Ecosystems Service and Resilience

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/34509

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Now showing 1 - 17 of 17

Distilling the role of ecosystem services in the Sustainable Development Goals
(Journal Article, 2018-02) Wood, S.L.R.; Jones, S.K.; Johnson, J.A.; Brauman, Kate A.; Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca; Fremier, Alexander K.; Girvetz, Evan Hartunian; Gordon, L.J.; Kappel, K.V.; Mandle, L.; Mulligan, M.; O'Farrell, P.; Smith, W.K.; Willemen, L.; Zhang, Wei; DeClerck, Fabrice A.J.
Achieving well-being for all, while protecting the environment, is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and a central idea in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We believe that integrating ecosystem services, the benefits nature provides to people, into strategies for meeting the SDGs can help achieve this. Many development goals are likely underpinned by the delivery of one or more ecosystem services. Understanding how these services could support multiple development targets will be essential for planning synergistic and cost-effective interventions. Here we present the results of an expert survey on the contributions of 16 ecosystem services to achieving SDG targets linked to environment and human well-being, and review the capacity of modelling tools to evaluate SDG-relevant ecosystem services interactions. Survey respondents judged that individual ecosystem services could make important contributions to achieving 41 targets across 12 SDGs. The provision of food and water, habitat & biodiversity maintenance, and carbon storage & sequestration were perceived to each make contributions to >14 SDG targets, suggesting cross-target interactions are likely, and may present opportunities for synergistic outcomes across multiple SDGs. Existing modelling tools are well-aligned to support SDG-relevant ecosystem service planning. Together, this work identifies entry points and tools to further analyze the role of ecosystem services to support the SDGs.
Sustainable intensification: overcoming land and water constraints on food production
(Journal Article, 2015-04) Chartres, Colin J.; Noble, A.D.
People and Fresh Water Ecosystems: Pressures, Responses and Resilience
(Journal Article, 2016-08) Matthews, Nathaniel
Freshwater ecosystems are central to the global water cycle, in local generation of freshwater flows, and the healthy functioning and resilience of other ecosystems. Freshwater security depends on healthy ecosystems. Current human threats to freshwater ecosystems include rapid infrastructure development and land-use change, inefficient water use and over-abstraction, and pollutants. These threats, combined with increasing demand for water resources, exacerbate the sustainable development challenge. By 2025, two-thirds of the world's population may be living in conditions of severe water stress. It is essential to find solutions that provide for the maintenance of freshwater ecosystems while meeting human needs. This paper examines responses to three pressures to freshwater ecosystems: declining ecosystem services, hydropower and urban development. It explores opportunities for improved decision-making and enhanced resilience including: better evaluation of trade-offs and interlinkages; improved monitoring; decision-making that incorporates long-term perspectives and risks; and the leveraging of crises to advance change.
A risk-minimizing argument for traditional crop varietal diversity use to reduce pest and disease damage in agricultural ecosystems
(Other, 2014) Jarvis, D.; Mulumba, J.; Peng, H.; Paparu, P.; Yang, Y.; Lu, C.; Fadda, Carlo
Much of the worlds' annual harvest loss to pests and diseases occurs as a consequence of crops grown in monocultures, or crop varieties with uniform resistance. This uniform resistance is met by the continuing evolution of new races of pests and pathogens that are able to overcome resistance genes introduced by modern breeding, creating the phenomenon of boom and bust cycles. Until recently, IPM methods have concentrated on using agronomic techniques to modify the environment around predominantly modern cultures to reduce the need for pesticides, making limited use of the opportunities offered by the effective deployment of the intra-specific diversity of local crop varieties themselves within IPM practices. One of the few assets available to small-scale farmers in developing countries to reduce pest and disease damage is their local crop varietal diversity, together with the knowledge to manage and deploy this diversity appropriately. Through a research partnership, over the past eight years, among Biodiversity International and over 30 national and local government and non-government organizations in China, Uganda, Ecuador, and Morocco, high levels of diversity were found within the traditional varieties of a set of globally agreed upon staple crops for the specific pest and disease systems in the four countries: (i) maize (Zea mays): northern leaf blight (Setosphaeria turcica) and stem borer; (ii) common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris): angular leaf spot (Phaeoisariopsis griseola), anthracnose (Colletotrichum lindemuthianum), rust (Uromyces