Community-Based Climate Change Adaptation Action Plans to Support Climate-Resilient Development in the Eastern African Highlands

Smallholder farmers in the Eastern African Highlands depend on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods. Climate adaptation and sustainable development goals must be targeted in an integrated way to better match farmers’ realities and address local priorities and vulnerabilities in these areas. To support climate-resilient development in the Eastern African Highlands, 224 local stakeholders were engaged in the development of community-based climate change adaptation action plans for the Jimma Highlands in Ethiopia, Taita Hills in Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Participatory methods, high-resolution climate projections and the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) guidelines were used in the design of these climate action plans with specific objectives to: 1) engage stakeholders to increase understanding of climate change impacts, adaptation options and their potential trade-offs, 2) build their capacities to design climate change adaptation projects, 3) empower stakeholders to identify existing vulnerabilities and enhance climate resilience and 4) strengthen networks to facilitate information access and sharing. Increased risk of water stress and reduction of agricultural productivity were the most frequently identified climate-change-induced problems in the three areas. The developed action plans target the underlying causes of these problems and describe sector-specific responses, activities, critical barriers and opportunities and support the National Adaptation Programmes of Action.Peer reviewe

Retention and hydrolysable fraction of atmospherically deposited nitrogen in two contrasting forest soils in Switzerland

Nitrogen (N) from atmospheric deposition has been shown to be mainly retained in the organic soil layers of temperate forest ecosystems, but the mechanisms and the physico-chemical fractions involved are still poorly defined. We performed a hot-acid hydrolysis on N-15-labelled soil samples collected 1 week, 3 months and 1 year following a single in situ application of either (NO3-)-N-15 or (NH4+)-N-15 in two montane forest ecosystems in Switzerland: Grandvillard (beech forest on a calcareous, well-drained soil, 650 m above sea level) and Alptal (spruce forest on hydromorphic soil, 1200 m above sea level). After (NH4+)-N-15 application, recovery rates in the soil were smaller in Alptal than in Grandvillard through a large rate of absorption by mosses. At both sites, the organic soil layers retained most of the tracers at all three sampling times between 1 week and 1 year. In Grandvillard, the hydrolysable fraction (hydrolysable N : total N) of N-15 was on average 79% and thus similar to the hydrolysable fraction of native N. This similarity is probably because of the rapid incorporation of N into organic molecules, followed by stabilization of the recalcitrant N pool through organo-mineral bonds with soil minerals. In Alptal, the N-15 hydrolysable fraction was greater than that of native N, particularly after (NH4+)-N-15 application (N-15, 84%; native N, 72%). At both sites, N-15 and the fraction of hydrolysable native N remained constant between 1 week and 1 year. This shows that both the recalcitrant and the hydrolysable pools are stable in the mid-to long-term. We present arguments indicating that biological recycling through microbes and plants contributes to the stability of the hydrolysable N fraction

Sustainable development in the Alps: the Mountaineering Villages (Bergsteigerd\uf6rfer) initiative

Mountain regions provide goods and services such as water, hydroelectricity, timber, biodiversity, recreation, etc. which are important not only to the local communities. International agreements and policy documents, namely the Alpine Convention, the Alpine Space programme, the European Union Strategy for the Alpine Region, and the 2030 Agenda, address these regions. The aim of this research is to investigate the potential of the Mountaineering Villages initiative, launched by the Austrian Alpine Association, to achieve the objective of sustainable development in the Alpine region in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2030 Agenda. For this purpose, an analysis was carried out to compare the Mountaineering Villages criteria and the SDGs. Results revealed that not only SDG15 and SDG6, which explicitly recognize the importance of mountains, but also other SDGs, in particular SDGs 4, 8, 9, 11 and 12, would be positively affected by the implementation of the MVs initiative. In fact, MVs are oriented towards the development of sustainable tourism, which means first and foremost safeguarding local natural and cultural values as unique and attractive elements, as well as the development of both mountaineering and tourism services, facilities and skills, thus promoting socioeconomic development of the area through the creation of jobs and the enhancement of local economies and communities