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