Creación y análisis de escenarios futuros sobre agricultura, seguridad alimentaria nutricional y medios de vida en el Corredor Seco de Honduras

This report presents the methodology and results of the participatory scenario building workshop led in Honduras from 22 to 23th November 2018

Ecosystem services and hydroelectricity in Central America: modelling service flows with fuzzy logic and expert knowledge

Because ecosystem services are generally not produced and used in the same place, their assessment should consider the flows of services from ecosystems to users. These flows depend on the characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems and users, the spatial relationships between them, and the presence of filters or barriers between ecosystems and users. The objective of this paper is to map the ecosystem services provided to the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan hydroelectric sectors, which are crucial sectors for national sustainable development and depend directly on hydrological ecosystem services. The paper presents an approach for modelling the flows of multiple services from diverse ecosystems to diverse users through different kinds of filters in a landscape. The approach uses expert knowledge and fuzzy numbers to handle uncertainties. The analyses for Costa Rica and Nicaragua show how the approach helps identify priority areas for the conservation and restoration of forests for the services they provide to the hydroelectric sector. As such, it is a useful tool for defining spatially targeted policies for the conservation of ecosystem services and for involving the users of ecosystem services in ecosystem management. (Résumé d'auteur

Ecosystem services and hydropower generation in Costa Rica

El objetivo de este estudio es identificar los ecosistemas forestales que provén servicios ecosistémicos hídricos (SEH) importantes para la adaptación del sector hidroenergético al cambio climático en Costa Rica. Se evaluó un marco metodológico que tomó en cuenta los vínculos espaciales entre usos del suelo, su capacidad de producir SEH y la utilidad que las centrales hidroeléctricas obtienen de los SEH, en un contexto de vulnerabilidad a eventos climáticos. Las centrales hidroeléctricas reciben SEH del 24% del territorio nacional, que en su mayoría está bajo cobertura forestal (52%). Las cuencas del río Reventazón, Grande de Tárcoles y Grande de Terraba son las más importantes en términos de área que provee SEH. Cerca del 70% de los ecosistemas forestales identificados como relevantes para la hidroenergía se encuentran fuera de áreas protegidas. Los resultados de este trabajo son de importancia para la implementación de planes de manejo adaptativo de los ecosistemas prioritarios para garantizar el flujo continuo de SEH y así contribuir a la resiliencia del sector hidroenergético, en particular frente al cambio climático.The purpose of this study is to identify forest ecosystems that provide hydrological ecosystem services (HES) relevant for the adaptive capacity to climate change in the hydropower sector of Costa Rica. We assessed a methodological framework that considers spatial linkages between land use, capacity of the ecosystem to produce environmental services, and the utility that hydropower plants derive from those HES in a context of vulnerability to climatic events. Hydropower plants receive HES from 24% of the national territory, where forest cover represents 52% of land use. The watersheds of Rio Reventazón, Grande de Tárcoles and Grande de Terraba are the more important in terms of area providing HES. Approximately 70% of forest ecosystems identified during the course of this study providing HES to the hydropower sector are currently outside the national protected areas system. The results of this study are relevant for the implementation of adaptive management plans in forest ecosystems providing HES, and thus, improve the resilience to climate change in the hydropower sector

Mapping adaptive capacity and smallholder agriculture: applying expert knowledge at the landscape scale

The impacts of climate change exacerbate the myriad challenges faced by smallholder farmers in the Tropics. In many of these same regions, there is a lack of current, consistent, and spatially-explicit data, which severely limits the ability to locate smallholder communities, map their adaptive capacity, and target adaptation measures to these communities. To explore the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in three data-poor countries in Central America, we leveraged expert input through in-depth mapping interviews to locate agricultural landscapes, identify smallholder farming systems within them, and characterize different components of farmer adaptive capacity. We also used this input to generate an index of adaptive capacity that allows for comparison across countries and farming systems. Here, we present an overview of the expert method used, followed by an examination of our results, including the intercountry variation in expert knowledge and the characterization of adaptive capacity for both subsistence and smallholder coffee farmers. While this approach does not replace the need to collect regular and consistent data on farming systems (e.g. agricultural census), our study demonstrates a rapid assessment approach for using expert input to fill key data gaps, enable trans-boundary comparisons, and to facilitate the identification of the most vulnerable smallholder communities for adaptation planning in data-poor environments that are typical of tropical regions. One potential benefit from incorporating this approach is that it facilitates the systematic consideration of field-based and regional experience into assessments of adaptive capacity, contributing to the relevance and utility of adaptation plans