Project

Discipline

Socio-ecological systems; Bayesian modelling; Multi-stakeholder learning; Land use decision-making; Adaptive land governance; Telecoupling; Trade-offs in ecosystem service flows

Lead
Die Nutzung von Landschaftssystemen am Rande von tropischen Regenwäldern ist oft nicht nachhaltig. Dies verdeutlicht die Herausforderung, wirtschaftliche und menschliche Entwicklung mit den planetaren Grenzen in Einklang zu bringen. Zunehmend werden Landnutzungsentscheidungen in diesen sozio-ökologischen Systemen von globalen Akteuren beeinflusst und gesteuert. Landwirtschaftliche Intensivierung, Produktion von Bio-Treibstoffen, Projekte zur Kohlenstoffspeicherung und Ausdehnung von Schutzgebieten sind nur einige der treibenden Kräften. Dies führt dazu, dass nicht nur die grundlegenden Lebensbedürfnisse und Entwicklungsansprüche der lokalen Bevölkerung in Frage gestellt werden, sondern oft auch Ökosystemdienstleistungen von globaler Bedeutung gefährdet werden.
Lay summary
Inhalt und Ziel des Forschungsprojektes Das übergeordnete Ziel dieses Projekts ist es, in global vernetzten Landschaftssystemen der Tropen innovative Strategien und institutionelle Mechanismen zu entwerfen und zu testen, mit deren Hilfe Ökosystemdienstleistungen erhalten und die Lebensbedingungen der lokalen Bevölkerung verbessert werden können. Dazu untersuchen wir komplexe und global vernetzte Landnutzungsentscheide in Landschaften dreier Länder (Laos, Myanmar, Madagaskar), fördern Lernprozesse zwischen verschiedenen Akteurgruppen, und erarbeiten Ansätze und institutionelle Mechanismen, um angepasste Landnutzungsentscheidungen zu treffen. Die Analyse der Effektivität dieser Ansätze ist ein wichtiges Forschungsanliegen. Wissenschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Kontext des Forschungsprojekts Unsere Arbeit wird neue Erkenntnisse generieren, wie in global vernetzten Systemen Ökosystemdienstleistungen erhalten und Armut gelindert werden kann. Indem wichtige Entscheidungsträger direkt im Projekt involviert sein werden, wird sichergestellt, dass die gewonnenen Einsichten in entwicklungspolitische  Prozesse einfliessen.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 08.01.2015

Active participation

Self-organised

Active participation

Self-organised

Communication	Title	Media	Place	Year

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

Landscapes on forest frontiers in the humid tropics provide powerful examples of the issues discussed in the current debate on Sustainable Development Goals - the global community’s attempt to reconcile human development with increasingly evident planetary boundaries. These social-ecological systems (SES) not only have to meet the immediate livelihood needs and the broader development aspirations of their local populations. They are also expected to ensure the complex mix of ecosystem service flows that support human well-being locally and provide environmental benefits worldwide. At the same time, global forces have come to outweigh local determinants of land use change in these landscapes. Driven by demands for agricultural expansion and intensification, fuel, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and more, these forces consist not only of socio-economic (“globalization”) or environmental interactions (“teleconnections”), but increasingly encompass combined socio-economic and environmental interactions between two or more distant SES. This phenomenon, which land change scientists have recently conceptualized under the term “telecoupling”, points to major methodological and empirical research gaps. Telecoupling provides the overall framework of this project, which aims to devise and test innovative strategies and institutional arrangements for securing ecosystem service flows and human well-being in and between telecoupled landscapes. In a first, problem-oriented hypothesis, we stipulate that the capacity of SES to support ecosystem service flows and human well-being decreases with increasing telecoupling. In other words, the growing distance between supply and demand undermines ecosystem stewardship and SES’ adaptive capacities. In a second, solution-oriented hypothesis, we acknowledge that the development of resource-rich but poverty-prone SESs nonetheless depends on new alliances with distant actors. We hypothesise that their active participation in land governance can increase SES’ adaptive capacity and thus support ecosystem service flows and human well-being. Third, we intend to explore concrete opportunities for change and stipulate that transdisciplinary learning among multiple stakeholders opens up pathways to more adaptive governance of telecoupled SES. This project will build on research partnerships in Laos, Myanmar, and Madagascar, linking case study research in concrete contexts with generalization and modelling, and bridging scientific specialization with inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and application. A first work package led by the University of Bern will analyse how telecoupling influences land use decisions, and how these in turn modify the flows of ecosystem services and their impact on human well-being. On that basis, a second work package under the guidance of ETHZ will develop a generic Bayesian network model, which will be parameterized through participatory stakeholder interaction and result in a 3D collaborative virtual platform for understanding land use decision-making. The third work package will translate these general insights into concrete innovations using a structured multi-stakeholder learning process. We intend to fully exploit the benefits of the six-year project duration to reconcile the conflicting objectives of scientific excellence, application, and capacity building. We intend to advance the frontiers of land science through nine specialized PhD studies; interdisciplinary innovation will be provided by post-doc as well as senior researchers in North and South. Development outcomes are systematically built into the research process. We intend to harness opportunities of telecoupling for ecosystem stewardship and for the well-being of marginalized populations. We will strive for impact by developing and testing concrete strategies and innovative institutional arrangements through intensive collaboration with stakeholders at different levels of scale and from distant places. This will be supported by the establishment of stakeholder platforms, communities of practice, and funding of small application projects, as well as through intensive communication and science-policy dialogue from the local to the international level.