Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Farmer-led Agroecological Research in Malawi using Scenarios for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

需要对社会经济和全球环境趋势对生物多样性和生态系统服务的复杂相互作用进行创新研究，以帮助开发更多信息丰富的情景，以应对环境和人类发展挑战。为了克服这些挑战，需要结合自然-人类系统的方法和分析。这些方案提供了生物多样性和生态系统服务的改进情景，将土地利用、入侵物种、过度开发、生物多样性、环境变化和污染等直接和间接驱动因素的产出结合起来。由此产生的模型提供了一种最先进的方法，可以实现更准确的定量评估、更好的土地利用和更有效的生态系统服务。采用这种方法，这项涉及科学家国际合作的研究开发了一种以社区为基础的共同发展方法，以改变撒哈拉以南非洲的农业做法，这些做法往往与土壤侵蚀率高、土壤质量下降和农用化学品使用增加有关，所有这些都通过增加污染和减少生物多样性和水质对人类和环境产生负面影响。将马拉维的农业作为试验案例。先前的研究表明，如果与参与式教育相结合，生态农业耕作方法可以改善粮食安全、营养、土壤和人类健康。这些做法包括豆科作物间作、堆肥和覆盖。然而，很少有人知道这些做法如何影响非洲的生物多样性和生态系统服务，以及这些做法是否同时增强了农业生态系统和社区的复原力。这项研究解决了这一主题领域的知识差距，并使决策者参与有可能在不同规模上形成农业政策的参与性研究。在这个项目中，由农民研究人员和研究科学家组成的团队探索生态农业和不同的土地利用做法如何影响生物多样性（蜜蜂、鸟类和天敌）、生态系统服务和农民生计。由此产生的经验数据用于参数化潜在土地利用情景，并衡量农业生态实践是否缓冲了生物多样性的丧失。这项工作的更广泛影响包括美国科学家与其他5个国家的科学家之间的国际合作，其中两个国家位于撒哈拉以南非洲（马拉维、肯尼亚、德国、挪威和加拿大）。对于这个项目，每个国家资助由本国科学家执行的科学部分。影响还包括向政府、工业和农民合作社等部门的利益相关者宣传本研究成果。此外，还有国际跨学科研究的学生和博士后培训，并支持在科学领域性别代表性不足的研究者。其他影响还包括社会影响，例如，在人口众多且不断增长的低收入农业人口国家，由于全球变暖以及农业和文化土地使用方式问题而遭受严重环境变化的国家，增加和改善粮食安全和生态系统服务，每一种影响都可能导致政治不稳定。这项工作还通过改进农业实践和提高认识来促进更可持续的环境。该奖项支持参与由来自23个国家的26个资助机构组成的联盟通过贝尔蒙特论坛征集“生物多样性和生态系统服务情景”提案竞争性选择的项目的美国研究人员。该呼吁是一项多边倡议，旨在支持有助于开发情景、模型和决策支持工具的研究项目，以了解和解决我们星球面临的关键问题。竞赛的目标是改进和应用参与式情景方法，以提高研究的相关性和接受度，并解决影响驱动因素和政策干预建模方法方面的差距。它还开发和交流与模型相关的不确定性水平，以改善数据可访问性并填补知识空白。利用这一方法，该研究以马拉维的农业为例，探讨了全球南方土地利用变化情景下的生物多样性保护、生态系统服务和粮食安全改善问题。研究问题包括：(1)在马拉维当前和未来土地利用情景下，多空间尺度的农业生态实践能否缓冲生物多样性和生态系统服务的丧失；(2)是否存在景观级农业生态采用的断点，在此断点上生物多样性和生态系统服务得到最大限度的保留；(3)社会角色（如阶级、性别、健康状况）和/或关键宏观社会力量（如农业政策、推广服务、国际协定）是否影响农业生态利用以及低收入小农条件下家庭和社区复原力的相关措施；(4)参与式情景规划方法能否在不同土地利用情景和预期气候变化影响下增强社区的长期恢复力和生物多样性；(5)新的制度和政策框架是否能够使利用生态农业实践减少生物多样性丧失、维持生态系统服务和提高气候变化适应能力。这些问题可以通过直接测量生物多样性和生态系统服务的农民研究人员将社会经济和生物多样性动态结合起来来解决。工作是与包括生态学家、社会学家、公共卫生专业人员、地理学家、昆虫学家和经济学家在内的跨学科研究科学家团队密切合作完成的。由此产生的实证研究结果用于设计和模拟未来土地利用和土地利用变化的多种情景，以确定对生物多样性、生态系统服务、粮食安全和农民生计的影响。然后利用这些发现来确定影响如何根据整个地区所使用的农业生态实践的程度而变化。这项工作的组成部分包括参与式地理信息系统（GIS）和情景规划，以确定未来的生态行为以及土地利用的预计和预期结果。项目目标是尽量减少对以化石燃料为基础的农业投入的需求；尽可能地模仿自然系统及其复原力；并将社会优先事项纳入行为实践，以解决收入、人类营养、粮食安全和人类健康问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Innovative research on the complex interaction of socio-economic and global environmental trends on biodiversity and ecosystem services is needed to help develop more informative scenarios for addressing environmental and human development challenges. To overcome these challenges coupled natural-human systems approaches and analyses are needed. These provide improved scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services that couple the outputs of direct and indirect drivers such as land use, invasive species, overexploitation, biodiversity, environmental change, and pollution. The resulting models provide a methodological state-of-the art that results in more accurate quantitative assessments, better land use, and more effective ecosystem services. Employing this methodology, this research, which involves an international collaboration of scientists, develops a community-based, co-development approach to altering farming practices in sub -Saharan Africa that are often linked to high rates of soil erosion, decreasing soil quality, and increasing use of agrochemicals, all of which have negative impacts on humans and the environment through increased pollution and decreased biodiversity and water quality, using farming in Malawi as a test case. Previous research has shown that, when combined with participatory education, agroecological farming methods result in improved food security, nutrition, soil, and human health. Such practices include legume intercropping, composting, and mulching. However, little is known how these practices influence biodiversity and ecosystem services in Africa and if the practices simultaneously enhance agroecosystem and community resilience. This research addresses knowledge gaps in this topic area and engages decision-makers in participatory research that has the potential to shape agricultural policies at various scales. In this project, teams of farmer-researchers and research scientists explore how agroecological and different land use practices impact biodiversity (bees, birds, and natural enemies), ecosystem services, and farmer livelihoods. Resulting empirical data are used to parameterize scenarios of potential land use and gauge whether agroecological practices buffer loss of biodiversity. Broader impacts of the work include international