Agroforestry Landscapes and Transforming Highland Livelihoods
A dialogue with Laura Kmoch on upcoming fieldwork and place-based research in Morocco and western Myanmar
Rural people’s livelihoods intricately depend on the landscapes they live in. These human-nature relations now transform throughout the world, due to complex social-ecological change dynamics.
Laura Kmoch is a postdoctoral researcher with expertise on rural livelihoods, climate vulnerability and land-use dynamics in highland areas. She recently joined the Section of Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems to advance the group’s research on livelihoods and drivers of rural change in Morocco’s agroforestry landscapes. On this occasion, she has been interviewed by Imke Horstmannshoff.
Read on to learn more about her background and research plans for the coming months.
Welcome to this blog, Laura! Could you tell us more about your work at the Social-Ecological Interactions group?
Thank you. It’s my pleasure to join this forum and to add to the team’s portfolio of research stories. I’ve now been part of the group for two months. My research feeds into the go-PRIMA and Landscape Chains projects in Morocco, which are located in two rather contrasting study areas: the Maâmora Forest in the country’s north-western coastal plain, and the terraced agricultural landscapes of the High Atlas mountains.
Maâmora is a vast cork-oak forest on the doorstep of Morocco’s populous cities Rabat, Salé and Kenitra.
This emblematic forest is under climate change pressure, and subject to competing interests of urban dwellers, livestock herders and forestry actors.
The provincial cities Demnate and Azilal, on the other hand, are within a few hours drive from Marrakech. They are gateways to Morocco’s traditional agroforestry landscapes and the region’s highland communities. Tobias Plieninger, Emmeline Topp and I are planning to visit both of these tree-crop landscapes in October this year, and my fieldwork will initially commence in the latter.
Which research projects are you currently working on?
Morocco’s High Atlas landscapes are fascinating, yet challenging places for agricultural production. The terrain is rugged, winters are cold and droughts common during the hot summer months. To thrive despite these demanding circumstances, local farming communities have developed intricate land-use regimes, which match the seasonal cycles of plant growth in this high altitude region.
One of these traditional land-use regimes is the Agdal system of the Amazigh livestock herders. The term Agdal has at least two meanings: It denotes collectively managed mountain pastures, as well as rural communities’ traditional land governance regimes, which regulate pastoralists’ seasonal access to these grazing areas.
It’s a remarkable way to manage common land, in due consideration of biophysical parameters and sustainable use constraints.
One of my first tasks in the research group is to synthesize literature about Morocco’s Agdal systems, for a comparative analysis of biocultural conservation approaches in the Mediterranean Basin.
Led by Tobias Plieninger, we contrast traditional land-use regimes in Greece, Spain, Libanon and Morocco, to draw out lessons for conservation science and understand how different values, rules and knowledges shape land systems in this biodiversity-rich region.
At the same time, I’m preparing for empirical research in Morocco this autumn. There is more to the High Atlas landscapes and people’s livelihoods than the sustenance of cows, sheep and goats. Households cultivate barley and tree-crops including walnuts, cherries, almonds, olives and apples on terraced land. They also domesticate aromatic highland plants or gather them in the wild.
Traditional land-use practices in this region remain very much alive. Yet, regional and global change drivers re-shape rural communities, and people’s relations to land.
Multiple climate threats, social change and unmet economic needs put High Atlas families, their agricultural production systems and customary institutions under pressure. New economic opportunities arise, resilient practices persist, but other traditions, activities and lifestyles may vanish. Individuals and entire households move from rural to urban areas or temporarily re-settle for paid work elsewhere in Morocco and overseas. Such mobility dynamics, their drivers and impacts on High Atlas tree-crop production system and value chains, are what my fieldwork will focus on.
Like everyone engaged in place-based research during the global pandemic, I’m confronted with COVID-related uncertainties. Yet, all going to plan, I will collaborate with our partner Global Diversity Foundation to disentangle the links between land-use and rural-urban mobility dynamics in Morocco’s High Atlas communities later this year.
Departing from either Demnate or Azilal, I’ll map and trace networks of people and tree-crop value chains from rural to urban areas and explore how they interconnect. Participatory causal-diagramming workshops and interviews with local stakeholders will serve to identify social-ecological system dynamics that drive land-user’s regional mobility patterns and agroforestry production decisions.
