Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change: Building and Testing Concepts, Methods, and Tools for Understanding and Supporting Autonomous Adaptation

人类对生物多样性变化的适应：构建和测试用于理解和支持自主适应的概念、方法和工具

• 批准号: NE/I004254/1
• 负责人: Katherine Willis
• 金额: $ 7.6万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2011 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FI004254%2F1
• 关键词: Human; Adaptation; Biodiversity; Change; Building

Biodiversity change directly threatens the livelihoods, food security, and cultural and ecological integrity of rural subsistence-oriented households across the developing world. People will be forced to respond to it in ways that either mitigate loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services or that exacerbate losses. An unprecedented extinction of species is underway, and climate change is affecting species' range and phenology, leading to new species configurations that affect ecosystem services in unpredictable ways. With climate change and continued habitat alteration entailed in human population growth, 'novel' ecosystems will become even more prevalent. In the UN International Year of Biodiversity, scientists and policy makers must recognise that humans, biodiversity, and ecosystems must co-evolve and co-adapt. However, Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change is not considered as theme in any international, regional, or national science or policy forums. There is a dearth of scientific research about HABC, so scientists and policy makers lack mandates, conceptual frameworks, knowledge, and tools to project or predict human responses and their actual or potential outcomes, synergies, and feedbacks. Indeed, 'A significant new research effort is required to encourage decision makers to consider biodiversity, climate change and human livelihoods together' (Royal Society 2007). At the same time, there is a call for a 'paradigm shift' in adaptation thinking away from top-down planning and toward supporting local adaptation. Local adaptation efforts go unnoticed, uncoordinated, and unaided by outsiders and, unless policy makers become aware of the importance and extent of autonomous adaptation processes and understand what influences their outcomes, adaptation and mitigation policies may be ineffective or counter-productive. This project's aim is to kickstart the development of appropriate conceptual frameworks, methods and integrated models for understanding human adaptation to change in biodiversity and related ecosystem services that can eventually be used to predict outcomes for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being in highly biodiversity dependent societies, and provide evidence for the utility of these outputs to a new network of researchers and policy makers. The building blocks for development of concepts, methods, tools and models are a) local information or knowledge systems and monitoring capacity, b) local valuation of biodiversity and related ecosystem services; c) integrating biological resources and ecosystem services into an understanding of livelihood processes, d) assessing perceptions, risks, needs, and ability to respond, and e) understanding biological and welfare outcomes and feedbacks. The project joins partners from anthropology, economics and ecology/biology at Oxford, Kent and SOAS, with partners from South Africa and India. Partners will jointly elaborate the conceptual framework in a first intensive workshop using a scenario building protocol. Then, teams incrementally develop and evaluate research protocols and methods and collect primary data in a field research site in the Western Ghats, and results are initially modeled. A second workshop revises the scenarios and prepares a second field data collection phase. This iteration permits further grounding of the conceptual framework and methods, and development and testing of a stronger, less aggregative model based on much better decisions about how different variables interact. After the second field research phase, scenarios are revised and integrated analysis and modelling of the data is done, and variables, variable sets, or system state indicators that are useful for monitoring biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being with biodiversity/ecosystem change are identified. A science-policy network is kickstarted (see impact plan).

生物多样性变化直接威胁到发展中国家农村自给自足家庭的生计、粮食安全以及文化和生态完整性。人们将被迫采取要么减轻生物多样性和生态系统服务损失要么加剧损失的方式来应对。前所未有的物种灭绝正在发生，气候变化正在影响物种的范围和物候，导致新的物种配置以不可预测的方式影响生态系统服务。随着气候变化和人口增长导致的栖息地持续改变，“新”生态系统将变得更加普遍。在联合国国际生物多样性年，科学家和政策制定者必须认识到人类、生物多样性和生态系统必须共同进化和共同适应。然而，人类对生物多样性变化的适应并未被视为任何国际、区域或国家科学或政策论坛的主题。关于 HABC 的科学研究缺乏，因此科学家和政策制定者缺乏任务、概念框架、知识和工具来预测或预测人类的反应及其实际或潜在的结果、协同作用和反馈。事实上，“需要开展重大的新研究工作来鼓励决策者将生物多样性、气候变化和人类生计放在一起考虑”（皇家学会，2007 年）。与此同时，有人呼吁适应思维的“范式转变”，从自上而下的规划转向支持本地适应。当地的适应工作不被外界注意到、不协调和不被外界协助，除非政策制定者意识到自主适应过程的重要性和范围并了解影响其结果的因素，否则适应和缓解政策可能无效或适得其反。该项目的目的是启动适当的概念框架、方法和综合模型的开发，以了解人类对生物多样性和相关生态系统服务变化的适应，最终可用于预测高度依赖生物多样性的社会中生物多样性、生态系统服务和人类福祉的结果，并为新的研究人员和决策者网络提供这些成果的效用证据。开发概念、方法、工具和模型的基石是 a) 当地信息或知识系统和监测能力，b) 生物多样性和相关生态系统服务的当地评估； c) 将生物资源和生态系统服务纳入对生计过程的理解中， d) 评估认知、风险、需求和应对能力，以及 e) 了解生物和福利结果和反馈。该项目联合了来自牛津大学、肯特大学和伦敦大学亚非学院的人类学、经济学和生态学/生物学领域的合作伙伴，以及来自南非和印度的合作伙伴。合作伙伴将在第一次密集研讨会上使用场景构建协议共同阐述概念框架。然后，团队逐步开发和评估研究方案和方法，并在西高止山脉的实地研究地点收集原始数据，并对结果进行初步建模。第二次研讨会修改场景并准备第二个现场数据收集阶段。这种迭代允许进一步奠定概念框架和方法的基础，并基于关于不同变量如何相互作用的更好决策来开发和测试更强大、更少聚合的模型。在第二个实地研究阶段之后，对情景进行修订，并对数据进行综合分析和建模，并确定有助于监测生物多样性、生态系统服务和人类福祉与生物多样性/生态系统变化的变量、变量集或系统状态指标。科学政策网络启动（参见影响计划）。