Contribution short abstract

We examine how human and nonhuman actors co-produce landscape change and livelihoods in Hungary’s Sand Ridge region. Drawing on interview analysis and natural archives, we analyse local interpretations of aridification, land-use pressures, and prospects for multispecies adaptive strategies.

Contribution long abstract

The Sand Ridge has undergone rapid aridification and landscape transformation over the past two centuries, with marked acceleration since the 1980s. While these changes have attracted growing research attention, multispecies and more-than-human political ecological perspectives remain underused despite their relevance. This paper combines new materialist approaches with critical political economy to examine how inanimate actants (water, sand, wind) and diverse flora and fauna (grazing livestock, introduced plants, invasive species) interact with historically situated forms of socio-economic organization to shape the region’s landscape and multi-species livelihoods.

Drawing on interviews with local stakeholders, the paper analyses how people living in and from the land perceive these socio-ecological processes. It highlights interviewees’ assessments of the roles and potentials of animate and inanimate nonhuman entities in co-creating landscapes and livelihoods, and considers how such understandings might support renewed strategies of multispecies collaborative adaptation.

Empirically, the study focuses on two sites. The first is a small border town once known for tomato production but now severely affected by the drastic decline of the groundwater table. The second is a historic wine-growing area with relatively favourable soils, where wine-related tourism is expanding while conservation efforts face pressure from recurring drought and the political embeddedness of some landowners and the fishing community.

Our approach offers new momentum for collective reflection among researchers and practitioners working in the region, and contributes to building counter-narratives grounded in residents’ own insights, as well as the natural archives of the region.