James L. MacKinnon

Bio: James L. MacKinnon is an academic researcher from Conservation International. The author has contributed to research in topics: Deforestation & Livelihood. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 5 publications receiving 520 citations.

Extreme vulnerability of smallholder farmers to agricultural risks and climate change in Madagascar

Abstract: Across the tropics, smallholder farmers already face numerous risks to agricultural production. Climate change is expected to disproportionately affect smallholder farmers and make their livelihoods even more precarious; however, there is limited information on their overall vulnerability and adaptation needs. We conducted surveys of 600 households in Madagascar to characterize the vulnerability of smallholder farmers, identify how farmers cope with risks and explore what strategies are needed to help them adapt to climate change. Malagasy farmers are particularly vulnerable to any shocks to their agricultural system owing to their high dependence on agriculture for their livelihoods, chronic food insecurity, physical isolation and lack of access to formal safety nets. Farmers are frequently exposed to pest and disease outbreaks and extreme weather events (particularly cyclones), which cause significant crop and income losses and exacerbate food insecurity. Although farmers use a variety of risk-coping strategies, these are insufficient to prevent them from remaining food insecure. Few farmers have adjusted their farming strategies in response to climate change, owing to limited resources and capacity. Urgent technical, financial and institutional support is needed to improve the agricultural production and food security of Malagasy farmers and make their livelihoods resilient to climate change.

Climate change adaptation for conservation in Madagascar

Abstract: Madagascar's imperilled biota are now experiencing the effects of a new threat—climate change ([Raxworthy et al . 2008][1]). With more than 90% endemism among plants, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, the stakes are high. The pristine landscapes that allowed this exceptional biodiversity to

Strategies of smallholder farmers for coping with the impacts of cyclones: A case study from Madagascar

Abstract: In many tropical countries, smallholder farmers are highly vulnerable to cyclones and experience significant crop losses, food insecurity and income loss when cyclones hit. Madagascar has one of the highest rates of cyclones globally and a population comprised primarily of smallholder farmers, yet there is little information on how Malagasy smallholder farmers prepare for and cope with the cyclones. We conducted interviews with 200 Malagasy smallholder farmers following the impacts of cyclone Giovanna (a category 4 cyclone that struck in February 2012) to understand how farmers prepared for the cyclone, how the cyclone impacted their livelihoods and what strategies farmers used to deal with these impacts. Most farmers prepared for the cyclone by storing clean water; some also secured their buildings and stored food and seeds. Cyclone Giovanna caused substantial damage to crops, stored grains and houses, and significantly reduced farmer food security. Farmers coped with the cyclone by replanting crop fields, rebuilding homes with local materials, reducing consumption of staple foods, harvesting wild foods and finding temporary work to buy food. Informal social networks were critical for providing food and rebuilding houses. There is an urgent need for governments, donors, and development organizations to reduce the vulnerability of Malagasy smallholder farmers to cyclones by improving early warning systems, increasing farmer preparedness for cyclones, creating formal safety nets to help farmers access food and essential supplies following cyclones, and promoting the use of adaptation measures to enhance the resiliency of smallholder farmers to future climate shocks.

Costs of delivery approaches for providing livelihood projects to local communities as part of REDD+ programmes: An analysis from Madagascar

Abstract: Providing benefits to local people from forest conservation programmes is an important issue for policy makers. Livelihood projects are a common way to provide benefits, but there is little information about their costs. We analysed 463 livelihood projects in the Ankeniheny-Zahamena Corridor Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) pilot project in Madagascar to understand how different approaches to delivering livelihood projects affect costs. We compared costs across four approaches: conservation agreements, small grants, direct implementation and application of social safeguards. The approach impacted overall costs and the proportion of funds reaching communities. Projects implemented as safeguards were most expensive and had the lowest proportion of expenditures reaching the community. Projects provided as part of conservation agreements directed the highest proportion of expenditures to communities. Our results highlight that how livelihood projects are delivered has implications for project costs and community benefits and should be an important consideration in the design and implementation of REDD+ and forest conservation policies.

Local Perceptions of the Livelihood and Conservation Benefits of Small-Scale Livelihood Projects in Rural Madagascar

Abstract: Small-scale livelihood projects are widely used in forest conservation and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)+ initiatives; however, there is limited information on how ef...

Using Deep Learning for Image-Based Plant Disease Detection

Abstract: Crop diseases are a major threat to food security, but their rapid identification remains difficult in many parts of the world due to the lack of the necessary infrastructure. The combination of increasing global smartphone penetration and recent advances in computer vision made possible by deep learning has paved the way for smartphone-assisted disease diagnosis. Using a public dataset of 54,306 images of diseased and healthy plant leaves collected under controlled conditions, we train a deep convolutional neural network to identify 14 crop species and 26 diseases (or absence thereof). The trained model achieves an accuracy of 99.35% on a held-out test set, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach. Overall, the approach of training deep learning models on increasingly large and publicly available image datasets presents a clear path toward smartphone-assisted crop disease diagnosis on a massive global scale.

Extreme vulnerability of smallholder farmers to agricultural risks and climate change in Madagascar

Abstract: Across the tropics, smallholder farmers already face numerous risks to agricultural production. Climate change is expected to disproportionately affect smallholder farmers and make their livelihoods even more precarious; however, there is limited information on their overall vulnerability and adaptation needs. We conducted surveys of 600 households in Madagascar to characterize the vulnerability of smallholder farmers, identify how farmers cope with risks and explore what strategies are needed to help them adapt to climate change. Malagasy farmers are particularly vulnerable to any shocks to their agricultural system owing to their high dependence on agriculture for their livelihoods, chronic food insecurity, physical isolation and lack of access to formal safety nets. Farmers are frequently exposed to pest and disease outbreaks and extreme weather events (particularly cyclones), which cause significant crop and income losses and exacerbate food insecurity. Although farmers use a variety of risk-coping strategies, these are insufficient to prevent them from remaining food insecure. Few farmers have adjusted their farming strategies in response to climate change, owing to limited resources and capacity. Urgent technical, financial and institutional support is needed to improve the agricultural production and food security of Malagasy farmers and make their livelihoods resilient to climate change.

Resilience of local food systems and links to food security - A review of some important concepts in the context of COVID-19 and other shocks.

Abstract: The objective of this review is to explore and discuss the concept of local food system resilience in light of the disruptions brought to those systems by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion, which focuses on low and middle income countries, considers also the other shocks and stressors that generally affect local food systems and their actors in those countries (weather-related, economic, political or social disturbances). The review of existing (mainly grey or media-based) accounts on COVID-19 suggests that, with the exception of those who lost members of their family to the virus, as per June 2020 the main impact of the pandemic derives mainly from the lockdown and mobility restrictions imposed by national/local governments, and the consequence that the subsequent loss of income and purchasing power has on people's food security, in particular the poor. The paper then uses the most prominent advances made recently in the literature on household resilience in the context of food security and humanitarian crises to identify a series of lessons that can be used to improve our understanding of food system resilience and its link to food security in the context of the COVID-19 crisis and other shocks. Those lessons include principles about the measurement of food system resilience and suggestions about the types of interventions that could potentially strengthen the abilities of actors (including policy makers) to respond more appropriately to adverse events affecting food systems in the future.

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