appendiculatus), and bean fly (Ophiomyia phaseoli; O. spencerella); (iii) faba bean (Vicia faba): aphids (Aphis fabae), chocolate spot (Botrytis fabae), seed pod weevil (Bruchus rufimanus; B. dentipes); (iv) banana and plantain (Musa spp.): black leaf streak (black sigatoka; Mycosphaerella fijiensis), Fusarium wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense), nematodes, and weevils (Cosmopolites sordidus); (v) barley (Hordeum vulgaris): net blotch (Pyrenophora teres) and powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis); and (vi) rice (Oryza sativa): rice blast (Pyricularia grisea) and rice plant hopper (Nilaparvata lugens). Resistance of traditional and modern varieties to the above pests and diseases was assessed from both participatory diagnostics of farmer knowledge and from cross-site on-farm and on-station trials. By performing cross-site onfarm experiments, it was possible to identify traditional varieties with more effective resistance to pest and diseases when grown outside their home sites in all four countries. Increased diversity of crop varieties, measured by number of varieties (richness) and their evenness of distribution across the farmer's fields corresponded to a decrease in the average damage levels across sites and to a reduction of variance of disease damage for common bean and plantain in Uganda, and for maize and rice in China. In sites with greater disease incidence in Uganda, households with greater levels of diversity in their production systems had less damage to their standing crop in the field compared to sites with lower disease incidence. The results support what might be expected of a risk-minimizing strategy for use of diversity to reduce pest and disease damage.
Examining multi-functionality for crop yield and ecosystem services in five systems of agroecological intensification
(Journal Article, 2017-01-02) Garbach, K.; Milder, Jeffrey C.; DeClerck, Fabrice A.J.; Montenegro de Wit, M.; Driscoll, L.; Gemmill-Herren, Barbara
Global linkages among energy, food and water: an economic assessment
(Journal Article, 2016-03) Ringler, Claudia; Willenbockel, Dirk; Pérez, Nicostrato D.; Rosegrant, Mark W.; Zhu, Tingju; Matthews, Nathaniel
The resolution adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 September 2015 is symptomatic of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. It postulates goals and related targets for 2030 that include (1) End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2); (2) Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all (SDG6); and (3) Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (SDG7). There will be tradeoffs between achieving these goals particularly in the wake of changing consumption patterns and rising demands from a growing population expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050. This paper uses global economic analysis tools to assess the impacts of long-term changes in fossil fuel prices, for example, as a result of a carbon tax under the UNFCCC or in response to new, large findings of fossil energy sources, on water and food outcomes. We find that a fossil fuel tax would not adversely affect food security and could be a boon to global food security if it reduces adverse climate change impacts.
Mapping Ecosystem Services to Human well-being (MESH): managing landscapes to achieve Sustainable Development Goals
(Brief, 2015) CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of Agricultural Landscapes. Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition
(Conference Proceedings, 2015) DeClerck, Fabrice A.J.; Estrada-Carmona, Natalia; Garbach, K.; Martínez Salinas, A.
Agriculture faces the dual challenge of feeding a 9-12 billion global population by 2050 and reducing its footprint on the environment. While the impact of agriculture on the environment is well recognized, and there are growing calls for efforts to reduce or mitigate this impact, the ecosystem services approach presents an alternative where ecosystems are managed to support and improve agriculture. As the world’s single largest terrestrial ecosystem, agro-ecosystems must be managed for the multiple goods and services they provide. A principal question for agroecology is whether the large-scale adoption of ecosystem-based approaches is capable transforming agriculture’s environmental externalities from negative to positive, while meeting food production needs. Ecosystem services science plays a significant role in this transformation by focusing attention on how biodiversity in agricultural landuses and landscapes can be managed for multiple benefits. We provide an example from the Volcanica Central Talamanca Biological Corridor in Costa Rica, where significant research has been undertaken, and is beginning to show where synergistic interactions between conservation, agricultural production and hydropower generation can be managed for multiple benefits. We recognize that significant trade-offs can exist. However, focusing attention on these multiple services, understanding their mechanisms, and quantifying the benefits of the trade-offs between the multiple services of agricultural landscapes provides novel solutions and spaces for managing positive interactions between agriculture and the environment.
