Sustainable poverty alleviation from coastal ecosystem services (SPACES): Investigating elasticities, feedbacks and tradeoffs

该项目旨在更好地了解生态系统服务与福祉之间的联系，以便设计和实施更有效的减贫干预措施。我们这样做的背景下，沿海，社会生态系统在两个贫穷的非洲国家：肯尼亚和莫桑比克，尽管最近的政策和科学的兴趣在ES，仍然存在重要的知识差距，生态系统如何实际上有助于福祉，从而减轻贫困。根据ESPA框架，区分生态过程，“最终环境服务”，“资本投入”，“商品”和“价值”，该项目关注这些要素如何相互关联以产生环境服务效益，并特别关注如何分配这些效益以（潜在地）使穷人受益，提高他们的福祉。因此，我们致力于ESPA的目标，即理解和促进增加最贫困人口的利益和更多人能够满足其基本需求的方法，但我们也确定了冲突的权衡，即那些对生态系统或贫困人口造成严重损害并需要紧急关注的问题。国际科学和政策论坛目前正在辩论几个基本问题，与可能影响穷人获得环境服务惠益的能力的四个主要全球趋势有关：（1）治理权力的下放及其对地方生态系统治理和生态系统生产的影响，（2）环境变化，特别是气候变化的速度和规模前所未有，正在造成新的脆弱性，机遇和限制，“不断变化的基准线”，以及要求行为发生根本性变化以科普，（3）市场一体化现已到达发展中世界最偏远的角落，改变了人与资源之间的关系以及自然资源管理的动机，（4）社会变化，包括人口统计、人口、城市化和文化全球化，与环境服务建立新的关系，进一步使人们摆脱对特定资源的直接依赖。选择研究地点是为了收集经验证据，以帮助回答有关这四个变化驱动因素如何影响穷人从环境服务中受益的能力的关键问题。我们的目标是对莫桑比克和肯尼亚快速转型的沿海地区贫困居民的福祉产生直接影响，研究将在那里进行，同时也通过我们的国际影响战略对其他发展中国家的沿海穷人产生间接影响。研究结果还将使各级多个利益攸关方受益。地方政府、非政府组织和民间社会团体-通过参与项目活动，例如参加讲习班和接触新型分析和系统思维;捐助组织和发展机构-通过研究提供证据，为支持部门发展的战略提供信息（例如渔业，沿海规划和旅游业发展）以及了解和评估不同发展干预措施影响的方法-国际科学界-通过会议、科学出版物传播研究结果（开放获取），以及概念和理论的发展和对生态系统服务与福祉之间多重联系的新理解。非洲区域科学家将通过在项目范围内提供的公开课程以及在区域场所传播成果而特别受益。我们的影响和效益战略包括：（1）在正在进行的沿海发展进程中确定“机会之窗”，以改善生态系统服务对穷人的惠益流动，以及（2）在肯尼亚和莫桑比克确定并寻求积极缓解“冲突”权衡。

This project aims to better understand the links between ecosystem services (ES) and wellbeing in order to design and implement more effective interventions for poverty alleviation. We do this in the context of coastal, social-ecological systems in two poor African countries; Kenya and Mozambique.Despite recent policy and scientific interest in ES, there remain important knowledge gaps regarding how ecosystems actually contribute to wellbeing, and thus poverty alleviation. Following the ESPA framework, distinguishing ecological processes, 'final ES', 'capital inputs', 'goods' and 'values', this project is concerned with how these elements are interrelated to produce ES benefits, and focuses specifically on how these benefits are distributed to (potentially) benefit the poor, enhancing their wellbeing. We thus address the ESPA goal of understanding and promoting ways in which benefits to the poorest can be increased and more people can meet their basic needs, but we also identify conflicted tradeoffs, i.e. those which result in serious harm to either the ecosystem or poor people and which need urgent attention.Several fundamental questions are currently debated in international scientific and policy fora, relating to four major global trends which are likely to affect abilities of poor people to access ES benefits: (1) devolution of governance power and its impacts on local governance of ecosystems and production of ES, (2) unprecedented rates and scales of environmental change, particularly climate change, which are creating new vulnerabilities, opportunities and constraints, 'shifting baselines', and demanding radical changes in behaviour to cope, (3) market integration now reaches the most remote corners of the developing world, changing relationships between people and resources and motivations for natural resource management, (4) societal changes, including demographic, population, urbanisation and globalisation of culture, forge new relationships with ES and further decouple people from direct dependency on particular resources. Study sites have been chosen so as to gather empirical evidence to help answer key questions about how these four drivers of change affect abilities of poor people to benefit from ES.We aim for direct impact on the wellbeing of poor inhabitants of the rapidly transforming coastal areas in Mozambique and Kenya, where research will take place, while also providing indirect impact to coastal poor in other developing countries through our international impact strategy. Benefits from research findings will also accrue to multiple stakeholders at various levels. Local government, NGOs and civil society groups - through engagement with project activities, e.g. participation in workshops and exposure to new types of analysis and systems thinking.Donor organizations and development agencies - through research providing evidence to inform strategies to support sector development (e.g. fisheries, coastal planning and tourism development) and methods to understand and evaluate impacts of different development interventions - e.g. through tradeoff analysis and evaluation of the elasticities between ecosystem services and wellbeing.International scientific community - through dissemination of findings via conferences, scientific publications (open access), and from conceptual and theoretical development and new understandings of the multiple linkages between ecosystem services and wellbeing. Regional African scientists will benefit specifically through open courses offered within the scope of the project, and through dissemination of results at regional venues.Our strategies to deliver impact and benefits include (1) identifying 'windows of opportunity' within the context of ongoing coastal development processes to improve flows of benefits from ecosystems services to poor people, and (2) identifying and seeking to actively mitigate 'conflicted' tradeoffs in Kenya and Mozambique.