PhD defence: Lisset Pérez Marulanda
Lisset Pérez Marulanda defends her thesis,
Defining, operationalizing and promoting Sustainable Land Use Systems
A Pathway to Foster Sustainability in Areas Affected by Armed Conflict and Deforestation
Supervisors:
Associate professor Martin Rudbeck Jepsen, IGN
PhD Augusto Castro-Nuñez, Alliance Bioversity International and CIAT - Colombia
Assessment Committee:
Associate Professor Stefan Sieber, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) - Germany
Professor Jon Unruh, McGill University, Dept of Geography - Canada
Professor Ole Mertz (chair), IGN
Summary:
Understanding the driving forces behind land use systems and their interactions with the environment is crucial for achieving sustainable development. Geography as a discipline plays a vital role in sustainability research, as it focuses on human-environment interactions and is linked to economic and social dimensions of sustainability. Sustainable land use systems (SLUS) like agroforestry cocoa, implemented using organic fertilization, prescribed post-harvest practices and rainwater irrigation, can increase farm productivity while reducing deforestation and providing legitimate incomes for rural households. SLUS can mitigate climate change by decreasing deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions while enhancing farm productivity and/or revenues. However, the sustainability of land use systems depends on factors such as organic fertilization, rainwater reservoirs, and post-harvest processing techniques. The thesis aims to explore how SLUS can promote sustainable development by contributing to climate change mitigation and peacebuilding. The thesis seeks to develop tools for evaluating the contributions of SLUS to sustainable development and advance the theoretical framework for assessing progress toward sustainability by incorporating peacebuilding and climate change mitigation. The goal is to enhance measures of sustainability in land use systems to achieve sustainable development goals related to environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation, and peacebuilding. Achieving sustainable development depends on peace and sustainability accounting tools that incorporate climate change mitigation, which is essential for addressing sustainability challenges. There is also a need for studies that apply sustainability measures to assess land systems in conflict-affected regions vulnerable to deforestation
A digital version of the PhD thesis can be obtained from the PhD secretary phd@ign.ku.dk