AfricanBioServices - Linking Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functions and Services in the Serengeti-Mara Region, East Africa: Drivers of Change, Causalities and Sustainable Management Strategies
AfricanBioServices is a four year 10 million euro research project involving thirteen institutions in Europa and East Africa focusing on natural resource management problems in the cross-boundary Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania.
THE PROJECT IS CLOSED
Project period: 2015-2019
The AfricanBioServices consortium brings together a uniquely equipped group of researchers with complementary skills in human welfare, socio-economics, ecology, biodiversity, climate change, and ecosystem services with key research institutes, management authorities and policymakers from the East African community.
Work Packages overview
AfricanBioServices is organised into seven interlinked work packages (WPs):
- WP1 assembles, integrates and constructs a relational database to curate existing data and data produced by the project for the region.
- WP2 quantifies the connections between human population growth, land-use change and biodiversity changes.
- WP3 analyses the consequences of climate change for key aspects of biodiversity in the region.
- WP4 empirically tests the links between biodiversity and the core ecosystem services on which people in the region depend.
- WP5 quantifies human reliance on ecosystem services and examines management options.
- WP6 manages communication and dissemination of the project results.
- WP7 is devoted to project management.
WP 5 - quantifies human reliance on ecosystem services and examines management options
Martin Reinhardt Nielsen is the leader of WP5 that includes three tasks with associated overall objectives:
- to quantify and analyse patterns in the contribution of ecosystem service derived income to household welfare in the GSME and evaluate the welfare implications of changes in ecosystem service provision for different societal groups.
- to analyse the natural resource policy framework in Tanzania and Kenya and provide recommendations for adjustments to ensure sustainable management and simultaneously promoting poverty alleviation objectives in the governance of ecosystem services.
- to assess household’s preferences and trade-offs in choices regarding changing ecosystem services, policies and management strategies and determine what incentives best encourage households to choose livelihood strategies that are compatible with maintaining ecosystem function and ecosystem service delivery.
WP5 has produced eleven deliverables and a growing number of scientific publications and has thus contributed to fulfilling the expected impacts of AfricanBioServices by enabling the identification and development of more effective policies and other responses to managing drivers of change in the GSME. Specifically WP5 has quantified adjacent communities reliance on protected areas in the GSME and its relationship with their wellbeing; evaluated the feasibility of manipulating substitute prices to reduce bushmeat demand; the consequence of future road development across the GSME; reviewed the experience with Wildlife Management Areas; evaluated the risk of violence as a consequence of environmental degradation; and tried to make sense of the current drive to fence land in Kenya. These and many other studies carried out under WP5 has produced specific recommendations for policy development and management interventions.
Associate professor Martin Reinhardt Nielsen
Mail: mrni@ifro.ku.dk
Phone: +45 353-31726
IFRO participants
Xi Jiao, postdoc
Solomon Zenas Walelign, postdoc
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carsten Smith-Hall | Professor, Head of Section | +4535331763 | |
| Jette Bredahl Jacobsen | Professor, Head of Section | +4535331746 | |
| Martin Reinhardt Nielsen | Associate Professor | +4535331726 |
Funding
The project is financed by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 641918.
Project: AfricanBioServices – Linking Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functions and Services in the Serengeti-Mara Region, East Africa: Drivers of Change, Causalities and Sustainable Management Strategies
Amount: TBA (IFRO share)
Start: 2015
End: 2019