reflection1_theme5

=NBDC Science and Reflection Workshop= =4-6 May 2011=

Theme 5: Environment and Ecosystem Impacts
Thursday 4 May: 14:30 - 17:00 Organizer: Mulugeta Rapporteur: Amare Haileslassie [capture main points into a short 'blog post' or story]

Under theme 5 (environment and ecosystem impact) we will have four to five short presentations to provide highlights of what are intended to be done and have already been done to link RMS to broader environmental health and ecosystem functions (i.e. ecosystem services supply and possible or probable trade-offs following various RWM practices and interventions). Along these we will introduce the concept of resilience and show links between resilience-SLM-ecosystem functions. The first part of the session will, therefore, focus on how a logical link between these aspects can be established and how we intend to accomplish (i.e. proposals of methodologies) in the NBDC, where we expect good inputs from the participants. This will be followed by couple of other presentations as shown below, and the last part of the session, for which sufficient time is allocated, will be used for discussion, comments, suggestions, reflections and feedback from participants.
 * Short Scope Note for this conversation**


 * People, Presenters, Process**

Presentations

Mulugeta: concepts, definitions and framework and some preliminary findings Presentation]

Tilahun: case example: RMS to build resilience from AHI presentation]

Katherine: Ecosystems and livelihoods: understanding co-production Presentation]

Fergus: modeling ecosystem services supply & trade-off: POLYSCAPE Presentation]

Debbie: the concept of scenarios. Presentation]

**Theme Reflection**
 * To what extent is the science presented so far or from this session progressing the Nile BDC? gaps, omissions?
 * 1) The scale of our operation is unlikely to have any influence at community livelihood not environmental sustainability
 * 2) Any interventions if it withstand the adverse conditions we can sag the project is sustainable, so reliance and sustainability is not the same and one sustainability is a broad term
 * 3) Modeling of ESo/Resilience may not be the only solution
 * 4) It offers information about scientific approach towards approaching resilience
 * 5) Like the decision making tool (GIS) for discussion with stakeholders + showing trade-offs
 * 6) Few (no) scenarios focusing on increasing system productivity livelihoods – specific examples with RMS ….
 * 7) Science of ESs and how it shall be applied in NBDC is still young
 * 8) Good progress on science
 * 9) Need to educate some people about the ability to model anything


 * What can we take forward so far or from this session to strengthen project complementarities
 * 1) Stakeholders dialogue
 * 2) Pulling out resources prioritization
 * 3) This area can help bring complementarilty across projects
 * 4) Gives over-arching view, but not clear about where it links
 * 5) Ecosystem services by definition link the biophysical + the socio-economic. A good framework to link the different research components
 * 6) Needs more interaction with other themes
 * 7) Modeling social processes and resilience?
 * 8) Interesting, logical but difficult to realize
 * 9) Scenarios need to be firmed up and passed to modelers quick


 * What progress have we made so far or in this session on core concepts and approaches? suggestions?
 * 1) There is a serious mix up on the definition on the resilience on the SLM
 * Resilience will come as a result of SLM on certain environment
 * Resilience is the ability to recover from shocks in a short period of time
 * 1) Need to have a working definition of resilience for NBDC. This will then help in framing researchable questions
 * 2) The concept of sustainability is the broad term which holds true for the impact of scenarios while resilience is rather a recover of problems which could by itself included under the term of sustainability
 * 3) Good progress on concepts
 * 4) Interesting but broad the fuzzy
 * 5) Ecosystems services concept is a good one to use. But think about what will be measured – the service e.g. soil fertility the benefit e.g. crop-yield/income or both. The benefits of services depend on management intuitions, markets etc.
 * 6) Concept very well formulated
 * 7) Some presentations academic but not grounded in basic issues
 * 8) Concepts are not fully clear and understood by everyone.
 * 9) The RWM has to consider the environmental impact at the lowest scale (Plots, kebele and continuing to water shade and landscape of the basin)
 * 10) It is not clear how to quantity ecosystem service indicators and how to link with other components
 * 11) No money downstream so need innovative approaches to attaching value to eco-system services
 * 12) Resilience responding to change or adaptive capacity anticipating and pre-empting change


 * Five points for discussion and the notes from the cards:**

1.Ecosystem services: is assessing ESs an appropriate proxy for environmental impacts of RWM as presented? If so which ESs to consider and at what scale? Which ESs are sensitive enough to be affected within the project period or shortly after so that we may focus on these? Are they too biological or include also socio-economic aspects through the provisioning services? Which services should represent socio-economic aspects?(Fred) > Regulation: water quality, supporting: water quantity, soil moisture
 * 1) Assessing ES appropriate proxy, yes but in what framework? MA? Fisher (intermediate and final benefits)
 * 2) Which ES? Provisioning: crop livestock asset + products livestock ( milk, meat, trees/wood, NWFF
 * 1) Nutrient cycling, carbon sequeleration, , cultural: spiritual, EG spring tourism + biodiversity
 * 2) Sensitive ES due to RWMs + crop(yield) + livestock productivity + water quantity + soil fertility + nutrient cycling
 * 3) Socio – economic, through, market value , livestock production + asset, crop productivity, tourism
 * 4) Scale ES analysis, intensification, level depend on value, that people attached , landscape

