Environmental change; climate change and development; ecosystem services and poverty alleviation; resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity to environmental change; conservation and development; coastal and marine social ecological systems. Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Caribbean

Research Groups: Climate Change and Development


Research Activities

My research concerns environmental change and how individuals and societies respond to change. I am interested in issues of resilience and adaptation, and the different policy options for dealing with environmental change in developing countries. Currently much of my research in these areas is focused on climate change and on management of coastal resources. I have worked in other contexts, particularly on terrestrial conservation and forest ecosystems.
 

Major research themes: 

1. Resilience and Development

This research is the focus on my ESRC Professorial Fellowship ‘Resilient development in Social Ecological Systems’ (2009-2011) which aims to advance theoretical and conceptual understanding of resilience across the social sciences and inform policy discussions and governance strategies which take a resilience approach. The concept of ‘resilient development’ is the central focus, and the fellowship will culminate in a book on how resilience thinking potentially changes the theory, policy and practice of development. The objectives are to define the framework of a broad social science of resilience through a comprehensive review of the concept applied across relevant social science disciplines and analysis in areas which are currently under-emphasised in the study of resilience in linked social ecological systems. This includes developing a political ecology of resilience, investigating diverse social constructions of resilience in policy and practice, using discourse analysis and mental models; and analysing the winners and losers in a resilience approach.

On-going activities in the fellowship include:

Sustainable Adaptation: An Oxymoron?

This paper was presented at the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Conference in Oslo in June 2009.

Analysing Policy Discourses of Resilience
An early version was presented to the Resilience Alliance Science Meeting in Canada in September 2009. The paper will be presented at the Associated of American Geography Conference in USA in April 2010.

Social Ecological Resilience and Human Security

This chapter has been written for the volume entitled “The Changing

Environment for Human Security: New Agendas for Research, Policy, and

Action" edited by Karen O’Brien, Johanna Wolf and Linda Synga.

Advancing an Understanding of Agency in Adaptive Capacity

This paper brings together literatures on resilience from human development and social ecological systems to inform analysis of agency in adaptive capacity.
 

2. Coastal Social Ecological Systems: Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience

My work on coastal social and ecological systems started when I worked with Emma Tompkins, Neil Adger and colleagues at University of the West Indies on ‘Trade-off Analysis’ to create innovative methods to engage diverse stakeholders and understand the trade-offs between ecosystem health, social benefits and economic This resulted in a book produced in 2003 ‘Making Waves: Integrating Coastal Conservation and Development’. We further developed stakeholder based scenario techniques to examine the governance of coasts under climate change (with Emma Tompkins and Roger Few) in the Tyndall Centre project, ‘Responding to climate change: Integrated and inclusive coastal analysis.’

More recently this work on coastal dimensions of climate change has led to research on the complex dynamics and pathways of change impacts on fisheries for FAO (with Tim Daw, Neil Adger and Marie-Caroline Badjeck) published as an FAO Technical Paper 530. I’ve also collaborated on research in Western Indian Ocean impacts of coral bleaching on dependent communities (papers in Conservation Letters and Conservation Biology) and on vulnerability of national economies to climate impacts of fisheries (paper in Fish and Fisheries).

From 2007-2009 I collaborated with Sergio Rosendo and Matthew Bunce on a Leverhulme Trust funded project, ‘Coastal Resilience to Climate Change in East Africa’. This has used a series of techniques, including mental models approaches to understand how multiple stressors interact and how people perceive climate in the context of other changes, in four locations in Tanzania and Mozambique. Papers are being published form this including on Multiple Stressors (in Environment, Development and Sustainability); on ‘Policy misfits, climate change and cross-scale vulnerability: How development projects undermine resilience’ (in review) and on adaptive capacity.  

3. Ecosystem Services and poverty alleviation

I am interested in looking at how ecosystem services approaches relate to poverty alleviation and how they are applied in different developing country contexts. In 2008 I headed a large international consortium to undertake a Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Situational Analysis [you can download the report at http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/espa/resources.asp] for the NERC-DFID-ESRC ESPA programme. This developed regional studies – in Western Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia – and a series of national and local workshops in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Philippines and Vietnam – to examined how ecosystem services can deliver benefits to poor people. Further work examines how a pro-poor approach to ecosystem services could be developed; the changing nature of coastal vulnerability in developing countries; and the institutional transformations and capacities to implement ecosystem services approaches.

We also challenged these areas in the recent NERC-ESRC seminar series ‘Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being: Interrogating the Evidence’ which I co-ordinated along with Neil Adger and Kerry Turner from UEA, Baskar Vira from Cambridge University, and Dominic Moran from Scottish Agricultural College.

