International Symposium on Sustaining Food Security and Managing Natural Resources in Southeast Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century

Introduction When working to promote sustainable agricultural development, the problems of access to the land and the productive use of natural resources are key ones. Scientists working on such problems at the agricultural systems level need to understand the interactions among diverse ecological and social factors and the dynamics in complex systems. Natural dynamics are composed of numerous interwoven biophysical processes, involving different resources at different spatial and temporal scales. Social processes involve different stakeholders at various levels of organization, ranging from individuals or local communities occupying the land and exploiting its resources to large development-oriented or policy-making institutions. Based on a prior understanding of the natural and agronomic dynamics, finding a way to generate acceptable rules for an improved regulation of collective uses of land resources (through the application of economic, legal, or institutional management tools) is a major question. This constitutes the focus of this paper, which is illustrated by an ongoing case study about steep land management in diversified farming systems in the highlands of upper northern Thailand.