Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The 'Goldilocks Hypothesis' : A Political Ecology Of The Land-Sparing/Wildlife-Friendly Farming Debate, M. Jahi Chappell

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

Proposals for biodiversity conservation as related to the dominant form of human land use, agriculture, have broadly coalesced around two paradigms: "Land sparing" and "Wildlife-friendly farming." Neither paradigm is sufficiently grounded in the more complex socioeconomic realities of the food system with regards to another paramount problem of our time: widespread malnutrition. However, the "land sparing" paradigm's simplistic approach to food, policy, and ecosystem dynamics is arguably more egregiously out of sync with current knowledge. The talk will present a conceptual view of food systems, hunger, and biodiversity conservation, with the goal of generating discussion on how to systematically integrate …