Abstract
Agriculture is a dominant form of management and a major driver of global change in the Anthropocene. Whilst farmland intensification and expansion came at high costs for the global natural capital, the role of low intensity, traditionally managed High Nature Value farmlands (HNVf) for achieving food security while contributing to the conservation of biodiversity and the delivery of ecosystem services has been acknowledged. Yet, most research on HNVf has focused the impacts of land-use change, potentially overlooking the challenges that climate change may pose to their future persistence. In this chapter, we present an overview of the impacts of climate change on HNVf, based on the analysis of current scientific evidence. Overall, while an increasing number of studies was observed, there is a lack of data-driven assessments at the global scale, reflecting an inability to forecast the impacts of climate change on low-intensity farming systems at this scale. High variation was observed regarding the impacts addressed and the topics tackled in space and time in the research records scrutinized. A paradigm shift towards integrated approaches considering both climate and land-use change impacts in the social-ecological systems underlying low-intensity, traditionally managed HNVf is discussed and future perspectives and research needs are outlined.
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Acknowledgements
AL and FM were supported by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) through Post-Doctoral Grant SFRH/BPD/80747/2011 and contract IF/01053/2015, respectively. This research is a result of project FARSYD-2011–2016—POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016664, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by national funds through FCT—Portuguese Science Foundation (PTDC/AAG-EC/5007/2014).
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Lomba, A., Buchadas, A., Honrado, J.P., Moreira, F. (2019). Are We Missing the Big Picture? Unlocking the Social-Ecological Resilience of High Nature Value Farmlands to Future Climate Change. In: Castro, P., Azul, A., Leal Filho, W., Azeiteiro, U. (eds) Climate Change-Resilient Agriculture and Agroforestry. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75004-0_4
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