2.ESs supply evaluation (trade-offs and synergies): whose trade-offs and/or synergies? Which tools? Why? (Fergus)


 * 1) Do ES need to be valued ($) to be trade-off?
 * 2) Between provisioning services (food production) & often ES depended on design of food production and innovation
 * 3) Sharing of benefits the ESs at the landscape level through innovative institutional mechanisms ( Diga –example)
 * 4) Off – setting the trade – offs by bringing the synergies of ESs and commercial benefits
 * 5) Who would be co-investors? Difficult in Ethiopian context many NGOs

3.LH: Does strengthening the adaptive capacity of those most vulnerable, lead to resilience of the overall system or does it threaten resilience? How do we distinguish between coping and adaptive strategies? What are the most important environmental factors that livelihoods have to be adapted to? Do we have enough knowledge currently on the dynamics of those factors and livelihoods? (Katherine)
 * 1) what are livelihoods tipping points?
 * 2) Public good translated into private goods – governance?
 * 3) Adaptation at on scale for example market engagement too many tomatoes or too much irrigation – no water
 * 4) Markets + adaptation, how do markets promote adaptation or ….. collapse?
 * 5) Coping us struggling
 * 6) Coping – reactive, adaptive – anticipating pro – active

4.Resilience: Is the concept that links RWM-SLM-Resilience logical, appropriate & clear? Resilience of what & to what should we investigate? How is this defined spatially and temporally? –Spatial scale: Watershed scale? Landscape scale? Farming system scale? District scale? Or? –Temporal scale? As far as what in the past? And as far as what in the future? (Mulugeta)


 * 1) Project life time is too short, scenario + modeling
 * 2) SEs of metoscale (catchment – woreda)
 * 3) Remote sensing changes from past to present, trends and trajectories
 * 4) Resilience = sustainability depends on data + context
 * 5) Production ( crop + livestock), food (fiber/feed nutrient flow carbon sequestration , solid quality , hydrological flow

5. Scenarios: discussion (Debbie)
 * 1) How to develop a coherent Nile BDC scenarios
 * 2) Need credible multi-scale story lines participatory
 * 3) Gap- exploratory scenarios
 * 4) What to do with results of scenarios process, vision, work, validation integrated
 * 5) Sequence of nesting guidelines, working group, share inputs
 * 6) Use scenarios to connect projects, purpose w/r/t end users

The environment and ecosystem impacts session was started by five short presentations covering: i) Linking Rain Water Management Strategies (RWMs) to Ecosystem, Environmental Health and Resiliencies; ii) Integrating RWMs for Environmental Resiliencies; iii) Ecosystem and Livelihood: Understanding Co-production; iv) A Polyscape Approaches for Modeling Ecosystem Services Supply & Trade-off; v) Developing Rain Water Management Scenarios for NBDC In the first presentation Mulugeta highlighted the overall conceptual framework to link RWMs to environmental health and ecosystem resiliencies. He defined and linked concepts like RWM, Sustainable Land Management (SLM) and resiliencies. He further highlighted on the proposal to asses RWMs and ecosystem resilience by taking case examples from each of the study landscapes and elaborated also on some of the indicators to be used in this assessment. The second speaker was Tilahun and he showed a case example of how integrated approaches in RWMs can enhances ecosystem services supply, and thus landscape socio-ecological resilience by rehabilitating degraded lands and water productivity improvement. The speaker emphasized the importance for collective plan of action and implementation and lessons that are relevant for the NBDC In the third presentation Katherine illustrated the concepts of social resilience as vital components of ecosystem resilience. She underlined the importance of social processes and the challenges such as when and for who important are stresses/shocks; coping short term adaptation rather than long term systematic transformation. She further highlighted relation between social capital and adaptive capacity. When do social network build resiliencies and when do simply they maintain coping; how social networks do affect resilience; how do adaptive capacity at different scale affects the overall system interconnectivity. Presentation on polyscape approaches to model ecosystem services supply & trade-off was handled by Fergus. In this presentation he highlighted that a gricultural landscapes produce a diverse range of ecosystem services (ES) and land use change affects them and thus the spatial configuration of particular landscape features (trees, ponds, wetlands) is critical to the supply of many services. Then the speaker elaborated many  the technical relevance polyscape approaches such as data inputs and outputs for such exercises. The last presentation, by Debbie, explored concepts and applicability of scenario building for NBDC. The speaker raised number of important issues on how to build of scenarios; how to implement them to look at impacts; the role of communities in scenario building in relation to their future and how scenarios will be linked to RWMs. Each of the presentations concluded with a series of questions which were the basis to form the focus of the subsequent break-out discussion groups and for the group discussion result refer to the report.
 * ** Rapporteur's (Amare Haileslassie) note: **