General

It is estimated that 70% of the population of Uganda, Botswana, and Nigeria directly depend on the rich biodiversity of their ecosystems for their livelihoods, health and well-being. These ecosystems are being damaged at alarming rates in conjunction with a deterioration of social, cultural, and economic prosperity. Land degradation currently leads to annual loss of more than 3% of agriculture GDP in the sub-Saharan region, with two-thirds of arable land expected to be lost in Africa by 2025. While research, innovation, and policy addressing these environmental and social realities is carried out nationally and internationally, these occur largely without community involvement or qualitative input, and mostly without successful implementation. The CSPE Network brings together environmental and social scientists in community and public pedagogies to address this apparent implementation gap. As a matter of urgency, the gap between environmental research, innovation, and policy and the communities impacting and being impacted by the environment needs to be mitigated, in order to effectively address the growing issues related to biodiversity degradation. The CSPE Network will seek to develop Innovation and Economic Growth by facilitating innovative cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborations to address biodiversity loss in engagement with the social, cultural, and economic factors experienced by communities. Uganda, Botswana, and Nigeria have a rich, important history of non-formal, community and public pedagogies. Focused on learning and teaching outside formal educational institutions, community and public pedagogies include learning in various public and community spaces and can emerge for example, through instruction, engagement, social arts, and popular culture, amongst many other forms. There is a significant field of research and practice in community engagement, indigenous ways of knowing, and vocational development in the African context, but this social science area rarely works directly with environmental science. Hence, there are parallel objectives (environmental sustainability and the well being of people) but a lack of common language, approach, or expertise. In the context of environment-dependent populations, community and public pedagogies are the strongest, fastest, and most appropriate forms of engagement required to connect new scientific information with existing socio-cultural knowledge and realities. The environmental policy implementation gap is not new but it is predominantly put down to failures of governance and control. The CSPE Network postulates that addressing biodiversity degradation without genuine community engagement is a project destined to continue to fail. Likewise, to address the health, well-being, and education of populations without rich, science-based environmental knowledge is equally futile. Furthermore, the leadership of all three countries recognise that the environmental challenges they face require inter-sectoral and holistic attention (Uganda Vision 2040; Nigeria Vision 20:2020; Botswana National Development Plan 10). The CSPE Network proposes that without the full engagement of communities, governance will only further widen the gap between communities and the policy makers and researchers trying to protect them. This sustained dynamic and the ever-increasing set of problems is due not to a lack of knowledge, expertise or financial resources. It is due to the disconnect between environmental science and the engagement of communities: a disconnect this network is designed to mitigate.

Objectives

The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) supports cutting-edge research to address challenges faced by developing countries. The fund addresses the UN sustainable development goals. It aims to maximise the impact of research and innovation to improve lives and opportunity in the developing world.

General

Half of Peru’s GHG emissions come from the land use sector. Most of these emissions are a result of deforestation processes related to smallholder agricultural producers in the Peruvian Amazon. A major driver of deforestation is the lack of land tenure rights for smallholders which reduces their commercial opportunities, makes access to financial resources difficult, and increases overall risk. To address this issue, the Government of Peru has developed an innovative land tenure mechanism to formalize smallholder farmers called the Agroforestry Concession (AfC). AfCs offer a renewable usufruct contract for 40 years to thousands of eligible farmers currently encroaching on public forest domain in the Peruvian Amazon. Upon award, farmers commit to avoid deforesting, conserve remnant forests, maintain or establish sustainably managed agroforestry systems, and implement soil and water conservation measures. Public financial incentives need to support the small-scale farmers that choose to enroll in the AfC system and comply with its environmental requirements, but they are currently not aligned towards this goal. A key challenge for AfC adoption is ensuring that tangible incentives are in place. Providing secure land tenure through AfC contracts alone will not be enough to ensure widespread adoption of the AfC system and compliance with its environmental terms. If current public agricultural programs were to support this new mechanism, it would offer increased opportunity to actively engage more smallholder producers than at present. More importantly, support through public funds will lower overall risk in zero-deforestation supply chains of small-scale producers and provide the foundation for green private investment.

Objectives

The project objective is to align agricultural public funds or programs with environmental and social safeguards to incentivize the adoption and compliance with the new AfC system, thus reducing deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon and improving livelihoods of small-scale farmers. GGGI will work with the Government of Peru (GoP) to incorporate AfC possession as eligibility criteria for prioritized public incentive programs to promote the formalization of small-scale agricultural producers in the Amazon through the AfCs

General

(Kenya): .The Kenya Agricultural Value Chain Enterprises mechanism seeks to reduce poverty among smallholder farmers and improve the nutrition status of women and children in 22 Feed the Future focus counties. ..FY 2016 funding will: 1) strengthen and promote smallholder production systems; 2) increase yields and reduce costs of production through transfer of low-cost technologies and practices; 3) source financial and technical assistance to reduce the costs of aggregation and marketing of food security crops, dairy, and other horticulture; 4) improve post harvest handling systems to reduce physical wastage and quality-related price erosion; 5) add value through processing crops and milk into manufactured products; 6) attract new private sector investments that increase demand for smallholder-based production systems; 7) support decentralized public sector capacity in regulation of commercial agribusiness based on smallholder producers; and 8) improve the land rights for smallholder farmers......