriculture to the rapid expansion of commercial agriculture. Linking these approaches allows to progress in a theory on land use frontier emergence, and to establish the basis for proactive governance of these dynamics.
Patrick Meyfroidt holds a PhD in geography (2009) and a degree in sociology from the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium. Since 2016, he is a Research Associate of Belgian Research Fund and Professor at UCLouvain. His main research interests are land use and forest transitions, linkages between globalization and human-environmental changes, and governance of land systems.
The research presented here is part of the ERC SG project MIDLAND: erc-midland.earth.
Date:
21 May 2021, 16:00
Venue:
Online
Speaker:
Patrick Meyfroidt, PhD (UCLouvain)
Organising department:
Oxford University Centre for the Environment
Organiser:
Jane Applegarth (University of Oxford, Oxford University Centre for the Environment)
Organiser contact email address:
jane.applegarth@eci.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Yadvinder Malhi (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://www.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk/event/patrick-meyfroidt/
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Jane Applegarth
