Understanding Community Support Towards Three Marine Protected Areas in the Visayas Region of the Philippines

Community support towards Natural Resource Management (NRM) strategies is thought to be crucial for their success and sustainability. This study considers the case of community based Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Philippines where, despite their proliferation many are failing to achieve their objectives. The lack of acceptance and support from the adjacent community is thought to lead to these “failures” of MPAs. Very little work however has been carried out to understand support towards MPAs and what influences it. I define support as the combination of attitudes and relevant environmental action undertaken with regards to the already implemented MPA. This thesis seeks to understand “community support” by determining: 1. What factors influence attitudes towards MPAs? 2. What factors influence actions towards MPAs? 3. What is the relationship between attitudes towards the MPA and MPA related actions? I combine both quantitative and qualitative research methods to help determine which factors are associated with community support but also to help explain how these factors influence support. Fisher questionnaires, Semi Structured Interviews, In depth interviews and Focus Groups were carried out at three different villages with adjacent MPAs within the Visayas region of the Philippines. A number of MPA design and MPA management factors as well as individual feelings, emotions and socio-economic characteristics were found to influence support through a multitude of ways. The plurality of factors identified, their interconnectedness and the way their impacts on support varies through time and between individuals within a community makes it clear there is no simple solution as to which set of factors are necessary for prolonged support. Nevertheless we now have a clearer idea as to how best to design, manage and implement an MPA in a way that is supported by the adjacent community

Money, use and experience: Identifying the mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing in coastal Kenya and Mozambique

Despite extensive recent research elucidating the complex relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing, little work has sought to understand how ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing and poverty alleviation. This paper adopts concepts from the “Theory of Human Need” and the “Capability Approach” to both identify the multitude of links occurring between ecosystem services and wellbeing domains, and to understand the mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing. Focus Group Discussions (N = 40) were carried out at 8 sites in Mozambique and Kenya to elicit how, why, and to what extent benefits derived from ecosystem services contribute to different wellbeing domains. Our results highlight three types of mechanisms through which ecosystem services contribute to wellbeing, monetary, use and experience. The consideration of these mechanisms can inform the development of interventions that aim to protect or improve flows of benefits to people. Firstly, interventions that support multiple types of mechanisms will likely support multiple domains of wellbeing. Secondly, overemphasising certain types of mechanism over others could lead to negative social feedbacks, threatening the future flows of ecosystem services. Finally, the three mechanism types are interlinked and can act synergistically to enhance the capacities of individuals to convert ecosystem services to wellbeing

Stories in social-ecological knowledge cocreation

Transformations in social-ecological systems to overturn poverty and ecosystem degradation require approaches to knowledge synthesis that are inclusive and open to creative innovation. We draw on interviews with participants and in-depth process observation of an iterative knowledge cocreation process in Kenya and Mozambique that brought together scientists, community representatives, government representatives, and practitioners who had expertise or experience in poverty and/or coastal natural resource use and management. We analyze the communicative spaces opened by techniques of system diagrams and future scenarios, and provide a rich account of the emergent process of developing a "shared conceptual repertoire" as a basis for effective communication and knowledge synthesis. Our results highlight the difficulties of challenging dominant narratives and the creative potential that exists in reflecting on their underpinning assumptions. In our analysis, stories and lived experiences emerged as key means shaping the construction of shared concepts and ideas. We conclude by outlining the implications of designing knowledge cocreation processes that support the task of devising systemic interventions that are robust for a range of future scenarios. This includes embracing the role of stories in generating shared meanings and opening up spaces for exploration of knowledge assumptions that are embedded in intervention narratives

Multiple Impact Pathways Of The 2015-2016 El Niño In Coastal Kenya

The 2015-2016 El Niño had large impacts globally. The effects were not as great as anticipated in Kenya, however, leading some commentators to call it a 'non-event'. Our study uses a novel combination of participatory Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis tools, and new and existing social and biophysical data, to analyse vulnerability to, and the multidimensional impacts of, the 2015-16 El Niño episode in southern coastal Kenya. By using a social-ecological systems lens and a unique dataset, our study reveals impacts overlooked by conventional analysis. We show how El Niño stressors interact with and amplify existing vulnerabilities to differentially impact local ecosystems and people. The policy significance of this finding is that the development of specific national capacities to deal with El Niño events is insufficient; it will be necessary to also address local vulnerabilities to everyday and recurrent stressors and shocks to build resilience to the effects of El Niño and other extremes in climate and weather

