Ellen Hoffmann - Böcker

Bengaluru is one of the fastest growing megacities in India. As such, it provides an in-situ laboratory for studying rural-urban transitions. While urbanization is most evident in the changing landscape with increasing built-up areas, it comes along with changes in ecosystem functions, new economic opportunities, changes in social organization and individual attitudes and behavior. All of these processes are interlinked and mutually depend on each other. This book attempts to integrate studies from a wide scope of disciplinary perspectives and at different spatial scales under the framework of complex social-ecological systems.Agriculture is the prime example of a system in which humans interact with their biophysical environment, and the production systems in the rural-urban interface are profoundly affected by urbanisation. Intensification and diversification of agriculture are immediate responses to urban pressures and demands, and are linked as much to resource (over-)use as to commercialisation. Yet, little is known about the spatial patterns of agricultural transformation in areas of urban sprawl.The focus of the contributions here is explicitly on the interface, in-between the rural and urban systems. It thus differs from the urban-centered perspective of city planners as well as from the rural predominance in most of the agricultural research. In the present volume this focus is implemented by analysing samples along a spatial gradient representing different stages of urbanization. Ongoing time series analyses and a panel study will complement the spatial approach by a temporal dimension.

Bengaluru is one of the fastest growing megacities in India. As such, it provides an in-situ laboratory for studying rural-urban transitions. While urbanization is most evident in the changing landscape with increasing built-up areas, it comes along with changes in ecosystem functions, new economic opportunities, changes in social organization and individual attitudes and behavior. All of these processes are interlinked and mutually depend on each other. This book attempts to integrate studies from a wide scope of disciplinary perspectives and at different spatial scales under the framework of complex social-ecological systems.Agriculture is the prime example of a system in which humans interact with their biophysical environment, and the production systems in the rural-urban interface are profoundly affected by urbanisation. Intensification and diversification of agriculture are immediate responses to urban pressures and demands, and are linked as much to resource (over-)use as to commercialisation. Yet, little is known about the spatial patterns of agricultural transformation in areas of urban sprawl.The focus of the contributions here is explicitly on the interface, in-between the rural and urban systems. It thus differs from the urban-centered perspective of city planners as well as from the rural predominance in most of the agricultural research. In the present volume this focus is implemented by analysing samples along a spatial gradient representing different stages of urbanization. Ongoing time series analyses and a panel study will complement the spatial approach by a temporal dimension.

This book emerged from decades of agro-ecological research in the Karakoram Mountains and the Cholistan Desert of Pakistan conducted in collaboration with local scientists, PhD scholars, and villagers in partly very remote oases that exhibit a historically unusually high diversity of agro-pastoral land use systems. Due to their resilience under isolated harsh environmental conditions, as outlined in Section 1 these oases exemplify many centuries-old sustainable systems of resource use that are currently undergoing rapid transformation. The volume depicts a mixed-methods approach that combines classical multi-location biodiversity research and molecular analyses with a collection of 169 Folk Tales. Taken together, the book draws attention to the sustainability lessons that are encoded in ancient social-ecological systems.In an environment whose interacting environmental stresses of droughts, floods, harsh winters, hot summers, wanted and unwanted vistors, and fragile political conditions could hardly be controlled by small agropastoral communities, their members found ways to navigate constraints and uncertainties. Sustainable water use (SDG 6, Clean water) is key to the ancient, gravity irrigated terrace agriculture practiced in the mountain and lowland desert oases. Given millennia-old trading between East and West but also South and North across Asia and with Europe, the crops cultivated and the animal husbandry systems practised in these areas of Pakistan are extraordinarily diverse and adapted to varying resources (SDG 15, Life on land). This equally applies to fruit and cereal species but also to livestock, mainly yaks and goats, that thrive on the summer pastures surrounding the oases. Responsible consumption and production (SDG 12) are inherent to these systems and a prerequisite for their mere existence. Section 3 of the book takes scientific account of this rich biodiversity. In managing their oasis systems, local residents are highly dependent on each other. Collaboration is essential for survival and this has formed strong social commitments (SDG 11, Sustainable communities). Resource governance is encoded in cultural practices, and has been passed on in a large reservoir of Folk Tales. Section 2 of the book presents a unique collection of such tales reported by village elders. In original language videos readily available through QR codes and their careful English transcriptions, peasants narrate historical events, traditional practices of every-day life, mystical fairy-tales with symbolic meanings, and general lessons of moral as part of an ancient heritage of humanity. Given that the linkage between socio-cultural heritage and bio-physical diversity has been little explored in scientific research, this book provides a starting point for a deeper, interdisciplinary analysis of the ancient social-ecological systems of Pakistan's desert oases, which takes into account different knowledge systems. It documents a rapidly vanishing bio-cultural diversity preserved for many centuries and testifies of eye-level partnerships that allowed their documentation.