Presented by Katherine Snyder to the Nile Basin Development ChallengeScience and Reflection Workshop, Addis Ababa, 4-6 May 2011

1. Ecosystems and livelihoods: Understanding co-production Biodiversity Conservation and the Eradication of Poverty Science 12 November 2004: 1146-1149. Katherine Snyder Nile Basin Development ChallengeScience and Reflection WorkshopAddis Ababa, 4-6 May 2011

2. The importance of social processes The environment/society nexus: actors produce landscapes and livelihoods Understanding change as a process of co-production Need to map interventions to existing social relations: making choices about the ecosystem (grass versus shrubs..etc) Ecosystem services are filtered through particular relations and structures of power

3. Challenges Stresses and shocks: which ones are important and for what/whom? Coping and short-term adaptation rather than long term systemic transformation Discerning the long-term ‘slow variables’: demography, migration, climate, economic shifts Institutions: which build resilience?

4. Managing uncertainty Social capital’s relationship to adaptation When do social networks build resilience and when do they simply maintain coping How do social networks affect resilience at other scales? How does adaptive capacity at different scales affect overall resilience of a system (interconnectivity) Equity of outcome: distributing vulnerability Who defines vulnerability and who are vulnerable

5. Adaptation: Looking to the Future Adaptation in one area may affect vulnerability/resilience in another (upstream/downstream; across countries) Social construction of adaptation – interacting with the biophysical world; decision-making and the power to implement decisions Values - what we value Knowledge – what we know Risk – what we perceive Culture – how we live

6. Adaptation and Vulnerability Does strengthening the adaptive capacity of those most vulnerable, lead to resilience of the overall system or does it threaten resilience? How do we distinguish between coping and adaptive strategies? What are the most important environmental factors that livelihoods have to be adapted to? Do we have enough knowledge currently on the dynamics of those factors and livelihoods?