Grants

Coastal ecosystems in Southeast Asia are under threat from overfishing, habitat degradation and climate change. Protecting these ecosystems is essential to conserving biodiversity and safeguarding the wellbeing of millions of people that depend on these ecosystems for their food and livelihoods.  Community-based fisheries management (CBFM) - in which fisheries management decisions are devolved to local communities - has long been proposed for its potential to advance biodiversity, sustainable management and livelihood objectives while prioritizing local values and needs. Understanding the mechanisms through which CBFM interventions deliver effective social and conservation outcomes is essential to support the design, implementation and scaling up of CBFM, yet these are still poorly understood. 

This study aims to address this critical question by: evaluating the impacts and mechanisms of a CBFM initiative; identifying the factors influencing adoption; and combining this information to assess the potential scalability of CBFM. To do this we focus on the Fish Forever (FF) program in the Philippines. This initiative reaches over 30 sites and 600 communities throughout the country, deploying a combination of behavioural interventions, policy and legal support, innovative finance and management support, with the explicit aims of conserving biodiversity, sustaining livelihoods, securing food supply, and improving wellbeing. By employing a holistic approach – which simultaneously addresses multiple challenges for multiple objectives – the FF programme has the potential to deliver social and ecological benefits that are sustained over time. The Philippines, with its extensive coastline and long history of community-based management of coastal resources plays a significant role in worldwide efforts to address coastal degradation through community efforts. We expect to draw valuable lessons from this case study, that would help to scale effective CBFM through SE Asia.

Madagascar is the African country most exposed to climate risks. In the south and western regions, declining precipitation over the past 50 years has led to severe water shortages and drought. The impact on Malagasy farmers in these regions has led to chronic food insecurity and poverty in their communities.

These regions are further burdened by high rates of deforestation, which is predicted to accentuate these warmer conditions on an already dry environment. Agricultural land is severely degraded due to the continued use of swidden agriculture (involving burning and rotational farming), leading to declining productivity and soil erosion, which in turn drives further forest clearing. As conditions worsen due to climate change, farmers must adapt their farming practices to the drier and warmer conditions.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can help develop more sustainable agricultural systems and enhance famers’ resilience, thus reducing food insecurity - while generating biodiversity and greenhouse gas mitigation co-benefits from reduced deforestation. Despite their demonstrated benefits, adoption of CSA remains very low in Madagascar. This project will bring together multiple stakeholders to identify the most effective CSA practices in the south and western Madagascar’s contexts and address critical knowledge gaps on key enablers and barriers to CSA adoption.

Cities in developed and developing countries have emerged as critical actors in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts. Although the COVID-19 crisis has caused disruptions in habits and short-term economic development and carbon emissions, it is less clear whether it represents a critical juncture beyond which cities will shift towards enduring low-carbon and climate-resilient pathways.1 This study investigates cities as potential drivers of green and climate-resilient recovery, seeking to identify factors that influence whether cities embark on low-carbon and resilient pathways; return to prior unsustainable pathways, or backtrack on climate commitments and head to unsustainable pathways. By comparing climate commitments of cities in developed and developing countries, we aim to challenge conventional paradigms about development and recovery from crises which often entail investments that lock-in high-carbon and unsustainable development. Our aim is to shed light on those factors that can be harnessed - and actions that can be taken - by individual cities and networks of cities, to support a green and climate-resilient recovery

Summary

Covid-19 has triggered a global economic shutdown, with businesses, schools and transport options closing down, and ‘social distancing’ enforced on citizens. This has led to unintended reductions in carbon emissions and other pollutants as a result of decreased travel and consumption. Although a global pandemic that has caused more than 130,000 deaths at time of writing and debilitated the world economy should not be heralded as the way to secure pollution reductions, it does however present a unique opportunity to assess our current economic trajectory, and to identify the mechanisms needed to shift direction onto a more sustainable pathway. This project seeks to address this opportunity by identifying which current pro-environmental and pro-social behaviours can be sustained beyond the lifetime of the pandemic, and the mechanisms and/or policy decisions that would support these longer-term changes.

Preferences for green and equitable post-Covid-19 recovery policies will be identified via repeat online surveys with a representative panel of UK residents, and timed to coincide with major shifts in policy or evolution of the Covid-19 virus.

This research will be used to inform policy makers about the optimal mix of behaviours and supporting policy mechanisms needed to shift trajectory onto a sustainable pathway beyond the lifetime of the pandemic. Such information will be vital to guide the ‘return to normality’ as the pandemic passes. This moment represents a ‘critical juncture’ during which the decisions made by government, corporations and households will determine the future social and environmental pathway of our economy and society.

Community-based co-management is hailed as the solution to natural resource decline experienced by rural communities worldwide. It involves decentralised resource management which responds to social and conservation goals. The Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) network in Fiji is one of the most extensive networks of community-based co-management sites in the world. The LMMA process involves the collaborative generation and dissemination of knowledge and decision tools on marine resource management between scientists, NGOs, fishing communities and government officials. After 14 years of existence, the Fiji LMMA network is seeking to identify lessons learned, to provide guidance to stakeholders about inputs and organisational processes that generate knowledge and decisions that deliver sustainable resource use and management. To address this question, the project seeks to evaluate the impact of knowledge co-production on the success or failure of LMMAs in delivering social and ecological benefits, and to identify contextual factors that are conducive to success.

Lead institution: Middlesex University

Partners: Fijian Locally Managed Marine Area Network, Wildlife Conservation Society, Imperial College London and Conservation International

Link to British Academy webpage