REDD at the crossroads? The opportunities and challenges of REDD for conservation and human welfare in South West Uganda

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) in the tropics could slow climate change while contributing to biodiversity conservation and to improvement of people’s livelihoods. In this study we assessed the opportunities and challenges of implementing REDD in South West (SW) Uganda. We consulted key stakeholders and reviewed regional literature particularly focusing on the opportunities for conservation and human welfare benefits. We structured our study using the Simpson and Vira (2010) framework for assessing policy interventions. The leading drivers of forest loss and degradation include escalating timber trade, fuel-wood extraction and agricultural expansion. Generally, local stakeholders had limited awareness of REDD, and local expectations appeared un-realistically high. Mechanisms for allocating and administering REDD payments remained unknown. However, Civil Society Organisations appeared the most popular option to manage REDD funding as government agencies had limited credibility. For REDD to succeed, the challenges we have highlighted will need to be addressed: key to success will be improvements in foundational knowledge, enabling institutions and social conditions. Our results have implications for potential REDD activities around the world which face similar challenges.This work was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to Mbarara University of Science and Technology.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Inderscience via http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJESD.2015.07013

Location, location, location: considerations when using lightweight drones in challenging environments

Lightweight drones have emerged recently as a remote sensing survey tool of choice for ecologists, conservation practitioners and environmental scientists. In published work, there are plentiful details on the parameters and settings used for successful data capture, but in contrast there is a dearth of information describing the operational complexity of drone deployment. Information about the practices of flying in the field, whilst currently lacking, would be useful for others embarking on new drone-based investigations. As a group of drone-piloting scientists, we have operated lightweight drones for research in over 25 projects, in over 10 countries, and in polar, desert, coastal and tropical ecosystems, with many hundreds of hours of flying experience between us. The purpose of this paper was to document the lesser-reported methodological pitfalls of drone deployments so that other scientists can understand the spectrum of considerations that need to be accounted for prior to, and during drone survey flights. Herein, we describe the most common challenges encountered, alongside mitigation and remediation actions that increase the chances of safe and successful data capture. Challenges are grouped into the following categories: (i) pre-flight planning, (ii) flight operations, (iii) weather, (iv) redundancy, (v) data quality, (vi) batteries. We also discuss the importance of scientists undertaking ethical assessment of their drone practices, to identify and mitigate potential conflicts associated with drone use in particular areas. By sharing our experience, our intention is that the paper will assist those embarking on new drone deployments, increasing the efficacy of acquiring high-quality data from this new proximal aerial viewpoint.This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council [NE/K570009815], [NE/K500902/1] (to AMC), [NE/M016323/1] (to IHM-S), [NE/570009815] (to JPD) and the UK Technology Strategy Board [TS/K00266X/1] (to KA). JS and KA were partly supported by the European Space Agency contract No. 4000117644/16/NL/FF/gp

Bootstrapping Q Methodology to Improve the Understanding of Human Perspectives.

Q is a semi-qualitative methodology to identify typologies of perspectives. It is appropriate to address questions concerning diverse viewpoints, plurality of discourses, or participation processes across disciplines. Perspectives are interpreted based on rankings of a set of statements. These rankings are analysed using multivariate data reduction techniques in order to find similarities between respondents. Discussing the analytical process and looking for progress in Q methodology is becoming increasingly relevant. While its use is growing in social, health and environmental studies, the analytical process has received little attention in the last decades and it has not benefited from recent statistical and computational advances. Specifically, the standard procedure provides overall and arguably simplistic variability measures for perspectives and none of these measures are associated to individual statements, on which the interpretation is based. This paper presents an innovative approach of bootstrapping Q to obtain additional and more detailed measures of variability, which helps researchers understand better their data and the perspectives therein. This approach provides measures of variability that are specific to each statement and perspective, and additional measures that indicate the degree of certainty with which each respondent relates to each perspective. This supplementary information may add or subtract strength to particular arguments used to describe the perspectives. We illustrate and show the usefulness of this approach with an empirical example. The paper provides full details for other researchers to implement the bootstrap in Q studies with any data collection design

Trade-offs in linking adaptation and mitigation in the forests of the Congo Basin

Recent discussions on forests and climate change have highlighted the potential for conservation of tropical forests to contribute synergistically to both mitigation (reducing emissions of greenhouse gases) and adaptation (increasing capacity to cope with changing climate conditions). Key mechanisms through which adaptive advantages might be gained include the potential for forest resources to support livelihoods in the context of climatic strains on agriculture and the protection that intact forest ecosystems might provide against landslides, flash floods and other hazards related to extreme weather. This paper presents findings from field research with forest communities in three areas of the Congo Basin in Central Africa, in which the adaptive role and potential of forests in these respects is critically analysed. The investigation was carried out through a combination of structured and semi-structured qualitative techniques within six villages in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Rwanda. The findings of the research highlight the need to understand both the limits of synergy, and the constraints and trade-offs for rural livelihoods that may be associated with a forest conservation agenda driven by the additional impetus of carbon sequestration. The search for synergy may be conceptually laudable, but if forest management actions do not take account of on-the-ground contexts of constraints and social trade-offs then the result of those actions risks undermining wider livelihood resilience

From food to pest: Conversion factors determine switches between ecosystem services and disservices

Ecosystem research focuses on goods and services, thereby ascribing beneficial values to the ecosystems. Depending on the context, however, outputs from ecosystems can be both positive and negative. We examined how provisioning services of wild animals and plants can switch between being services and disservices. We studied agricultural communities in Laos to illustrate when and why these switches take place. Government restrictions on land use combined with economic and cultural changes have created perceptions of rodents and plants as problem species in some communities. In other communities that are maintaining shifting cultivation practices, the very same taxa were perceived as beneficial. We propose conversion factors that in a given context can determine where an individual taxon is located along a spectrum from ecosystem service to disservice, when, and for whom. We argue that the omission of disservices in ecosystem service accounts may lead governments to direct investments at inappropriate targets

Ecosystem Services in the Service-Dominant Logic Framework.

Peer reviewe

A response to O’Byrne et al.

We welcome O’Byrne and colleagues’ response to our piece, as a valuable contribution to the growing debate around how to accelerate urgently-needed reductions in people’s personal environmental footprints. We agree with some of the authors’ points, disagree on others, and conclude that actions targeting individuals and “a higher level of organization” are both likely to be essential