Land Use Change and Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change in the Mayan Forest and the Americas' Internationally Adjoining Protected Areas.

Abstract

The growing evidence of the negative impacts of climate change on livelihoods suggests that the implementation of household based adaptation strategies is likely to grow dramatically in the next few decades. Household adaptation could become a critical factor in environmental change. Without understanding of the likely effects of adaptation on environmental change, efforts to foster adaptation can produce unintended outcomes. This dissertation assesses how household-based adaptation strategies, together with a range of other factors, such as institutions, governance, and socioeconomic conditions, influence land use change, as a specific form of environmental change. These strategies include storage, diversification, exchange and pooling and have been used, through history, by different societies to adapt to climatic, economic, or political changes. To answer its research questions, this dissertation draws inferences from a large-N case study in the Mayan Forest and a comparative analysis of internationally adjoining protected areas across the Americas. The causes of land use change have been extensively studied; nonetheless, scholars have not yet systematically addressed land use change within the context of adaptation to climate variability and change. This dissertation makes a contribution to the scholarship on climate adaptation and land change by examining the influence of adaptation as a potentially major driving factor of land use change. It finds that adaptation exercises a critical influence on land use change in the Mayan Forest and in protected areas throughout the Americas. The results from the Mayan Forest case study show that the influence of adaptation on land use change depends on the context within which they occur. The comparative analysis across protected areas supports these findings suggesting that adaptation mediates the influence of socio-economic, institutional, and governance factors. The effects of adaptation on land use change depend on the specific adaptation strategy households follow. In the Mayan Forest, land use change is likely to increase when people rely on government aid or follow storage as adaptation strategy. In contrast, land use change decreases if people exchange, diversify, or pool to adapt. Across the Americas diversification and migration are associated with lower land use change.