Survey data of public awareness on climate change and the value of marine and coastal ecosystems

The long-term provision of ocean ecosystem services depends on healthy ecosystems and effective sustainable management. Understanding public opinion about marine and coastal ecosystems is important to guide decision-making and inform specific actions. However, available data on public perceptions on the interlinked effects of climate change, human impacts and the value and management of marine and coastal ecosystems are rare. This dataset presents raw data from an online, self-administered, public awareness survey conducted between November 2021 and February 2022 which yielded 709 responses from 42 countries. The survey was released in four languages (English, French, Spanish and Italian) and consisted of four main parts: (1) perceptions about climate change; (2) perceptions about the value of, and threats to, coasts, oceans and their wildlife, (3) perceptions about climate change response; and (4) socio-demographic information. Participation in the survey was voluntary and all respondents provided informed consent after reading a participant information form at the beginning of the survey. Responses were anonymous unless respondents chose to provide contact information. All identifying information has been removed from the dataset. The dataset can be used to conduct quantitative analyses, especially in the area of public perceptions of the interlinkages between climate change, human impacts and options for sustainable management in the context of marine and coastal ecosystems. The dataset is provided with this article, including a copy of the survey and participant information forms in all four languages, data and the corresponding codebook.This study received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement MaCoBioS (No 869710). The funders had no role in any part of the research process.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services

Conservation managers frequently face the challenge of protecting and sustaining biodiversity without producing detrimental outcomes for (often poor) human populations that depend on ecosystem services for their well‐being. However, mutually beneficial solutions are often elusive and can mask trade‐offs and negative outcomes for people. To deal with such trade‐offs, ecological and social thresholds need to be identified to determine the acceptable solution space for conservation. Although human well‐being as a concept has recently gained prominence, conservationists still lack tools to evaluate how their actions affect it in a given context. We applied the theory of human needs to conservation by building on an extensive historical application of need approaches in international development. In an innovative participatory method that included focus groups and household surveys, we evaluated how human needs are met based on locally relevant thresholds. We then established connections between human needs and ecosystem services through key‐informant focus groups. We applied our method in coastal East Africa to identify households that would not be able to meet their basic needs and to uncover the role of ecosystem services in meeting these. This enabled us to identify how benefits derived from the environment were contributing to meeting basic needs and to consider potential repercussions that could arise through changes to ecosystem service provision. We suggest our approach can help conservationists and planners balance poverty alleviation and biodiversity protection and ensure conservation measures do not, at the very least, cause serious harm to individuals. We further argue it can be used as a basis for monitoring the impacts of conservation on multidimensional poverty

Aligning Resilience and Wellbeing Outcomes for Locally-Led Adaptation in Tanzania

Interventions to address climate adaptation have been on the rise over the past decade. Intervention programmes aim to build the resilience of local communities to climate shocks, and ultimately their wellbeing by helping them to better prepare, adapt and recover. Resilience, similar to human wellbeing, is a multidimensional construct grounded in local realities and lived experiences. Yet current evaluation frameworks used in resilience programming rarely consider what resilience means in local contexts prior to implementation. This means policy designs risk failing to improve resilience of communities and creating unintended negative consequences for communities’ wellbeing. Better processes and indicators for assessing resilience are needed. This paper explores the interplay between local predictors of resilience and wellbeing to assess the validity of self-assessed indicators as part of frameworks to measure resilience. We draw from research on the Devolved Climate Finance (DCF) mechanism implemented between 2014 and 2018 in Tanzania. We find that different factors explain resilience when compared to wellbeing; while resilience is primarily influenced by relationships, wellbeing is correlated with livelihoods. This shows that incentives to improve resilience differ from those of wellbeing. Climate and development practitioners must adopt locally grounded framings for resilience and wellbeing to ensure interventions track appropriate indicators, towards positive outcomes