Food versus fuel: Examining tradeoffs in the allocation of biomass energy sources to domestic and productive uses in Ethiopia
(Conference Paper, 2015) Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Bryan, Elizabeth; Alemu, T.; Ringler, Claudia
Ecosystems and human well-being in the Sustainable Development Goals
(Journal Article, 2015-04) Wood, S.L.R.; DeClerck, Fabrice A.J.
The Role of Latin America’s Land and Water Resources for Global Food Security: Environmental Trade-Offs of Future Food Production Pathways.
(Journal Article, 2015) Flachsbarth, I.; Willaarts, B.; Xie, Hua; Pitois, G.; Mueller, N.D.; Ringler, Claudia; Garrido, A.
One of humanity’s major challenges of the 21st century will be meeting future food demands on an increasingly resource constrained-planet. Global food production will have to rise by 70 percent between 2000 and 2050 to meet effective demand which poses major challenges to food production systems. Doing so without compromising environmental integrity is an even greater challenge. This study looks at the interdependencies between land and water resources, agricultural production and environmental outcomes in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), an area of growing importance in international agricultural markets. Special emphasis is given to the role of LAC’s agriculture for (a) global food security and (b) environmental sustainability. We use the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT)—a global dynamic partial equilibrium model of the agricultural sector—to run different future production scenarios, and agricultural trade regimes out to 2050, and assess changes in related environmental indicators. Results indicate that further trade liberalization is crucial for improving food security globally, but that it would also lead to more environmental pressures in some regions across Latin America. Contrasting land expansion versus more intensified agriculture shows that productivity improvements are generally superior to agricultural land expansion, from an economic and environmental point of view. Finally, our analysis shows that there are trade-offs between environmental and food security goals for all agricultural development paths.
Groundwater and ecosystem services: a framework for managing smallholder groundwater-dependent agrarian socio-ecologies - applying an ecosystem services and resilience approach
(Journal Article, 2015) CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems
Get the Science Right when Paying for Nature’s Services
(Journal Article, 2015-03-13) Naeem, S.; Ingram, J.C.; Varga, A.; Agardy, T.; Barten, P.; Bennett, G.; Bloomgarden, E.; Bremer, L.; Burkill, P.; Cattau, M.; Ching, C.; Colby, M.; Cook, D.C.; Costanza, R.; DeClerck, Fabrice A.J.; Freund, C.; Gartner, T.; Goldman-Benner, R.; Gunderson, J.; Jarrett, D.; Kinzig, A.P.; Kiss, A.; Koontz, A.; Kumar, P.; Laskey, J.R; Masozera, M.; Meyers, D.; Milano, F.; Naughton-Treves, L.; Nichols, E.; Olander, L.; Olmsted, P.; Perge, E.; Perrings, C.; Polasky, S.; Potent, J.; Prager, C.; Quétier, F.; Redford, K.; Saterson, K.; Thoumi, G.; Vargas, M.T.; Vickerman, S.; Weisser, W.; Wilkie, D.; Wunder, Sven
Few projects adequately address design and evaluation
Wetlands and people
(Book, 2014) International Water Management Institute
A Monitoring Instrument for Resilience
(Working Paper, 2015-02-17) Hills T; Pramova, E.; Neufeldt, Henry; Ericksen, Polly J.; Thornton, Philip K.; Noble, A.D.; Weight, Elizabeth; Campbell, Bruce M.; McCartney, Matthew P.
This document describes a monitoring instrument for efficiently tracking changes in resilience in agricultural initiatives. Operationalizing the concept of resilience (i.e. the ability to withstand change, stresses and shocks) poses significant challenges for project managers, particularly when required for performance reporting. This monitoring instrument aims to balance the demands for tracking and reporting changes in resilience with the scarcity of time and information typical of development initiatives. The instrument can be used to inform decisions on program planning and management where the program goal is to enhance the resilience of communities, to better manage ecosystem services, and to create positive and sustainable development impacts.
Multi-scaled assessment of Ecosystem Services (ES) using diverse tools Volcanica Central Talamanca Biological Corridor - Reventazon River, Costa Rica
(Poster, 2014) Jones, Sarah K.; DeClerck, Fabrice A.J.; Estrada-Carmona, Natalia
Ecosystem services and resilience framework
(Journal Article, 2014) CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems

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