CESEA - Coastal Ecosystem Services in East Africa

CESEA项目是坦桑尼亚、肯尼亚和英国的科学家和研究人员之间的合作。通过将生态和发展方面的专家聚集在一起，它将找到帮助当地人在消除贫困的同时保护沿海资源的新方法。特别是，它将与依赖红树林和海草资源的人们合作，这两种生态系统对鱼类、海岸保护以及碳的捕获和储存至关重要，但正在遭受高破坏率。项目团队将通过三种方式帮助地方和国家管理这些生态系统：首先，我们将与肯尼亚和桑给巴尔的林业部门合作，确定它们如何更好地支持社区在保护和管理方面的努力。已经存在允许社区控制沿海资源的法律；理论上，这应该意味着当地居民在保护资源的同时从资源中受益。但实现这一目标需要相关政府机构的帮助和支持，而这往往无法在实地实现。CESEA的研究将确定这方面的障碍是什么，以及如何更有效地实现这一目标，并在当地社区和政府机构之间开辟新的沟通渠道。其次，我们将研究如何将海草草甸纳入生态系统服务项目的支付。海草在生态上与红树林有联系——它们都是鱼类的育苗地，是海岸线的保护地，是过滤和清除污染的场所，也是碳汇。我们知道如何测量红树林中的碳，以及如何通过向管理良好的森林出售“碳信用额”来利用这种碳储量为当地人民造福。尽管海草与红树林生态系统有着密切的联系，但它们从未实现过这一点。我们将首次开发出必要的科学方法来测量这些系统中碳的数量和来源，这样社区组织就可以遵循我们的方法。我们将提出建议，把这门科学的成果与红树林系统结合起来，向国际市场出售碳。第三，我们将探讨为什么东非的一些社区在管理红树林和海草方面已经有了良好的记录，而另一些社区的生态系统却在退化。我们将让成功的当地社区与该地区的其他社区分享他们的知识，并帮助制定如何做到这一点的指导方针。我们会安排社区领袖与负责协助社区管理红树林和海草资源的政府官员和行政人员举行会议。这将是一种强有力的方式，可以确保听取社区的声音，并使国家计划能够借鉴社区的经验。

The CESEA project is a collaboration between scientists and researchers in Tanzania, Kenya and the UK. By bringing together experts in ecololgy and development it will find new ways to help local people maintain their coastal resources whilst beating poverty. In particular, it will work with people dependent on resources from mangroves and seagrasses, two ecosystems that are vitally important for fish, coastal protection and the capture and storage of carbon but which are suffering high rates of destruction.The project team will help with the local and national management of these ecosystems in three ways:First we will work with the forestry departments in Kenya and Zanzibar to identify how they can better support community efforts at conservation and management. Laws already exist that allow community control of coastal resources; on paper these should mean local people benefiting from their resources whilst conserving them. But achieving this needs the help and support of the relevant government institutions and this often fails to happen on the ground. CESEA research will identify what the barriers are to this and how it can happen more effectively, and open up new channels of communication between the local communities and the government bodies.Second we will research how to include seagrass meadows into payments for ecosystem services projects. Seagrasses are ecologically linked with mangrove forests - both act as nursery grounds for fish, as protection for coastlines, as sites for the filtering and removal of pollution and as sinks for carbon. We know how to measure the carbon in mangroves and how to use this carbon storage for the benefit of local people, through selling 'carbon credits' for well managed forests. This has never been achieved for seagrasses, despite their strong links with the mangrove ecosystems. For the first time we will develop the scientific methods necessary to measure the amounts and sources of carbon in these systems in such a way that community organisations could follow our methods. We will recommend ways in which the results of this science could be used in combination with mangrove systems to sell carbon to international markets.Third we will explore why some communities in East Africa already have a good record of managing their mangroves and seagrasses whilst others have degraded ecosystems. We will let the successful local communities share their knowledge with other communities in the region and help produce guidelines for how this can be done. We will organise meetings between local community leaders and the government officers and executives with responsibility for helping community management of mangroves and seagrass resources. These will be a powerful way of ensuring that the voices of communities are heard and that national plans can be informed by their experiences.