CNH-S: Poverty Traps and Mangrove Ecosystem Services in Coastal Tanzania

CNH-S：坦桑尼亚沿海的贫困陷阱和红树林生态系统服务

• 批准号: 1518471
• 负责人: Emi Uchida
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Rhode Island
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-15 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1518471&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CNH; Poverty; Traps; Mangrove; Ecosystem

More than 35% of mangrove areas worldwide have been degraded or lost entirely in the past 20 years, and this degradation has significant consequences for human wellbeing. Mangroves provide a number of ecosystem services that are particularly beneficial to low-income coastal communities. However, dependence on natural resources can lead to environmental degradation. Despite the importance of this interaction, there is a significant gap in understanding the relationship between mangrove ecosystem services and poverty traps, mechanisms that cause poverty to persist, in low income coastal communities. This interdisciplinary research is a first step toward advancing our understanding of ecosystem services through the lens of poverty traps. It empirically investigates important feedback loops, drivers and other mechanisms that link poverty traps and mangrove ecosystems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. This project will inform stakeholders involved in coastal resource management and poverty alleviation how changes in mangrove ecosystem services are associated with poverty and vice versa, and examine new approaches to break the vicious cycle of resource degradation and poverty. The findings can potentially be extended to efforts to sustain ecosystem services provided by other natural resources in developing economies.The research will be conducted in rural coastal Tanzania where degradation of mangrove resources and persistent poverty continue to be significant challenges. An interdisciplinary research team with expertise in economics, ecology, hydrology, climatology, and system modeling will undertake a two-year study to conceptualize and provide empirical evidence for the feedback loops, drivers, and thresholds existing within and across natural and human systems for multiple ecogeomorphological and poverty conditions. The researchers will collect and use a wide range of ecological and socioeconomic data by synchronizing the temporal and spatial scales at four sites. Four ecosystem services of mangrove forests that are likely interlinked with poverty will be examined: (a) goods extracted (fuel wood, building poles, and charcoal), (b) fish and shrimp habitats, (c) coastal protection, and (d) prospects for carbon storage (as a net carbon sink),which will be assessed as a potential source of revenue to break poverty-environment traps. The ecological processes of mangrove ecosystem functions and their services, as well as the decision rules related to natural resource use, management, and livelihood inferred from empirical evidence will then be used to build an agent-based model to scale up to a regional level. This approach will help identify system-wide effects under alternative scenarios and simulate directions in which the coupled systems can evolve to benefit both the environment and coastal communities.

在过去的20年里，全球超过35%的红树林地区已经退化或完全消失，这种退化对人类福祉产生了重大影响。红树林提供了许多对低收入沿海社区特别有益的生态系统服务。然而，对自然资源的依赖可能导致环境退化。尽管这种互动很重要，但在低收入沿海社区，在理解红树林生态系统服务与贫困陷阱之间的关系方面仍存在重大差距，贫困陷阱是导致贫困持续存在的机制。这项跨学科的研究是通过贫困陷阱的视角推进我们对生态系统服务的理解的第一步。它经验性地调查了在多个空间和时间尺度上将贫困陷阱和红树林生态系统联系起来的重要反馈回路、驱动因素和其他机制。该项目将向参与沿海资源管理和减贫的利益攸关方介绍红树林生态系统服务的变化与贫困之间的关系，并研究打破资源退化和贫困恶性循环的新方法。这些研究结果有可能推广到发展中经济体维持其他自然资源提供的生态系统服务的努力。这项研究将在坦桑尼亚沿海农村地区进行，那里的红树林资源退化和持续的贫困仍然是重大挑战。一个在经济学、生态学、水文学、气候学和系统建模方面具有专长的跨学科研究小组将进行一项为期两年的研究，以概念化自然和人类系统内部和跨自然和人类系统存在的多种生态地貌和贫困条件的反馈回路、驱动因素和阈值，并提供经验证据。研究人员将通过同步四个地点的时间和空间尺度来收集和使用广泛的生态和社会经济数据。将审查可能与贫困相互关联的红树林的四项生态系统服务：(A)提取的货物(薪材、建筑杆子和木炭)，(B)鱼和虾的栖息地，(C)沿海保护，以及(D)碳储存的前景(作为净碳汇)，这将被评估为打破贫困环境陷阱的潜在收入来源。然后，将利用红树林生态系统功能及其服务的生态过程，以及从经验证据中推断的与自然资源利用、管理和生计相关的决策规则，建立一个基于主体的模型，以扩大到区域层面。这一方法将有助于确定替代方案下的全系统影响，并模拟耦合系统可以演变成有益于环境和沿海社区的方向。