Resilient and sustainable natural resource production : how are farmers and foresters coping?

Abstract

Adapting to the anthropogenic environmental change while transitioning to a more sustainable and more productive natural resource management places unprecedented demands on natural resource production. Meeting this complex challenge without unwarranted environmental degradation or loss of livelihoods requires understanding and managing the resilience of properties that produce natural resources. However, insufficient attention has been paid in research and natural resource governance to the capacity of natural resource producers to adapt and achieve sustainable outcomes at the property-level, potentially leading to unintended environmental and social outcomes. We used a large and detailed survey data of farmers, foresters, and growers in New Zealand to identify factors that correlate with property-level outcomes that are desirable from the perspective of sustainable natural resource production: strong environmental performance, good financial situation, and high well-being. The results detail how these outcomes correlate with diverse individual traits and outlooks, property-level agroecosystem characteristics, economic resources, and social interactions. However, different factors drive individual outcomes, and a factor that is positively correlated with one desirable outcome may negatively correlate with another. The only factor that positively correlated with all three outcomes was the goal to have strong environmental performance in future, which may reflect optimism as a resilience determinant. Thus, the difficulty of achieving good outcomes across all three dimensions may arise from conflicting effects of different factors on property-level environmental, economic, and well-being outcomes. In conclusion, our results indicate that natural resource governance must more carefully consider interdependencies between environmental, financial, and well-being outcomes at the property-level to support the ability of natural resource producers to meet society’s demands.