Results of this work can then inform Moroccan policy processes, regional development programming and land-system research on rural-urban transformations, migration and agroforestry value chains.
How did you come to where you are now?
Prior to my employment at the Section of Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems, I was part of a highly interdisciplinary research group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. This is where I obtained my PhD degree in Energy and Environment, with a project on rural livelihoods and land-use dynamics in upland Myanmar. My interest in rural-urban mobility dynamics and their interplay with traditional land-use systems stems from this time.
Most of my PhD research in Myanmar took place in the northern Chin Hills, just across the border from Northeast India.
My lens into the social-ecological system dynamics and swidden landscapes of this region were people’s traditional farming practices and livelihood activities.
With support from my supervisors, I assessed households’ customary land-use systems and income streams from off-farm activities and different types of land. We found that our interview partners maintained a striking diversity of subsistence (tree-)crops on their farms, and relied on secure land access to meet their food and energy need.
Somewhat unexpected, we also realised that remittances substantially contributed to the income portfolios of more than a quarter of all studied households.
This insight led to follow-up research in collaboration with my co-supervisor Professor Martin Rudbeck Jepsen and migration specialist Professor Jytte Agergaard from the University of Copenhagen, as well as staff and students from Kalay University in Myanmar. The devastating military coup in the country earlier this year has brought this line of inquiry to a hold, at least for now. My interest in rural-urban transformation processes has been sparked for good though. Hence, I’m exited to soon delve into these dynamics in the context of Morocco’s agroforestry landscapes.
Which skills and experiences will you bring to your research in Morocco?
Throughout my time in Myanmar, I received invaluable support from staff of the NGO Ar Yone Oo Social Development Association. Their kind attitude and commitment to bettering the lives of Myanmar’s highland people is the spirit that I strive to bring with me, as I approach my research in Morocco’s High Atlas.
My experience with causal diagramming workshops likewise stems from my collaboration with Ar Yone Oo. The organisation implemented a project to support communities’ disaster recovery and to advance rural households’ climate change resilience, in the aftermaths of Cyclone Komen, which triggered disastrous landslides and widespread flooding in Myanmar in 2015. Participatory causal diagramming activities, with men and women from affected farming communities, enabled us to disentangle the cyclone’s repercussions for local cropping systems and livelihoods, which lasted for years.
Yet, I first used causal analysis techniques in another research project in northern Morocco, when documenting farmers’ agroecological knowledge about drivers of tree-cover change and agroforestry practices in the Zerhoun Massif.
In the context of alarming MENA-region climate change projections and the government’s ‘Plan Maroc Vert’, my research aimed at identifying tree-based adaptation options that fit the livelihood realities and needs of local farmers.
This study, supported by ICRAF, Bangor University, ICARDA and INRA Meknès also first introduced me to the country’s agrarian communities, beautiful tree-crop landscapes and breakfast msemmen, which I can’t wait to taste again, as I’m about to return to Morocco.
Thanks a lot, Laura, for these valuable insights!
Interested in go-Prima, Landscape Chains or other ongoing research projects concerning rural landscapes, ecosystem services and sustainable land use?
Read more on People • Nature • Landscapes.
Further readings
Kmoch, L., T. Pagella, M. Palm and F. Sinclair (2018). ‘Using Local Agroecological Knowledge in Climate Change Adaptation: A Study of Tree-Based Options in Northern Morocco.’ Sustainability 10(10), 3719. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103719
Garcia-Martin, M., M. Torralba, C. Quintas-Soriano, J. Kahl, T. Plieninger (2021). ‘Linking food systems and landscape sustainability in the Mediterranean region.’ Landscape Ecology 36(1) 1–17. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-020-01168-5
Kmoch, L., M. Palm, U. Persson and M. Rudbeck Jepsen (2021). ‘Access mapping highlights risks from land reform in upland Myanmar.’ Journal of Land Use Science 16(1) 34–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2020.1836053
Kmoch, L., M. Palm, U. Persson and M. Rudbeck Jepsen (2018). ‘Upland Livelihoods between Local Land and Global Labour Market Dependencies: Evidence from Northern Chin State, Myanmar.’ Sustainability 10(10), 3707. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103707
