Bridging national strategy on sustainable development of water-energy-food systems to local scale needs in Malawi

将水能源粮食系统可持续发展国家战略与马拉维当地规模的需求联系起来

• 批准号: EP/T024887/1
• 负责人: Justin Sheffield
• 金额: $ 16.59万
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FT024887%2F1
• 关键词: Bridging; national; strategy; sustainable; development

Progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires addressing many interlinked challenges related to water, energy and food systems. There are inevitable trade-offs in addressing the SDGs and climate change mitigation and adaptation targets, but also synergies if policy is well designed in a cross-sectoral manner. However, nations typically do not have the tools to identify and implement interventions, including evaluating the trade-offs and synergies, and monitor their effectiveness. Furthermore, land use decisions on water-energy-food (WEF) policy need to take into account sub-national and local scale needs and priorities, both human and environmental. Despite being the intended targets of policy, rural people with limited resources and education are often marginalized in decision making and therefore do not benefit when trade-offs in policy implementation are made to take account of the variety of actors. This project focuses on enhancing equity of rural people's key participatory roles in shaping and making policy work in order to bridge the gap between national scale priorities/strategies and gender-sensitive local scale needs, including environmental sustainability. Our focus will be on Malawi, which is high on the DAC list, has low population density and is largely rural. It also varies culturally and environmentally, which allows us to examine gaps around a range of policies and subsistence strategies. Bridging the scales is vital because homogenous policy formulation and implementation at the national or even sub-national scale is problematic for communities because rural people are not homogenous, with fundamentally varying kinds of and access to resources. These systems need to account for landscape diversity and gendered differences in their uptake and impacts, and therefore policies need to be tailored or disaggregated to ensure that they are relevant and are successful without unintended consequences. Many things that happen in the "hidden middle" that bridge the national and local scales are often ignored in policy and implementation. The hidden middle includes local to sub-national organizations; informal and formal supply chains that connect smallholders to domestic markets; kin, political, religious and other social networks. These meso-scale actors play essential roles in filling policy gaps, making up for shortcomings in infrastructure and connecting rural communities to a more diverse set of livelihood opportunities.We have identified gaps in the functioning of cross-scale interactions that affect Malawi's aggregate water-energy-food security, and its distributional access and benefits. By understanding the nature of these gaps, our objective is to identify solutions/policies that increase local livelihood opportunities and their sustainability. This will be done by better understanding:- how rural farmers of all genders and their local environments are connected to policy processes via the complex hierarchy of institutional arrangements - how rural farmers are connected via social and other networks, and how this helps to sustain livelihoods and increase resilience to change/shocks- how biophysical heterogeneity intersects with human activity, national policy and its effectiveness.- how competing interests, for example among and between rural farmers and commercial agriculture, give rise to trade-offs in benefits from policies- how policy is implemented on the ground at the local scale as a function of these local scale connections and heterogeneities, and how the effectiveness of policy is monitored Ultimately this will lead to deeper understanding of cross-scale interactions, while also allowing for the development of tools for better WEF policies that take into account local priorities and needs. Our aim is thus to understand how to disaggregate policy to better fit the local diversity of contexts and interests of various actors.

在实现联合国可持续发展目标方面取得进展，需要解决与水、能源和粮食系统相关的许多相互关联的挑战。在实现可持续发展目标和减缓和适应气候变化目标方面，不可避免地存在取舍，但如果以跨部门方式精心设计政策，也会产生协同效应。然而，各国通常没有工具来确定和实施干预措施，包括评估权衡和协同作用，并监测其有效性。此外，关于水-能源-粮食（WEF）政策的土地利用决策需要考虑次国家和地方层面的需求和优先事项，包括人类和环境。尽管是政策的预期目标，但资源和教育有限的农村人口往往在决策中被边缘化，因此，在考虑到各种行为者的情况下，在政策执行过程中进行权衡时，他们不会受益。这个项目的重点是提高农村人民在制定和制定政策工作方面的关键参与作用的公平性，以便弥合国家规模的优先事项/战略与对性别问题敏感的地方规模需求（包括环境可持续性）之间的差距。我们的重点将放在马拉维，该国在发展援助委员会名单上名列前茅，人口密度低，大部分是农村地区。它在文化和环境方面也各不相同，这使我们能够研究一系列政策和生存战略方面的差距。缩小规模是至关重要的，因为在国家甚至次国家范围内制定和执行同质化的政策对社区来说是有问题的，因为农村人口不是同质化的，他们的资源种类和获取途径从根本上是不同的。这些系统需要考虑到景观多样性及其吸收和影响方面的性别差异，因此需要量身定制或分类政策，以确保它们具有相关性并取得成功，而不会产生意想不到的后果。在国家和地方之间的“隐藏中间”发生的许多事情往往在政策和执行中被忽视。隐藏的中间包括地方到地方的组织；连接小农与国内市场的非正式和正式供应链；亲属、政治、宗教和其他社会网络。这些中尺度行为体在填补政策空白、弥补基础设施不足以及将农村社区与更多样化的生计机会联系起来方面发挥着至关重要的作用。我们已经确定了影响马拉维总体水-能源-粮食安全及其分配途径和利益的跨规模相互作用的运作差距。通过了解这些差距的本质，我们的目标是确定增加当地生计机会及其可持续性的解决方案/政策。要做到这一点，需要更好地理解：所有性别的农村农民及其当地环境如何通过复杂的制度安排层级与政策进程联系起来；农村农民如何通过社会和其他网络联系起来，以及这如何有助于维持生计和增强对变化/冲击的抵御能力；生物物理异质性如何与人类活动、国家政策及其有效性相交叉。-例如，在农村农民和商业农业之间的竞争利益如何导致政策利益的权衡-如何在地方规模上实施政策，作为这些地方规模联系和异质性的功能，以及如何监测政策的有效性。最终，这将导致对跨规模相互作用的更深入理解。同时也允许开发工具，以更好地制定考虑到当地优先事项和需求的世界经济论坛政策。因此，我们的目标是了解如何分解政策，以更好地适应当地情况的多样性和各种行动者的利益。

项目成果

Maize Yield Estimation in Intercropped Smallholder Fields Using Satellite Data in Southern Malawi

• DOI: 10.3390/rs14102458
• 发表时间: 2022-05-01
• 期刊: REMOTE SENSING
• 影响因子: 5
• 作者: Li, Chengxiu;Chimimba, Ellasy Gulule;Dash, Jadunandan
• 通讯作者: Dash, Jadunandan

Comparison of hydrological and vegetation remote sensing datasets as proxies for rainfed maize yield in Malawi

• DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2021.107375
• 发表时间: 2022-03-31
• 期刊: AGRICULTURAL WATER MANAGEMENT
• 影响因子: 6.7
• 作者: Anghileri, Daniela;Bozzini, Veronica;Sheffield, Justin
• 通讯作者: Sheffield, Justin

Recent changes in cropland area and productivity indicate unsustainable cropland expansion in Malawi

• DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac162a
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Environmental Research Letters
• 影响因子: 6.7
• 作者: Chengxiu Li;Matt Kandel;D. Anghileri;Francis Oloo;Oscar Kambombe;T. Chibarabada;C. Ngongondo;J. Sheffield;J. Dash

Social Capital Typologies and Sustainable Development: Spatial Patterns in the Central and Southern Regions of Malawi

• DOI: 10.3390/su14159374
• 发表时间: 2022-08-01
• 期刊: SUSTAINABILITY
• 影响因子: 3.9
• 作者: Craig，Ailish;Hutton，Craig W.;Sheffield，Justin
• 通讯作者: Sheffield，Justin