Health service needs and perspectives of remote forest communities in Papua New Guinea: study protocol for combined clinical and rapid anthropological assessments with parallel treatment of urgent cases

Introduction Our project follows community requests for health service incorporation into conservation collaborations in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This protocol is for health needs assessments, our first step in coplanning medical provision in communities with no existing health data. Methods and analysis The study includes clinical assessments and rapid anthropological assessment procedures (RAP) exploring the health needs and perspectives of partner communities in two areas, conducted over 6 weeks fieldwork. First, in Wanang village (population c.200), which is set in lowland rainforest. Second, in six communities (population c.3000) along an altitudinal transect up the highest mountain in PNG, Mount Wilhelm. Individual primary care assessments incorporate physical examinations and questioning (providing qualitative and quantitative data) while RAP includes focus groups, interviews and field observations (providing qualitative data). Given absence of in-community primary care, treatments are offered alongside research activity but will not form part of the study. Data are collected by a research fellow, primary care clinician and two PNG research technicians. After quantitative and qualitative analyses, we will report: ethnoclassifications of disease, causes, symptoms and perceived appropriate treatment; community rankings of disease importance and service needs; attitudes regarding health service provision; disease burdens and associations with altitudinal-related variables and cultural practices. To aid wider use study tools are in online supplemental file, and paper and ODK versions are available free from the corresponding author. Ethics and dissemination Challenges include supporting informed consent in communities with low literacy and diverse cultures, moral duties to provide treatment alongside research in medically underserved areas while minimising risks of therapeutic misconception and inappropriate inducement, and PNG research capacity building. Brighton and Sussex Medical School (UK), PNG Institute of Medical Research and PNG Medical Research Advisory Committee have approved the study. Dissemination will be via journals, village meetings and plain language summaries

The role of quantitative cross-case analysis in understanding tropical smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate shocks

Climate shocks are predicted to increase in magnitude and frequency as the climate changes, notably impacting poor and vulnerable communities across the Tropics. The urgency to better understand and improve communities' resilience is reflected in international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the multiplication of adaptation research and action programs. In turn, the need for collecting and communicating evidence on the climate resilience of communities has increasingly drawn questions concerning how to assess resilience. While empirical case studies are often used to delve into the context-specific nature of resilience, synthesizing results is essential to produce generalizable findings at the scale at which policies are designed. Yet datasets, methods and modalities that enable cross-case analyses that draw from individual local studies are still rare in climate resilience literature. We use empirical case studies on the impacts of El Niño on smallholder households from five countries to test the application of quantitative data aggregation for policy recommendation. We standardized data into an aggregated dataset to explore how key demographic factors affected the impact of climate shocks, modeled as crop loss. We find that while cross-study results partially align with the findings from the individual projects and with theory, several challenges associated with quantitative aggregation remain when examining complex, contextual and multi-dimensional concepts such as resilience. We conclude that future exercises synthesizing cross-site empirical evidence in climate resilience could accelerate research to policy impact by using mixed methods, focusing on specific landscapes or regional scales, and facilitating research through the use of shared frameworks and learning exercises

An Estimate of Avian Mortality at Communication Towers in the United States and Canada

Avian mortality at communication towers in the continental United States and Canada is an issue of pressing conservation concern. Previous estimates of this mortality have been based on limited data and have not included Canada. We compiled a database of communication towers in the continental United States and Canada and estimated avian mortality by tower with a regression relating avian mortality to tower height. This equation was derived from 38 tower studies for which mortality data were available and corrected for sampling effort, search efficiency, and scavenging where appropriate. Although most studies document mortality at guyed towers with steady-burning lights, we accounted for lower mortality at towers without guy wires or steady-burning lights by adjusting estimates based on published studies. The resulting estimate of mortality at towers is 6.8 million birds per year in the United States and Canada. Bootstrapped subsampling indicated that the regression was robust to the choice of studies included and a comparison of multiple regression models showed that incorporating sampling, scavenging, and search efficiency adjustments improved model fit. Estimating total avian mortality is only a first step in developing an assessment of the biological significance of mortality at communication towers for individual species or groups of species. Nevertheless, our estimate can be used to evaluate this source of mortality, develop subsequent per-species mortality estimates, and motivate policy action

Seeing the people for the trees: Impacts of conservation on human well-being in Northern Cambodia