collaboration between US scientists and those in 5 other countries, two of which are in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi, Kenya, Germany, Norway, and Canada). For this project, each country funds the scientific component carried out by its own scientists. Impacts also include significant public outreach on the results of this research to stakeholders from sectors such as government, industry, and farmer cooperatives. In addition, there is student and postdoc training in international transdisciplinary research and support of an investigator whose gender is underrepresented in the sciences. Other impacts include societal impacts such as increasing and improving food security and ecosystems services in countries with large and growing, low-income, agrarian, populations experiencing serious environmental changes due to global warming and problematic agricultural and cultural land-use practices, each of which can result in political instability. The work also promotes a more sustainable environment via improved agricultural practices and awareness.This award supports US researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a coalition of 26 funding agencies from 23 countries through the Belmont Forum call for proposals on "Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services". The call was a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that contribute to the development of scenarios, models, and decision-support tools for understanding and solving critical issues facing our planet. The goal of the competition was to improve and apply participatory scenario methods to enhance research relevance and its acceptance and to address gaps in methods for modelling impact drivers and policy interventions. It was also to develop and communicate levels of uncertainty associated with the models, to improve data accessibility and fill gaps in knowledge. Using this methodology, the research addresses biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and improvements in food security under scenarios of land-use change in the Global South, using farming in Malawi as a case study. Research questions include: (1) can agroecological practices at multiple spatial scales buffer the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services under current and future land use scenarios in Malawi; (2) are there breakpoints of landscape-level agroecological adoption above which biodiversity and ecosystem services are maximally retained; (3) do social roles (e.g., class, gender, health status) and/or key macro social forces (e.g., agricultural policies, extension services, international agreements) influence agroecological use and related measures of household and community resilience under low-income smallholder farmer conditions; (4) can participatory scenario planning approaches enhance long-term community resilience and biodiversity under different land use scenarios and anticipated climate change impacts; and (5) do new institutional and policy frameworks enable the use of agroecological practices to reduce biodiversity loss, sustain ecosystem services and improve climate change adaptation. These issues are addressed by coupling socio-economic and biodiversity dynamics via engaging farmer-researchers who directly measure biodiversity and ecosystem services. Work is done in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of research scientists including ecologists, sociologists, public health professionals, geographers, entomologists, and economists. Resulting empirical findings are used to craft and model multiple scenarios of future land use and land use changes to determine impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services, food security and farmer livelihoods. These finding are then used to determine how impacts vary, based on the degree of agroecological practices used, across the region. Components of the work include participatory geographic information system (GIS) and scenario planning to determine future ecological behavior and projected and desired outcomes of land use. Project goals are to minimize the need for fossil-fuel based agricultural inputs; mimic, as much as possible, natural systems and their resilience; and integrate social priorities into behavior practices to address income, human nutrition, food security and human health.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.