Sustainable Land and Water Management for a Greener Future Large-scale insights in support of Agroecological Intensification

The challenge of producing more food in times of climate change, degraded land and scarce water resources calls for a radical transformation of agriculture. Sustainable agricultural intensification is the process of increasing the productivity of farms while preserving functional ecosystems. During recent decades, a range of sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices and approaches to sustainable intensification have been successfully implemented at the local scale. However, adoption rates have remained low due to a variety of barriers and lack of effective approaches from authorities at larger scales (national to global). Despite the wealth of local successes, promoting and realizing the widespread uptake of SLWM requires large scale understanding of the potential and challenges of adoption of SLWM, which is currently lacking. This thesis bridges outcomes of successful implementation of SLWM from local cases to large scale social-ecological patterns, showing where and what is the potential of SLWM is for contributing to sustainable agricultural intensification and the barriers to achieving it. The methodological approaches and the results presented in this thesis provide insights for improving assessments of sustainable intensification of agriculture, as well as practical guidance for planning, policy- making and funding interventions to promote the widespread adoption of SLWM.