Policy and Practice Briefs

Ecosystem services are vital for peri-urban and urbanising areas, and the people who live within them. In contexts of rapid urbanisation, these services are under threat from redevelopment, pollution and overconsumption, and there are gaps in the policies and structures that should protect them. Despite these challenges, there are opportunities for local authorities and citizens to work together and join up policy with action on the ground.

The ESPA Deltas project (www.espadeltas.net) undertook an ambitious, interdisciplinary study to understand the ecosystems of coastal Bangladesh and the lives of the millions of people who benefit from them. A key aim was to make the findings available to decision-makers who are seeking to protect and improve the livelihoods and wellbeing of the people who live in this dynamic delta environment. The project’s many findings have been integrated into a sophisticated model, the Delta Dynamic Integrated Emulator Model (ΔDIEM).

Tanzania’s Community Wildlife Management Areas (CWMAs) – originally called Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) – were intended to benefit both people and wildlife. However, for their first two decades, CWMAs have been characterised by land conflict, wildlife damage to people and crops, lack of tourism potential and high administration costs among other negative impacts. Can rethinking how CWMAs are run bring about the benefits once promised?

Key messages of this policy brief include:

- Most CWMAs are not financially viable.

A new ESPA Policy & Practice Brief by Alexandros Gasparatos et al. assesses whether sugarcane and jatropha production have helped tackle poverty in rural Malawi. They conclude: Poverty alleviation and food security outcomes for those involved in the sugarcane sector vary but appear largely positive. Land use conversion for sugarcane production can have positive or negative environmental impacts. Policy-makers need to evaluate trade-offs across the different socioeconomic and environmental impacts to guide decisions that affect sugarcane development plans.

Insights into Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) gained from research projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America supported by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme. It offers lessons into how PES projects in Nepal can best be put into practice to improve Nepal’s environment sector and reduce poverty among Nepalese people.

African drylands, like those in Kenya and Tanzania, are fast approaching a tipping point where grazing lands are becoming enclosed, thereby restricting mobility of livestock and adversely impacting livelihoods as well as driving drastic wildlife decline. BEST explores policy and economic incentives to re-balance the system.

By taking a rigorous scientific process to monitoring and evaluating impacts, Fundación Natura Bolivia succeeded in both reducing its costs of doing business and providing evidence that it works. And this has stimulated wider uptake of Natura's pioneering approach.

Understanding how community rights and institutions affect poverty reduction and sustainability of ecosystem services.

Good research unearths new knowledge, but often fails to get that knowledge into practice or policy. This ESPA project is ensuring impact by considering it in the research methodology from the outset and is integrating its findings into other programmes even as it is ongoing.

Featured image courtesy of the Institute of Development Studies