Over recent decades, conservation projects, such as Protected Areas (PAs) and Payment for Environmental Services (PES), have increasingly incorporated poverty alleviation goals or targets towards improving human well-being in addition to biodiversity conservation outcomes. While methods to evaluate biodiversity are widely available, there is less guidance on how to measure the impacts of conservation interventions on human lives. Economic proxies have been popular, yet rarely reflect the multi-faceted incentives of resource users and their responses to conservation interventions. In this study, I use mixed methods to investigate the effects of conservation interventions on human well-being in Northern Cambodia, using three complementary approaches at different geographical scales. The Northern Plains landscape provides an ideal context for this exercise, because it includes two PAs and three PES initiatives, while also facing increasing development pressures in the form of large-scale agro-industrial development interventions: Economic Land Concessions (ELCs). I begin by exploring correlates of the spatial placement of ELCs, their outcomes in terms of deforestation rates, and the extent to which these development interventions trade off against conservation goals. The evidence indicates that ELCs not only fail to achieve their intended outcome but are also the main predictor of deforestation in the region, compromising environmental sustainability in the long-run. I then build on an existing longitudinal dataset from the Northern Plains to provide a medium-term evaluation of the impacts of PAs and PES on the socio-economic status of households in villages within PAs, compared with matched villages outside PAs. I demonstrate that external factors remain the main contributors to the socio-economic status of households across the landscape, with combined PAs and PES slightly reducing the rate of increase in household economic status and agricultural productivity, yet without impeding household development. The second half of this PhD offers a qualitative exploration of the conceptualisations of human well-being in the study area, to capture the multidimensionality and heterogeneity of well-being in the landscape. I find that individual well-being as well as village solidarity and trust are heavily linked with issues relating to land and resources, and their governance. From this study I developed locally relevant indicators pertaining to perceptions of salient land issues, which allow a more accurate assessment of the subjective dimension of human well-being across a landscape that features competing land uses from PAs and ELCs. The research findings highlight the complexity of attributing conservation impacts and capturing the direct and indirect consequences of conservation and development policies, and demonstrate how a more nuanced evaluation of conservation impacts on humans can guide future conservation interventions.Open Acces

Investigating Perceptions of Land Issues in a Threatened Landscape in Northern Cambodia

Land governance highly affects rural communities’ well-being in landscapes where land and its access are contested. This includes sites with high land pressures from development, but also from conservation interventions. In fact, local people’s motivations for sustainably managing their resources is highly tied to their perceptions of security, trust and participation in land management regimes. Understanding these perceptions is essential to ensure the internal legitimacy and sustainability of conservation interventions, especially in areas where development changes are fast paced. This paper presents an analysis of household perceptions of land issues in 20 villages across different conservation and development contexts in Northern Cambodia. We assess whether conservation and development interventions, as economic land concessions, influence perceptions of land issues in control and treatment sites by modelling five key perception indicators. We find that household characteristics rather than village contexts are the main factors influencing the perceptions of land issues. Interventions also affect perceptions, especially with regards to the negative effect of development pressures and population growth. While large-scale protected areas do not calm insecurity about land issues, some village-based payment for environmental services projects do. Ultimately, evidence from perception studies can help address current concerns and shape future conservation activities sustainably

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

Twenty priorities for future social-ecological research on climate resilience

Faced with the global climate crisis and the inevitability of future climate shocks, enhancing social-ecological resilience has become an urgent area for research and policy internationally. Research to better understand the impacts of, and response to, climate shocks is critical to improve the resilience and well-being of affected people and places. This paper builds on the findings of a focus collection on this topic to provide a concluding and forward-looking perspective on the future of social-ecological research on climate resilience. Drawing on an expert workshop to identify research gaps, we distinguish 20 priorities for future research on climate resilience. These span four key themes: Systems and Scales, Governance and Knowledge, Climate Resilience and Development, and Sectoral Concerns. Given the need and urgency for evidence-based policies to address the climate crisis, the analysis considers the importance of understanding how findings on social-ecological resilience are used in policy, rather than solely focusing on how it is generated. Many of the priorities emphasise the governance systems within which climate research is produced, understood and used. We further reflect on the state of current evidence generation processes, emphasising that the involvement of a wider range of voices in the design, implementation and dissemination of climate resilience research is critical to developing the efficient and fair interventions it is meant to support

"Living a good life": conceptualizations of well-being in a conservation context in Cambodia

