ALTER - Alternative Carbon Investments in Ecosystems for Poverty Alleviation

ALTER的目的是证明，通过在从田间到景观的一系列空间尺度上解决土壤退化问题，并利用农业和严重退化土地内的机会，对大规模减轻贫困，特别是对农村贫困人口，有真正和持久的好处。在世界各地，土壤退化以许多不同的方式影响着农村人民的健康、财富和福祉。土壤在维持农业产量、水分供应、水质、放牧动物资源和其他生态系统服务方面具有关键的支持作用。有些可能不那么明显，但仍然很有价值，比如维持栖息地以支持蜜蜂和当地野生动物。在非洲，土壤退化被认为是减轻农村社区贫困的主要制约因素。我们选择在埃塞俄比亚和乌干达开展工作，在这两个国家，矿物土壤和有机土壤的土壤退化问题截然不同，这是农业用地使用的结果，但农村社区对土壤的一系列好处有着类似的依赖。解决土壤退化问题并不简单，需要更好地了解人们如何从土壤中受益，如果他们能够改善他们所管理的土壤的状况，无论是用于作物、牲畜、木材生产还是半自然地区，他们将获得什么，他们需要做些什么来实现这一点，以及有哪些障碍可能会阻止这一点。与此同时，我们需要更好地了解改善土壤的不同管理方案可能取得的成功。最终，这些选择将需要某种形式的投资，无论是通过金钱、时间、资源还是其他机制。我们将从当地人、参与生态系统服务支付市场的组织和减轻贫困的国家目标的角度调查这些机制的相对利弊。从更广泛的角度看待碳效益和碳交易，是一个投资于持续改善退化生态系统和依赖这些生态系统的穷人生计的机会。所有这些研究和证据的建立都需要放在气候变化的背景下。我们需要确定，任何适合、可接受和可行的解决土壤退化问题的方法，都将对当地人民有长期的好处，而且这些好处不会被当地气候的持续变化所抵消。ALTER项目是由詹姆斯·赫顿研究所（英国）、阿伯丁大学（英国）、哈瓦萨大学（埃塞俄比亚）、埃塞俄比亚政府南方农业研究所（SARI，埃塞俄比亚）、东非碳基金会（CAFEA，乌干达）和国际水管理研究所（尼罗河流域和东非办事处，埃塞俄比亚）组成的国际财团。该团队汇集了自然科学家、社会科学家和经济学家，与农村社区和其他地方决策者和促进者合作，以提高我们预测人类与环境相关的系统如何响应激励和其他驱动因素变化的能力。需要这种预测能力，以便能够探讨不同的变革选择是否能导致实质性减轻贫穷。

ALTER aims to demonstrate that there are real and lasting benefits for wide scale poverty alleviation, particularly for the rural poor, by tackling soil degradation at a range of spatial scales, from field to landscape, and using opportunities within agricultural as well as severely degraded land. Throughout the world, soil degradation impacts on the health, wealth and well-being of rural people in many different ways. Soils have a key supporting role in maintaining agricultural yields, water availability, water quality, resources for grazing animals and other ecosystem services. Some are perhaps less obvious but still valued such as maintaining habitats to support honey-bees and local wildlife. In Africa, soil degradation is recognised as a major constraint to alleviating poverty in rural communities. We have chosen to work in Ethiopia and Uganda where there are contrasting issues of soil degradation in mineral and organic soils are a result of agricultural land use but similar reliance in rural communities' on a range of benefits from soils. Solutions to soil degradation are not simple and require a much better understanding of how people benefit from soils, what they stand to gain if they can improve the condition of the soils that they manage whether for crops, livestock, timber production or as semi-natural areas, what they would need to do to accomplish this and what barriers may prevent this. In parallel we need to gain better insight into the likely success of different management options to improve soils. Ultimately these options will require some form of investment whether that be via money, time, resources or other mechanisms. We will investigate the relative pros and cons of these mechanisms from the perspective of local people, organisations involved with markets for Payments for Ecosystem Services and national objectives in alleviating poverty. A broader view of carbon benefits and trading is an opportunity to invest in lasting improvements in degraded ecosystems and the livelihoods of the poor that depend on these. All of this research and evidence building needs to be placed into the context of climate change. We need to establish that whatever might be suitable, acceptable and viable for tackling soil degradation now will have long-term benefits to local people and that these benefits will not be negated by the on-going changes to local climate. The ALTER project is an international consortium between The James Hutton Institute (UK), University of Aberdeen (UK), Hawassa University (Ethiopia), The Ethiopian Government's Southern Agricultural Research Institute (SARI, Ethiopia), Carbon Foundation for East Africa (CAFEA, Uganda) and the International Water Management Institute (Nile Basin & Eastern Africa Office, Ethiopia). This team brings together natural scientists, social scientists and economists to work together with rural communities and other local decision-makers and facilitators to improve our capacity to predict how human-environment linked systems respond to incentives and other drivers change. This predictive capacity is needed to be able to explore whether different options for change could result in substantive poverty alleviation.