Presentation on the state of the art for the ASSETS project for the inception workshop in Southampton, May 21st 2012. Project is supported by the ESPA program, with funding coming from DFID and NERC.

1. ASSETS
Attaining Sustainable Services from Ecosystems
through Trade-off Scenarios
State of the art as of 21st May 2012
Photo by Erwin Palacios CI Colombia © The Economist

2. Our Team
• Southampton (Poppy, Eigenbrod,
Hudson, Madise, Schreckenberg,
plus Dawson, Margetts)
• Conservation International (USA)
• Basque Centre for Climate
Change
• CIAT & CI International Colombia
plus Colombian research centres,
universities and NGOs
• Chancellor College, Malawi, plus
Worldfish and LEAD Africa

3. The overarching goal is to explicitly quantify the
linkages between the natural ecosystem services
that affect – and are affected by – food security
and nutritional health for the rural poor at the
forest-agricultural interface
Photo by Erwin Palacios CI Colombia

4. A complex ecosystem where
agroecosystem meets “natural”
ecosystems

6. ASSETS Research Themes
Theme 1:
Drivers, pressures and linkages between
food security, nutritional health and ES
• Relationships
between
forest ES, food
& health
• Identifying key
drivers and
pressures

7. Choice of Case studies-
cutting across two continents
Africa & Amazonia:
different situations…… much in common
• Deforestation:
Africa much more advanced
Amazonia in rapd transition due to a range of drivers
• impacted by climate change and extreme weather events
• issues of extreme poverty, malnutrition and inequality
Our workshops selected paired case study regions in
Malawi and Colombia- as the best locations to address
our research questions, but also because of links to
partner organisations already active locally

8. Sub-Saharan Africa: Malawi
• One of the poorest countries on earth:
52% in poverty, 29% undernourished
• Mostly deforested: 27% remaining
• Prolonged droughts and occasional
extreme rain
• Paired case study regions: East Chilwa
and Chingale (Zomba West)
• 80% of people are subsistence
farmers or smallholders;
• Differences in rainfall, water
availability, forest cover…
• ….but with some protected forests
and wetlands (under pressure from
overexploitation & drought) Data from UNDP, FAO, CIA
Factbook,; imafe from nyastimes

9. Amazonia: Colombia
• Extremes of wealth and poverty in a fast
growing economy
• 45% forested- mostly in Amazonia and
Andes, but under great pressure
• Suffering climate & weather extremes:
La Nina, Climate Change
• Paired case study regions: Upper and
Lower Caqueta:
• 62% living in poverty
• At different stages of transition- driven
by incoming settlers, clearance for
cattle, soya, biofuels
• Several protected forest areas
• Indigenous groups may be most Data from UNDP, FAO, CIA
threatened by land use changes Factbook; image from

10. Participatory research
• Aims:
– To understand links between ES and food security
– To derive non-monetary values for different ES
• Well-being ranking of study communities
• Focus groups (differentiated by social group) to:
– Understand local concepts of food (in)security
– Identify ES that contribute to food security at different
temporal and spatial scales
• Seasonal calendars – seasonal coping strategies
• Community timelines – inter-annual food security
• Matrix scoring and ranking to prioritise the most important ES
for food security for different groups
• Participatory economic valuation of some ES

11. Participatory mapping to develop
adaptation strategies

12. The Food Estimation and Export for Diet
and Malnutrition Evaluation (FEEDME)
Model

13. Food Balance Sheets
SUPPLY = UTILIZATION

14. Measuring household poverty, food
security, and nutrition health
Aims:
• Identify poverty status of households using
objective and subjective measures
(expenditure, subjective wealth, assets)
• Measure food security and nutritional status of
under-five children in households across the
forest-agricultural gradient
• Deeper understanding of coping mechanisms
• Disseminate to, and feedback from the local
community

15. Food security surveys
• Aim : Assess availability, access, and utilisation of food
and how ES affects each
• Measures (men, women, children)
– Number of meals eaten on regular day/ yesterday
– Frequency of not having enough to eat in the past 6
months
– Frequency of sleeping hungry
– Detailed food consumption data including types,
sources, amounts (weighed), repeated to capture
seasonal variation
• Perception of hunger
– has enough to eat
– Hunger
• Nutritional health surveys
– Anthropometric measurements

16. ASSETS Research Themes
Theme 2:
Crises and tipping points: Past, present and
future interactions between food insecurity
and ES at the forest-agricultural interface
• Coping strategies
• Future scenarios
http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2010/08/12/an-
aerial-view-of-sumatra-island/

17. The ARIES Model:
Artificial Intelligence for
Ecosystem Services
A bit of history
• Initially developed at the University
of Vermont (Gund Institute) and
Conservation International mainly
on NSF money by ESPA co-PI
Ferdinando Villa (now at Basque
Centre for Climate Change, Bilbao
Spain)
• Co-lead on ARIES is Miroslav Honzák
at Conservation International
Malawian boy, Zomba,
(Washington) November 2010

18. ARIES: summary
• A rapid spatial assessment tool for ecosystem
services and their values; not a single model but an
artificial intelligence assisted system that
customizes models to user goals.
• Demonstrates a mapping process for ecosystem
service provision, use, sink and flow while most ES
assessments only look at provision.
• Probabilistic, Bayesian models inform decision-
makers about the likelihood of possible scenarios;
users can explore effects of policy changes and
external events on estimates of uncertainty.

19. Components of the ARIES system

20. Ecosystem Services flow
analysis in ARIES
4. Flow of Ecosystem Services
1. Provisionshed
2. Benefitshed
3. Sinks of Ecosystem Services

21. Precise spatial representation
and Area of Critical Flow
Area of Critical Flow

22. ASSETS Research Themes
Theme 3:
The science-policy interface: How can we
manage ES to reduce food insecurity and
increase nutritional health?
• Minimising risk of future
environmental change
• Influencing policy to better
manage ES conflicts, trade-offs
and synergies to sustain food
security and health?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/744
5570.stm

23. Pidgeon … Poppy 2006 Proc Roy Soc

24. Stakeholder Engagement & Feedback
Target audience
• Community members
– Through village meetings, community radios
• National policymakers e.g. Govt, civil society,
NGOs
– National advisory board meetings, briefings, policy
briefs
• International policymakers
– Scientific advisory meetings & through partners
(CIAT, CI, WorldFish)
• Academic beneficiaries

25. Our consortium will undertake world class research on
ecosystem services (ES) for poverty alleviation at the
forest-agricultural interface and deliver evidence from a
range of sources and in various formats to inform policy
and behaviour.
Photo by Erwin Palacios CI
Colombia
We hope to make a difference to the lives of 2 million poor people
living in our case-study regions – up to 550 million people living in
similar environments around the world.