"International". Jali Ardhi [Care for the Land] project: Realising land management change in degraded Maasai grazing lands.

“Jali Ardhi”在斯瓦希里语中的意思是“照顾土地”。这是跨学科的全球挑战研究基金项目“极端事件驱动的土壤侵蚀的社会生态恢复力：东非过去、现在和未来的挑战”的简称，也是本创新提案的基础。土壤侵蚀和下游淤积问题对水、粮食和能源（即HEP）安全构成挑战，气候变化的威胁日益严重。即使在“正常”的气候条件下，水对土壤的侵蚀也会减少农业用地上的水分和养分保持、生物多样性和植物初级生产力，从而对粮食生产造成压力，尽管下游的生态系统和水资源会受到损害。这破坏了依赖土壤和水资源的社区的环境和经济复原力，而物质和社会文化的积极反馈机制往往会放大冲击。在社区一级，土壤侵蚀通过破坏粮食和水安全以及限制社区、资源和市场之间在支离破碎的景观中的流动而产生严重影响。然而，环境冲击可以导致一种学习经验，推动一个系统走上一条质量不同的道路，并可以支持比以前更高的复原力水平（有时称为“反弹”）。共同设计可持续的土地管理实践和实施适当的以社区为重点的立法将使农村社区能够（1）通过恢复/增强退化景观从环境影响中恢复到超过先前状态的复原力水平，（2）承受未来极端气候事件的冲击，实现长期的可持续性和社会经济效益。坦桑尼亚农村土壤侵蚀的原因、过程和影响的深入证据，特别是处于从畜牧业向定居和农牧混合生计过渡的脆弱状态的马赛社区。它建立在经过验证的跨学科利益攸关方参与的基础上，为制定自下而上的政策工具（条例）提供新的行动框架，以实现土地管理做法的可信变革，为这些贫困的农村社区带来长期的社会经济效益。创新方案将建立在由此产生的问题研究证据基础和土地管理变革的潜在途径之上，而土地管理变革反过来又会为最终用户社区带来具体和切实的成果，如农业活动多样化、采用养护性农业/放牧方法以及替代性可持续生计发展。促进土地管理实践的逐步改变以减少复杂的土壤侵蚀影响是联合国可持续发展目标（SDG）的一个基本目标（例如可持续发展目标15，目标3，减少土地退化，同时使社区变得更有弹性，例如可持续发展目标13），这一挑战需要我们的团队开发和证明的跨学科方法。与当地政府的主要合作伙伴合作，作为一个土壤保护非政府组织，参与式方法和最终用户社区的专家（我们与他们有密切的工作关系，从以前的研究），我们提出的创新活动将提供一个范例，如何土地管理的变化可以从研究证据实现。虽然这个小型创新项目提供了一个机会，可以展示一种新的基于证据的、自下而上的社区方法，但扩大Jali Ardhi方法对东非地区的影响仍然是我们更广泛的目标。

'Jali Ardhi' means 'Care for the Land' in Swahili. This is the short project name for the interdisciplinary Global Challenges Research Fund project "Socio-ecological resilience to soil erosion driven by extreme events: past, present and future challenges in East Africa" upon which this innovation proposal is based.Soil erosion and downstream siltation problems challenge water, food and energy (i.e. HEP) security with growing threats from climate change. Even under 'normal' climatic conditions, soil erosion by water reduces water and nutrient retention, biodiversity and plant primary productivity on agricultural land putting stress on food production, notwithstanding ecosystem and water resource damage downstream. This undermines the environmental and economic resilience of communities that depend on soil and water resources, and shocks are often amplified by physical and socio-cultural positive feedback mechanisms. At community level, soil erosion has severe impacts through undermining food and water security and curtailing mobility between communities, resources and markets in fragmented landscapes. Environmental shocks can, however, lead to a learning experience that propels a system to a qualitatively different pathway and can support greater-than-previous levels of resilience (sometimes termed 'bounce back'). Co-design of sustainable land management practices and implementation of appropriate community-focussed legislation will enable rural communities to (1) recover from environmental impacts to a resilience level beyond the prior state through restoration/enhancement of degraded landscapes and (2) withstand shock of future extreme climatic events with longer-term sustainability and socio-economic benefits.This Innovation follow-on grant proposal draws on in-depth evidence of soil erosion causes, processes and impacts in rural Tanzania, specifically Maasai communities that are in a fragile state of transition from pastoralism to more sedentary and mixed agri-pastoral livelihoods. It builds on proven and interdisciplinary stakeholder engagement to deliver a new action framework for the development of bottom-up policy instruments (byelaws) to achieve credible change in land management practice with long-term socio-economic benefits for these impoverished rural communities. The Innovation programme will build on the resulting research evidence base of the problem and potential pathways to land management change that, in turn, underpin specific and tangible outcomes for the end-user communities such as diversification of agricultural activity, adoption of conservation agriculture/grazing approaches and alternative, sustainable livelihood development. Facilitating a step change in land management practice to reduce complex soil erosion impacts is a fundamental target within the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (e.g. SDG15, target 3 reducing land degradation while enabling communities to become more resilient e.g. SDG13), a challenge that requires the interdisciplinary approach developed and proven by our team.Working with key partners in local government, a soil conservation NGO, specialists in participatory approaches and end-user communities (with whom we have a close working relationship from prior research), our proposed innovation activities will provide an exemplar for how land management change can be realised from research evidence. While this small innovation project offers an opportunity to demonstrate a new evidence-based, bottom-up approach with communities, scaling up the impact of the Jali Ardhi approach to the East African region remains our wider ambition.