Download Ecosystem management scenarios for the

Title: Ecosystem services for the alleviation of poverty: an analytical toolkit (EcoScAPe)
Duration: 12 months
Principal Investigator: Prof. Adrian Newton, School of Conservation Sciences,
Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB, United Kingdom.
Email [email protected], tel. +44 (0)1202 965670
Co-Investigators and other research staff:
Prof. Roger Vaughan, Dr Maharaj Vijay Reddy, Dr Feifei Xu, Dr Jonathan Edwards, School
of Services Management, Dr Ross Hill, Dr Kathy Hodder, School of Conservation Sciences,
Bournemouth University, UK;
Dr Kate Schreckenberg, Dr Dirk te Velde, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK;
Prof Gareth Edwards-Jones, School of the Environment and Natural Resources, Bangor
University, UK
Dr Gopalsamy Poyyamoli, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences,
Pondicherry University, India
Dr Shibani Chaudhury and Dr Balachandran, Centre for Environmental Studies, VisvaBharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India;
Prof. K.G. Padmakumar, Kerala Agricultural University, Kottayam, Kerala, India
Prof. Jie Zhang, School of Geography and Oceanography Nanjing University, China;
Prof. Eng WU, Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Science, China
Ms. Tiehong Wu, School of History and Culture Tourism, Inner Mongolia University, China
Neville Ash, IUCN Ecosystem Management Programme, Gland, Switzerland
Specific objectives
 To establish a sustainable collaborative network involving research institutions in the
UK, India and China, focusing on the assessment of ecosystem services and their role
in supporting livelihoods
 To develop and test an analytical toolkit for assessing the links between ecosystem
services and human livelihoods, focusing on the use of scenarios supported by
spatially explicit modelling approaches
 To strengthen the capacity of partners to develop and implement interdisciplinary
research projects on ecosystem services and their role in poverty alleviation, using
participatory approaches involving stakeholder networks
Relevance to call
This project will establish a new collaborative partnership involving research partners in the
UK, India and China. Activities will include:
Development of an analytical toolkit. While assessment of the value of ecosystem services
has become a major research endeavour, spatial analysis of these values is in its infancy.
Mapping tools are urgently required to enable information on both costs and benefits of
ecosystem services to be integrated with land management and spatial planning. This
project will develop and test an analytical toolkit for analysing ecosystem services and their
role in supporting livelihoods, which will include: (i) use of remote sensing and GIS
technologies for spatially explicit cost-benefit analysis and poverty mapping; (ii) use of
1
spatially explicit models of ecosystem dynamics (LANDIS-II and GEOMOD) coupled with
analyses of economic values to assess the impacts of environmental change on spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem services and poverty; (iii) use of spatial multi-criteria
analysis to explore conflicts or trade-offs between the values of different ecosystem
services held by different stakeholders; (iv) application of the sustainable rural livelihoods
framework to explore links between availability of natural capital assets and poverty
alleviation; (v) use of scenario planning to provide a framework for exploring ecosystem
management approaches and their impacts on livelihoods under conditions of rapid
environmental change. These tools will be developed and applied in collaboration with
stakeholder networks, using participatory research approaches.
Capacity building. Training will be provided for both established and early career
researchers on methods including contingent valuation analysis, stakeholder consultation,
poverty assessment, geoinformatics, spatial modelling and spatial multi-criteria analysis. In
addition, training will be provided on the development, management and implementation of
interdisciplinary research projects, including the bidding process, and the use of research
results in evidence-based policy-making. South-south knowledge transfer and co-learning
will be encouraged through the participation of researchers from both India and China in
project workshops, which will be held in five study areas, namely in India: (i) Tamil Nadu
state (especially Gulf of Mannar), (ii) West Bengal (especially Sundarbans), (iii) Kerala
state (Vembanad); and in China: (i) Sichuan Province and (ii) Inner Mongolia Autonomous
Region. Workshops will strengthen research and networking capacity, will enable
analytical tools to be piloted in collaboration with stakeholders, and will also help with the
identification and articulation of research needs. In each of the study areas, analyses will
examine agricultural and peri-urban ecosystems as well as natural ecosystems, in line with
the findings of the situation analyses. Activities will focus primarily on
supporting/regulating/cultural services and their links with poverty, as these have been
neglected by previous research.
Networking. Networking among partners will be supported through use of internet
technologies including a project wiki, webinars and videolinks. The partnership will be
implemented as a distributed network, with the research partners in each region acting as
a hub of project activities. In both India and China, networks of stakeholders will be
developed including research scientists, national scientific academies, environmental
managers, local and national government, NGOs and local communities. Stakeholders will
be involved in project activities through participation in the regional workshops, which
together with internet resources, will raise awareness of ecosystem issues.
Expected outputs
(i) Scientific publications (> 2), (ii) policy briefs in each country, (iii) internet resources
including project website, wiki and distance-based learning materials, (iv) analytical toolkit
developed and tested (including tools for spatially explicit valuation, spatial multi-criteria
analysis, probabilistic- and process-based modelling, geoinformatics and scenario-building
tools), including lessons learned relevant to other projects in the ESPA programme, (v)
stakeholder networks established in each study region, (vi) preliminary ecosystem
management scenarios developed for each study region, (vii) strengthened capacity to
undertake interdisciplinary research, (viii) proposals for future collaborative research based
on the results obtained, (ix) an evaluation of the improvement in capacity achieved.
2