Impairment of Neutrophil Functions and Homeostasis in COVID-19 Patients: Association with Disease Severity

International audienceAbstract Background A dysregulated immune response is emerging as a key feature of critical illness in COVID-19. Neutrophils are key components of early innate immunity that, if not tightly regulated, contribute to uncontrolled systemic inflammation. We sought to decipher the role of neutrophil phenotypes, functions, and homeostasis in COVID-19 disease severity and outcome. Methods By using flow cytometry, this longitudinal study compares peripheral whole-blood neutrophils from 90 COVID-19 ICU patients with those of 22 SARS-CoV-2-negative patients hospitalized for severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and 38 healthy controls. We also assessed correlations between these phenotypic and functional indicators and markers of endothelial damage as well as disease severity. Results At ICU admission, the circulating neutrophils of the COVID-19 patients showed continuous basal hyperactivation not seen in CAP patients, associated with higher circulating levels of soluble E- and P-selectin, which reflect platelet and endothelial activation. Furthermore, COVID-19 patients had expanded aged-angiogenic and reverse transmigrated neutrophil subsets\textemdash both involved in endothelial dysfunction and vascular inflammation. Simultaneously, COVID-19 patients had significantly lower levels of neutrophil oxidative burst in response to bacterial formyl peptide. Moreover patients dying of COVID-19 had significantly higher expansion of aged-angiogenic neutrophil subset and greater impairment of oxidative burst response than survivors. Conclusions These data suggest that neutrophil exhaustion may be involved in the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 and identify angiogenic neutrophils as a potentially harmful subset involved in fatal outcome. Graphic Abstrac

Reconciling well-being and resilience for sustainable development

Securing well-being and building resilience in response to shocks are often viewed as key goals of sustainable development. Here, we present an overview of the latest published evidence, as well as the consensus of a diverse group of scientists and practitioners drawn from a structured analytical review and deliberative workshop process. We argue that resilience and well-being are related in complex ways, but in their applications in practice they are often assumed to be synergistic. Although theoretically compatible, evidence we present here shows that they may in fact work against each other. This has important implications for policy

Marine and coastal ecosystems and climate change : a public awareness survey

16th International Conference Littoral22, 12-16 September 2022, Campus de Caparica (Portugal).Hundreds of millions of people worldwide directly rely on marine and coastal ecosystems for their food, livelihoods and ways of life, yet these ecosystems are subject to a variety of pressures (UNEP, 2006; Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2015; Korpinen et al., 2019). These pressures include climate change - one of the most urgent challenges societies are currently facing, with “long-lasting or irreversible” adverse consequences predicted as a result (IPCC 2018). Healthy marine and coastal ecosystems are a pre-requisite for the continuing delivery of ecosystem services, such as the provision of food, climate regulation and carbon storage. Therefore, it is critical to achieve a more sustainable management and effective protection of such valuable ecosystems. Policy makers are increasingly aware of the adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation on our coasts and oceans. As public opinion influence decision-making on the actions to take and contribute to the success of their implementation (Rasmussen et al., 2017), it is important to understand how well informed the public is about climate change impacts and solutions in marine and coastal systems. In recent years, significant efforts have been made by the scientific community to raise public awareness of climate change and the links between healthy marine and coastal ecosystems and ecosystem service provision, including their role in mitigating and adapting to climate change (Barracosa et al., 2019). However, there has been little consideration of how the public perceives the interlinkages between climate change and its effects on marine and coastal ecosystems. Instead, most efforts have addressed climate change perceptions (van Valkengoed et al., 2022) Mildenberger et al., 2019) and marine threats perceptions (Ankamah-Yeboah et al., 2020; Lotze et al., 2018), separately. In the scope of the research project on “Marine Coastal ecosystems Biodiversity and Services in a changing world” (MaCoBioS) funded by the European Commission, people’s views on climate change, the value of marine and coastal ecosystems and the threats facing they face, as well as potential management options were investigated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio