Project
The world faces unprecedented threats to its climate and biodiversity, increasingly impacting people worldwide. In response, Natural Climate Solutions aim to restore, manage, and protect nature to tackle these challenges. These Solutions might play a significant role in government, business, and civil society plans to meet global sustainability goals. For example, the Bonn Challenge is a major international initiative to restore 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. Similarly, restoration is a core approach in Conservation International’s (CI) Natural Climate Solutions Roadmap. As such, there have been widespread calls to “scale up” the implementation of Natural Climate Solutions.
But the success of these Solutions in delivering positive outcomes at scale for people, nature, and the climate has been mixed. In some cases, these initiatives fail to get widely adopted. For example, numerous forest restoration projects have not gone beyond the piloting stage. In other instances, these initiatives are implemented at scale but do not contribute to sustainable development outcomes. For instance, over one million mangrove seedlings were planted on the Filipino island of Luzon in 2012, but by 2020 less than 2% had survived. Conversely, some Natural Climate Solution initiatives have successfully delivered impacts at scale, such as the Nepal Community Forestry Program, which recovered forests while delivering livelihood benefits across 19,000 community forestry groups.
This LISS DTP CASE aims to identify the features of Natural Climate Solution initiatives that influence both their likelihood of “scaling up” and their ability to deliver positive outcomes. Equally, the project will also identify trade-offs between scalability and effectiveness. Identifying such synergies and trade-offs will help guide the design of initiatives with scalable impacts.
This LISS DTP CASE will leverage collaboration between Imperial College London and CI. The LISS DTP student could lead a comparative case study across several project sites. Candidate sites could include those in East Africa, South America, Asia, and elsewhere. The project is expected to use mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, potentially including spatial statistical analysis.
The CASE project will provide the student with unique training opportunities, developing, implementing, and disseminating research with a major international conservation organisation.
Next steps
Applicants applying to a CASE studentship must meet the ESRC eligibility guidelines in terms of residency and academic qualifications, specifically core social science research methods training that must already have been undertaken. This project is a "+3 award", meaning it is a PhD program (as opposed to a combined MSc and PhD). Links to these guidelines can be found here: https://liss-dtp.ac.uk/applying-to-liss/case-studentships-student-applicants/
Candidates have covered at least three of the four major ESRC core research methods areas - social theory, qualitative methods, quantitative methods, and research design – Master’s modules. In some cases, we can consider professional experience, but this is in conjunction with a master’s degree rather than a substitute. You can see more details regarding these ESRC’s core research training areas here: https://liss-dtp.ac.uk/applying-to-liss/core-training-requirements/
Please check these guidelines before making an application and demonstrate that you meet these eligibility criteria within the cover letter.
Home, EU and international students are all eligible to apply. However, the total number of international studentships a DTP is able to offer has been capped by UKRI at 30% of the total number of studentships awarded each year, and so studentships for international students will be limited in number and competitive. LISS DTP institutions will attempt fund the difference between the UKRI Home Tuition Fee and International Fee for a limited number of international students and at this stage we cannot guarantee that every international student offered a LISS DTP studentship will receive this funding as part of their studentship.
Application deadline: 1 March 2023
To apply, please:
1. Submit the following four documents to Dr Morena Mills ([Email Address Removed]), Dr Thomas Pienkowski ([Email Address Removed]), and Dr Arundhati Jagadish ([Email Address Removed]), with the subject line with the following format surname_initial_CASE:
AND
2. Submit an application for the Environmental Policy Research (PhD) at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London through Imperial Gateway.
Shortlisted applicants will be invited for an interview in March 2023. Please contact Dr Thomas Pienkowski ([Email Address Removed]) with any questions.
Continue with Facebook
