The impact of livelihood-focused interventions on forest ecosystems, deforestation and associated environmental processes

"Project summary: Rapid deforestation contributes substantially to climate change. It undermines the provision of vital ecosystem services and livelihood opportunities necessary for sustainable development and limits future options for human adaptation (Bradshaw et al. 2007; Lima 2014). Reducing deforestation is therefore an important sustainable development, climate mitigation and adaptation mechanism (Pramova et al. 2012). One approach to reducing deforestation are livelihood focused interventions in communities adjacent to forests. Such interventions are common place in countries ranked low in terms of human development and high in terms of forest importance (e.g. for biodiversity and the ecosystem services they support. Livelihood focused interventions typically aim to reduce deforestation by diversifying the livelihood activities of forest-adjacent human populations and substituting those activities dependent on forest products (Sunderlin 2005, 2010). Whilst a significant amount of research has investigated the impacts of livelihood interventions on livelihoods, their impact on forest ecosystems and associated environmental processes (e.g. avoided deforestation and forest-climate interactions) is understudied.

The central research question in this PhD project will therefore be – how do livelihood focused interventions affect forest ecosystems, deforestation and associated environmental processes?

With significant amounts of overseas development assistance being spent on livelihood focused interventions and forest conservation in the developing world, better understanding of the impact of such projects on forests is important for the design of appropriate policy. There are substantial opportunities for well-designed livelihood interventions to have strong co-benefits for forest ecosystems, but there are also risks interventions might not lead to behaviour change or mis-targeted (Wright et al. 2015; Dokken and Angelsen, 2015) and instead result in increased deforestation locally or elsewhere (leakage) (Latham et al., in press). Livelihood interventions might provide additional rather than alternative livelihood activities, and/or increase the vulnerability of livelihood strategies to future shocks and stress through specialism on new or high risk activities. This PhD project will provide the knowledge to help inform the design and implementation of livelihood interventions that benefit livelihoods as well as reduce deforestation and mitigate climate change. The project therefore has the potential to generate high profile insights on how climate mitigation and adaptation through livelihood interventions will affect forest ecosystems.

Methodological approach: Drawing on the expertise of supervisors and collaborating partners, a cross-scale methodological approach will be used in this project. Firstly, insights will be drawn from a pan-tropical meta-analysis of livelihood projects which will be combined with remote sensing and existing plot data on forest loss to 1) explore whether relationships between forest loss and livelihood interventions are visible/exist. Secondly, ecological and social science fieldwork in a tropical forest location of high livelihood intervention (e.g. East Usambara mountains, Tanzania) will be conducted to 2) explore emergent insights generated from the meta-analysis, 3) investigate the effectiveness of different interventions in reducing deforestation and mitigating climate change, and 4) investigate the impact of interactions between different interventions in reducing deforestation and improving livelihoods. Ecological fieldwork is likely to include vegetation surveys in previously established plots, whilst social science fieldwork is likely to involve interviews with project developers and implementers and participatory research (household surveys, focus group work) with intervention recipients.

Supervisory arrangements: The supervisory team draws together complementary but different expertise relating to tropical forest ecosystems – rural livelihoods (Sallu), forest ecosystems (Lewis) and forest-climate interactions (Spracklen) – creating opportunities to harness existing knowledge and data, whilst developing new methodological approaches and insights to push forward new thinking in this area. The student will benefit from engagement across the School of Earth and Environment (particularly the Sustainability Research Institute and Institute of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences) and the School of Geography. Supervisors are all members of Leeds Ecosystem, Atmosphere and Forests Centre (LEAF) – a new interdisciplinary centre established to link researchers across schools and faculties, strengthen existing collaborations and encourage new inter-departmental partnerships, establishing the University of Leeds as a leading national centre in forest research. This PhD aligns with this new Centre.

The PhD will also benefit from active partnerships, research projects and research networks of supervisors in Tanzania and beyond, enhancing potential for research and development impact. "

http://www.nercdtp.leeds.ac.uk/projects/index.php?id=522