Conservation practice has sometimes been criticized for relying on simplistic assumptions about social contexts in natural resource management. Despite recent advances conceptualizing the interface between human well-being and the environment, very few studies moving from theory to practice exist. We address this gap by providing one of the first careful examinations of local conceptualizations of well-being in a conservation context, using mixed methods to examine the multidimensionality and heterogeneity of well-being conceptualizations across three sites in northern Cambodia. Each site faced different levels of conservation activities and development pressures, the latter being mainly linked to the degree of impact from economic land concessions. Our results highlight village context as a key line of variation in individual well-being, rather than differences related to age, gender, or wealth. Our results suggest that conservation incentives that mirror people's aspirations can balance out negative trade-offs linked to compliance and can contribute to well-being. We show that multifaceted values are attached to well-being components, highlighting the importance of subjective indicators and perceptions to capture fully the social changes and impacts of conservation in complex contexts. We conclude that enquiries into subjective well-being should become an integral part of participatory assessments and adaptive management of conservation interventions

Santé mentale des étudiants en transition à l’Université : comment contrôler le risque et soutenir la résilience ?

Les étudiants de première année universitaire sont soumis à un stress important : l’entrée à l’université met en jeu une série de changements touchant les différents domaines de la vie étudiante et impose des défis d’apprentissages : de savoir (la matière elle-même) mais aussi de rapport au savoir attendu de l’étudiant, ainsi qu’au niveau de la construction de nouveaux repères et liens sociaux. Des études ont constaté des scores élevés de détresse émotionnelle chez les étudiants par rapport aux populations non étudiantes, et de symptômes dépressifs depuis leur entrée à l’université. Cependant peu d’étudiants demandent de l’aide et nombreux sont ceux qui ont tendance à ne pas percevoir un besoin d’aide. Une enquête en ligne ciblant les étudiants de première année à l’Université a évalué plusieurs dimensions de la santé mentale sur base d’échelles d’auto-évaluation (Beck Depression Inventory Short Form – BDI-SF ; Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale – LSAS, – Symptom Check-List de Dérogatis – SCL-90R), la résilience des étudiants et les facteurs la soutenant. Dans ce contexte de transition à l’enseignement supérieur, la résilience peut être considérée comme le maintien d’une santé mentale «suffisamment bonne » . Les résultats de l’enquête seront présentés de même que des actions menées visant à soutenir la résilience, inspiré du programme « Je tiens lq route » ((M. Martineau et al., 2015) ayant notamment pour objectifs d’accroitre le sentiment bien-être des étudiants et la littératie en santé mentale, en les sensibilisant aux différents troubles mentaux, à l’importance d’apporter du support aux pairs en détresse, à sa capacité de contribuer au bien-être de l’autre et à l’existence des services psycho-sociaux

Détection des données singulières pour la prévision et la cartographie de la qualité de l’air

International audienceLe système PREV’AIR (www.prevair.org) diffuse chaque jour des cartographies de la qualité de l’air à l’échelle de l’Europe et de la France. Ces cartographies représentent la situation passée (J-1) et prévue (J+0, J+1, J+2) pour les principaux polluants atmosphériques réglementés. Elles sont produites par modélisation déterministe, en ajustant les résultats de simulation à l’aide des données de mesure collectées en temps quasi-réel. Ces données n’ont pas encore subi de validation technique et environnementale de la part des organismes qui les produisent (les Associations Agréées de Surveillance de la Qualité de l’Air). Aussi peuvent-elles inclure des valeurs aberrantes ou singulières susceptibles d’affecter sensiblement, et de manière inappropriée, les cartographies. Depuis quelques années, des méthodes de détection des anomalies se développent (Gerharz et al., 2011 ; Rehr et al., 2013 ; Kracht et al., 2013 ; Bobbia et al., 2015). A l’INERIS, des travaux ont été engagés selon deux approches : une approche temporelle, appliquée station par station ; une approche spatiale, appliquée heure par heure. La première repose sur un filtrage par fenêtre glissante et la seconde sur du krigeage en validation croisée. Des exemples d’application seront présentés et discutés. L’efficacité des méthodes sera évaluée sur des séries annuelles de référence dans lesquelles l’expertise permet d’identifier de façon sûre la présence ou l’absence de données singulières. A terme, l’objectif est de coupler les approches temporelle et spatiale afin de rendre la détection plus fiable et de les mettre en œuvre quotidiennement dans PREV’AIR