ASSETS Attaining Sustainable Services from Ecosystems through Trade-off Scenarios State of the art as of 21 st May 2012 Photo by Erwin Palacios CI Colombia © The Economist
May 22, 2015
ASSETSAttaining Sustainable Services from Ecosystems through Trade-off Scenarios
State of the art as of 21st May 2012
Photo by Erwin Palacios CI Colombia © The Economist
Our Team
• Southampton (Poppy, Eigenbrod, Hudson, Madise, Schreckenberg, plus Dawson, Margetts)
• Conservation International (USA)• Basque Centre for Climate
Change• CIAT & CI International Colombia
plus Colombian research centres, universities and NGOs
• Chancellor College, Malawi, plus Worldfish and LEAD Africa
The overarching goal is to explicitly quantify the linkages between the natural ecosystem services that affect – and are affected by – food security and nutritional health for the rural poor at the forest-agricultural interface
Photo by Erwin Palacios CI Colombia
A complex ecosystem where agroecosystem meets “natural” ecosystems
ASSETS Research Themes
Theme 1:Drivers, pressures and linkages between food security, nutritional health and ES
• Relationships between forest ES, food & health
• Identifying key drivers and pressures
Africa & Amazonia: different situations…… much in common
• Deforestation: Africa much more advancedAmazonia in rapd transition due to a range of
drivers• impacted by climate change and extreme weather events• issues of extreme poverty, malnutrition and inequality
Our workshops selected paired case study regions in Malawi and Colombia- as the best locations to address our research questions, but also because of links to partner organisations already active locally
Choice of Case studies- cutting across two continents
• One of the poorest countries on earth: 52% in poverty, 29% undernourished
• Mostly deforested: 27% remaining• Prolonged droughts and occasional
extreme rain• Paired case study regions: East Chilwa
and Chingale (Zomba West) • 80% of people are subsistence
farmers or smallholders; • Differences in rainfall, water
availability, forest cover…• ….but with some protected
forests and wetlands (under pressure from overexploitation & drought)
Sub-Saharan Africa: Malawi
Data from UNDP, FAO, CIA Factbook,; imafe from nyastimes
• Extremes of wealth and poverty in a fast growing economy
• 45% forested- mostly in Amazonia and Andes, but under great pressure
• Suffering climate & weather extremes: La Nina, Climate Change
• Paired case study regions: Upper and Lower Caqueta: • 62% living in poverty• At different stages of transition- driven
by incoming settlers, clearance for cattle, soya, biofuels
• Several protected forest areas• Indigenous groups may be most
threatened by land use changes
Amazonia: Colombia
Data from UNDP, FAO, CIA Factbook; image from telegraph.co.uk
Participatory research
• Aims:– To understand links between ES and food security– To derive non-monetary values for different ES
• Well-being ranking of study communities• Focus groups (differentiated by social group) to:– Understand local concepts of food (in)security– Identify ES that contribute to food security at different
temporal and spatial scales• Seasonal calendars – seasonal coping strategies• Community timelines – inter-annual food security• Matrix scoring and ranking to prioritise the most important ES
for food security for different groups
• Participatory economic valuation of some ES
Participatory mapping to develop adaptation strategies
The Food Estimation and Export for Diet and Malnutrition Evaluation (FEEDME) Model
Food Balance Sheets
Production
OpeningStocks
Imports
FoodFeed
Exports
Seed
Waste
Processing for Food
OtherUtilization
ClosingStocks
DomesticUtililization
SUPPLY = UTILIZATION
Measuring household poverty, food security, and nutrition health
• Identify poverty status of households using objective and subjective measures (expenditure, subjective wealth, assets)
• Measure food security and nutritional status of under-five children in households across the forest-agricultural gradient
• Deeper understanding of coping mechanisms• Disseminate to, and feedback from the local
community
Aims:
Food security surveys
• Aim : Assess availability, access, and utilisation of food and how ES affects each
• Measures (men, women, children)– Number of meals eaten on regular day/ yesterday– Frequency of not having enough to eat in the past 6
months– Frequency of sleeping hungry– Detailed food consumption data including types,
sources, amounts (weighed), repeated to capture seasonal variation
• Perception of hunger– has enough to eat– Hunger
• Nutritional health surveys– Anthropometric measurements
ASSETS Research Themes
Theme 2: Crises and tipping points: Past, present and future interactions between food insecurity and ES at the forest-agricultural interface
http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2010/08/12/an-aerial-view-of-sumatra-island/
• Coping strategies• Future scenarios
The ARIES Model: Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services
A bit of history• Initially developed at the University
of Vermont (Gund Institute) and Conservation International mainly on NSF money by ESPA co-PI Ferdinando Villa (now at Basque Centre for Climate Change, Bilbao Spain)
• Co-lead on ARIES is Miroslav Honzák at Conservation International (Washington) Malawian boy,
Zomba, November 2010
ARIES: summary
• A rapid spatial assessment tool for ecosystem services and their values; not a single model but an artificial intelligence assisted system that customizes models to user goals.
• Demonstrates a mapping process for ecosystem service provision, use, sink and flow while most ES assessments only look at provision.
• Probabilistic, Bayesian models inform decision-makers about the likelihood of possible scenarios; users can explore effects of policy changes and external events on estimates of uncertainty.
Components of the ARIES system
Ecosystem Services flow analysis in ARIES
1. Provisionshed
2. Benefitshed
4. Flow of Ecosystem Services
3. Sinks of Ecosystem Services
Precise spatial representationand Area of Critical Flow
Area of Critical Flow
ASSETS Research Themes
• Minimising risk of future environmental change
• Influencing policy to better manage ES conflicts, trade-offs and synergies to sustain food security and health?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7445570.stm
Theme 3: The science-policy interface: How can we manage ES to reduce food insecurity and increase nutritional health?
Pidgeon … Poppy 2006 Proc Roy Soc
Stakeholder Engagement & Feedback
Target audience• Community members– Through village meetings, community radios
• National policymakers e.g. Govt, civil society, NGOs– National advisory board meetings, briefings, policy
briefs• International policymakers– Scientific advisory meetings & through partners
(CIAT, CI, WorldFish)• Academic beneficiaries
Our consortium will undertake world class research on ecosystem services (ES) for poverty alleviation at the forest-agricultural interface and deliver evidence from a range of sources and in various formats to inform policy and behaviour.
We hope to make a difference to the lives of 2 million poor people living in our case-study regions – up to 550 million people living in similar environments around the world.
Photo by Erwin Palacios CI Colombia