Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

In Africa, "Climate-Smart" Conservation Must Be Coupled With Poverty Alleviation, Saleem H. Ali, Penda Diallo, Apoli Bertrand Kameni, Philippe Le Billon, Kopo Oromeng, Kyle Frankel Davis, Edward Carr

Geography

In August, the Seventh Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) concluded in Vancouver, Canada, with a pledge. A total of 185 countries agreed to protect 30% of land and coastal areas by 2030 (known as the “30 by 30 pledge”). But while this surge of conservation funding is heartening, there are serious concerns. Projects and programs that appear to produce both environmental and developmental goals could actually obscure the continuing marginalization of poor and vulnerable populations. Here, we suggest that such coupling of conservation and extraction needs to pay greater attention to poverty alleviation. Otherwise, it risks further marginalizing …

A Super-Ensemble Approach To Map Land Cover Types With High Resolution Over Data-Sparse African Savanna Landscapes, Lei Song, Anna Bond Estes, Lyndon Despard Estes

Geography

Accurate and timely land cover products are critical inputs for landscape planning, and provide key information for biodiversity conservation and food security. However, poor mapping quality and low resolution are considerable issues in existing land cover maps over the African savanna, where land use is complex and changing rapidly, and necessary ground-truth data are sparse and hard to obtain. To overcome this problem, to make optimal use of existing maps, and to minimize manual training data collection, we developed a three-stage ensemble method to make land cover maps. In the first stage, we extracted the consensus of multiple existing land …

High Resolution, Annual Maps Of Field Boundaries For Smallholder-Dominated Croplands At National Scales, Lyndon D. Estes, Su Ye, Lei Song, Boka Luo, J. Ronald Eastman, Zhenhua Meng, Qi Zhang, Dennis Mcritchie, Stephanie R. Debats, Justus Muhando, Angeline H. Amukoa, Brian W. Kaloo, Jackson Makuru, Ben K. Mbatia, Isaac M. Muasa, Julius Mucha, Adelide M. Mugami, Judith M. Mugami, Francis W. Muinde, Fredrick M. Mwawaza, Jeff Ochieng, Charles J. Oduol, Purent Oduor, Thuo Wanjiku, Joseph G. Wanyoike, Ryan B. Avery, Kelly K. Caylor

Geography

Mapping the characteristics of Africa’s smallholder-dominated croplands, including the sizes and numbers of fields, can provide critical insights into food security and a range of other socioeconomic and environmental concerns. However, accurately mapping these systems is difficult because there is 1) a spatial and temporal mismatch between satellite sensors and smallholder fields, and 2) a lack of high-quality labels needed to train and assess machine learning classifiers. We developed an approach designed to address these two problems, and used it to map Ghana’s croplands. To overcome the spatio-temporal mismatch, we converted daily, high resolution imagery into two cloud-free composites (the …

Participatory Community Wealth Ranking In Banana-Producing Regions Of Uganda And Tanzania, Pricilla Marimo, Clare Shelton, Cynthia Caron, Noel Madalla, Innocent Mpiriirwe, Rhiannon Crichton, Lilian Ndagire, Victor Manyong, Daud Batson Mbongo, Asher Wilson Okurut

Sustainability and Social Justice

Published by the Alliance of Bioversity International & the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The former is a research-for-development organization that provides scientific evidence of the role that on-farm and wild agricultural and forest biodiversity can play in a more nutritious, resilient, productive and adaptable food and agricultural system. The latter works in collaboration with hundreds of partners to help developing countries make farming more competitive, profitable, and resilient through smarter, more sustainable natural resource management.

Organizations Affiliated to the Authors:

Bioversity International; University of East Anglia; Clark University; National Agricultural Research Organization, Uganda; International …

Gender-Disaggregated Seasonal And Daily Calendars Of Farmers In Uganda And Tanzania, Pricilla Marimo, Clare Shelton, Cynthia Caron, Rhiannon Crichton, Noel Madalla, Mpoki Shimwela, Rony Swennen, Inge Van Den Bergh, Charity Kibooga

Sustainability and Social Justice

This report discusses the agricultural activities (seasonal, weekly, and daily) that take place in a typical year to provide insight into men’s and women’s perceptions of the seasons, agricultural activities, crops grown, and sex-disaggregated division of labor related to those crops and activities performed during specific times in a day or week in selected regions of Uganda and Tanzania. Qualitative data were collected from 38 sex-disaggregated focus group discussions (FGDs) conducted with a total of 341 participants. Sixteen FGDs consisted of men only and 22 consisted of women only.

Evaluating Agricultural Weather And Climate Services In Africa: Evidence, Methods, And A Learning Agenda, Catherine Vaughan, James Hansen, Philippe Roudier, Paul Watkiss, Edward Carr

Sustainability and Social Justice

Weather and climate services (WCS) are expected to improve the capacity of Africa's agricultural sector to manage the risks of climate variability and change. Despite this, a lack of evidence prevents a realistic analysis of whether such services are delivering on their potential. This paper reviews 66 studies that have evaluated outcomes and/or impacts of agricultural WCS in Africa, highlighting areas that have received relatively more attention as well as persistent gaps. While the evaluation of WCS outcomes is relatively straightforward, estimates of the number of people who access and use these services are uneven (covering a small number of …

Women’S Leadership, Agency And Voice: Promoting Gender Justice Within Community-Based Tenure Systems In Bolivia And Zambia: Synthesis Report, Cynthia Caron, Denise Bebbington

Sustainability and Social Justice

Published by the Rights + Resources coalition.

Land tenure security has become a major focus of donors, policy-makers, and the media in the past ten years, as land and forest resources are under a series of socio-economic and environmental pressures and related demands. How women gain access to and maintain control over land and forest resources in this dynamic environment depends both on existing institutional frameworks and on efforts to promote gender justice within customary tenure systems.

This report synthesizes research findings on gender dynamics and the implications for gender justice in community-based tenure systems in Zambia’s Eastern Province and …

High Carbon And Biodiversity Costs From Converting Africa's Wet Savannahs To Cropland, Timothy D. Searchinger, Lyndon Estes, Philip K. Thornton, Tim Beringer, An Notenbaert, Daniel Rubenstein, Ralph Heimlich, Rachel Licker, Mario Herrero

Geography

Do the wet savannahs and shrublands of Africa provide a large reserve of potential croplands to produce food staples or bioenergy with low carbon and biodiversity costs? We find that only small percentages of these lands have meaningful potential to be low-carbon sources of maize (1/42%) or soybeans (9.5-11.5%), meaning that their conversion would release at least one-third less carbon per ton of crop than released on average for the production of those crops on existing croplands. Factoring in land-use change, less than 1% is likely to produce cellulosic ethanol that would meet European standards for greenhouse gas reductions. Biodiversity …

Enso And Iod Teleconnections For African Ecosystems: Evidence Of Destructive Interference Between Climate Oscillations, Christopher A. Williams, N. P. Hanan

Geography

Rainfall and vegetation across Africa are known to resonate with the coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomena of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). However, the regional-scale implications of sea surface temperature variability for Africa's photosyntheis have received little focused attention, particularly in the case of IOD. Furthermore, studies exploring the interactive effects of ENSO and IOD when coincident are lacking. This analysis uses remotely sensed vegetation change plus a land surface model driven with observed meteorology to investigate how rainfall, vegetation, and photosynthesis across Africa respond to these climate oscillations. In addition to the relatively well-known ENSO …