4 Forests: People, poverty and carbon

I have been involved in research on forests for some years, examining the social dynamics of forest cover change. My recent research in this area has involved interrogating the assumptions made about opportunities for development benefits of climate change mitigation through the CDM by analysing carbon forestry projects in developing countries. I’ve worked with researchers and PhD students including Esteve Corbera, Emily Boyd and Janet Fisher on various projects, and this has led to a number of publications discussing the institutional and governance dimensions of carbon forestry and carbon offsetting, and the future of the CDM. For example we completed research in the Tyndall Centre on Evaluating Policy Options for the Clean Development Mechanism: A Stakeholder Multi-criteria Approach. We have latterly examined the implications of these experiences for REDD, with a major review paper (co-authored with Esteve Corbera and Manuel Estrada) published in Climatic Change [link?]

I am part of the Poverty Environment Network and am a partner in the project on Global Analysis of Forests and Poverty Alleviation, co-ordinated by CIFOR and funded by ESRC-DFID scheme.

Climate Change and Development
 

Publications

2011

Past Research students supervised
 

Alice Kaudia Social Forestry in Kitui District Kenya, PhD awarded 1996

Alice is now Head of IUCN in East Africa

Suren Batagoda Sustainable Forest Management in Sri Lanka, PhD awarded 1998

Suren is CEO, Sri Lanka Carbon Fund

Siri Eriksen Vulnerability and Adaptation to Environmental Change in Eastern Kenya, PhD awarded 2000

Siri is a lecturer at the Norweigian University of  Life Sciences

Jennifer Leith Political Ecology of Transmigration and Environmental Change in Indonesia, PhD awarded 2001

Jennifer leads DFID’s Caribbean Reducing Risks team

Emma Tompkins Trade-off Analysis for Coastal Management and Conservation, PhD awarded 2001

Emma is a senior lecturer at the Sustainability Research Institute at Leeds University and on secondment to DFID as a Research fellow in Cliamet Change Adaptation. She was previously a post doctoral fellow at the Tyndall Centre

Rebecca Clark Economics of Soil Erosion and Conservation in Sri Lanka, PhD awarded 2001

Rebecca is a Senior Specialist in Economics for Natural England

Mark Infield The Culture of Conservation: Exclusive Landscapes, Beautiful Cows and Conflict Over Lake Mburo National Park, Uganda  PhD awarded 2002

Mark co-ordinates Flora and Fauna International in Asia

Marcia Muchagata Shaping the Frontier: Farmers’ organisations, collective action and environment in Amazonia, PhD awarded 2002

Marcia is with the Brazilian Forests Service

Sergio Rosendo Social Sustainability and Rainforest Conservation in Amazonia, PhD awarded 2002

Sergio is a Research Fellow at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal

Valma Jessamy Natural Hazard Mitigation and Development Planning in the Eastern Caribbean. PhD awarded 2003

Valma is the executive director of JECO Caribbean, and Founding Director of Conservation Grenada Inc, a non profit voluntary environmental organization

Emily Boyd Forest post-Kyoto: Global Priorities and Local Realities. PhD awarded 2004 (ESRC studentship)

Emily is Lecturer at SRI Leeds and a fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. She was previously a post doctoral fellow at the Tyndall Centre

Aili Pyhala Socio-economics of biodiversity conservation and development: A Case Study of the region of Allpahuayo-Mishana-Nanay. PhD awarded 2004

Aili is involved in permaculture and social justice issues having worked for the Finiish Environment Institute

David Hutchinson Institutional fit in tropical ecosystems: A test using marine protected areas. PhD awarded 2004 (NERC/ESRC studentship)

David is a lecturer at Liverpool University

Lisa Schipper Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries: Policy Responses to Enhance Resilience in El Salvador PhD awarded 2004

Lisa works for the Stockholm Environment Institute, based in Bangkok having previous worked with the START programme in Asia.

Natasha Grist Natural resource management in colonist livelihoods in western Amazonia PhD awarded 2005

Natasha works on the Climate Change programme at Overseas Development Institute in London. She was previously a post doctoral fellow at the Tyndall Centre.

Esteve Corbera Elizalde Interrogating development in carbon forest projects: A case study of Mexico PhD awarded 2005

Esteve is a post doctoral fellow in the Tyndall Centre

Nadine Renaudeau d’Arc Community wildlife management of vicuna in Andes. PhD awarded 2005

Nadine works and a consultant on environment and conservation issues

Sirkku Juhola Deconstructing Agricultural Biodiversity PhD awarded 2005

Sirrku is a post doctoral fellow working on climate change adaptation at Umeå University, Sweden

Johanna Wolf Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in Coastal Communities PhD awarded 2006

Johanna is a post doctoral fellow at the Tyndall Centre and for the GECHS programme at University of Oslo

Mike Robbins Agriculture, Carbon Sequestration and Poverty (NERC/ESRC studentship) PhD awarded 2007

Mike now works for UNESCO in New York.

Patricia Almaguer Kalixto Puebla Panama Plan in Mexico (CONACYT funded) PhD awarded 2008

Patricia works as a post doctoral researcher oin environment and development issues in Mexico.

Louisa Evans  Knowledge and Science Interactions in marine Conservation Systems in East Africa.  NERC/ESRC studentship PhD awarded 2008

Louisa is a post doctoral fellow at WorldFish Centre in Malaysia