Earth System Governance in Africa: knowledge and capacity needs

Habtezion, Senay; Adelekan, Ibidun; Aiyede, Emmanuel Remi; Biermann, Frank; Fubara, Margaret; Gordon, Chris; Gyekye, Kwabena Awere; Kasimbazi, Emmanuel; Kibugi, Robert; Lawson, Elaine; Mensah, Adelina; Mubaya, Chipo Plaxedes; Olorunfemi, Felix; Paterson, Alexander; Tadesse, Debay; Usman, Raheem; Zondervan, Ruben

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2015.06.009

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Embracing and acknowledging the importance of these other forms of knowledge opens the possibility of finding solutions that tackle current soil erosion problems and build more sustainable communities. This approach creates new opportunities to balance the relationship between the environment, society and the economy at multiple spatial levels, and to support enhanced community and regional resilience to future resource challenges [15][16][17]. Building on this philosophy, this paper focusses on the need for policy integration and action between community and regional spatial levels.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Mind the Gap’: Reconnecting Local Actions and Multi-Level Policies to Bridge the Governance Gap. An Example of Soil Erosion Action from East Africa

Kelly

Wynants

Nasseri

et al. 2020

Land

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Achieving change to address soil erosion has been a global yet elusive goal for decades. Efforts to implement effective solutions have often fallen short due to a lack of sustained, context-appropriate and multi-disciplinary engagement with the problem. Issues include prevalence of short-term funding for ‘quick-fix’ solutions; a lack of nuanced understandings of institutional, socio-economic or cultural drivers of erosion problems; little community engagement in design and testing solutions; and, critically, a lack of traction in integrating locally designed solutions into policy and institutional processes. This paper focusses on the latter issue of local action for policy integration, drawing on experiences from a Tanzanian context to highlight the practical and institutional disjuncts that exist; and the governance challenges that can hamper efforts to address and build resilience to soil erosion. By understanding context-specific governance processes, and joining them with realistic, locally designed actions, positive change has occurred, strengthening local-regional resilience to complex and seemingly intractable soil erosion challenges.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Mind the Gap’: Reconnecting Local Actions and Multi-Level Policies to Bridge the Governance Gap. An Example of Soil Erosion Action from East Africa

Kelly

Wynants

Nasseri

et al. 2020

Land

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“…In the same vein as these principles, research points to a need for meaningful stakeholder inclusion in socialecological restoration projects (Baker et al 2014), and suggests that effective projects take place at small, community scales (Maynard 2013, Habtezion et al 2015. At the same time, globally conceived programs like the Bonn Challenge are concerned with speed and scale to respond to urgent global crises, such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and degradation of the world's landscapes (Temperton et al 2019).…”

Section: Restoration Recap •mentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Approaches to Restoration and Their Implications for Social Inclusion

Sigman¹,

Elias²

2021

Ecological Rest.

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Building on the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade advances global restoration on an unprecedented scale. Research increasingly points to the need for greater social inclusion in restoration projects, yet the approaches that favor such inclusion remain opaque in practice. In this paper, we identify three restoration approaches that figure in the international agenda and analyze these through the lens of social inclusion. We argue that: (1) restoration aimed at bringing ecosystems back to a previous state, or "return" restoration, favors natural science at the landscape scale over social inclusion at the community scale; (2) restoration seeking to recreate functional ecosystems in locations away from where the degradation has occurred, or "reorganization" restoration, fails to adequately address historical inequities and perpetuates legacies of exploitation; and (3) "resilience" oriented restoration is promising but remains theoretical, and risks instrumentalizing marginalized communities and their lands as experimental sites for restoration. Though both "return" and "reorganize" restoration face substantial criticism, these approaches continue to play a central role in the major paradigms and practices that enliven the global restoration agenda. To improve prospects for social inclusion in the global restoration movement, we advance that the movement must evolve beyond productivity-based inclusion schemes and address the role that international initiatives play in perpetuating systems of exploitation. Finally, we argue that "resilience" restoration offers the most promising pathway towards meaningful social inclusion when it can empower community members to participate in restoration as agents of change and co-experimenters.

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“…state and non-state) (Paterson and P-Laberge, 2018). In terms of outcomes, political economy analysis can also shed light on the shaping and allocation of risk and opportunity (Gotham 2016;Nightingale 2017;Mallin 2018). It provides insights into how and why trade-offs are made between competing goals, denoting which issues and groups emerge as winners or losers (Sovacool et al 2015;Sovacool and Linnér 2015;Sovacool et al 2017).…”

Section: Political Factors and Their Role In Climate Change Adaptatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of national climate adaptation agendas in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia: the role of national leadership and international donors

et al. 2020

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In this paper, we use an inductive approach and longitudinal analysis to explore political influences on the emergence and evolution of climate change adaptation policy and planning at national level, as well as the institutions within which it is embedded, for three countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia). Data collection involved quantitative and qualitative methods applied over a 6-year period from 2012 to 2017. This included a survey of 103 government staff (20 in Malawi, 29 in Tanzania and 54 in Zambia) and 242 interviews (106 in Malawi, 86 in Tanzania and 50 in Zambia) with a wide range of stakeholders, many of whom were interviewed multiple times over the study period, together with content analysis of relevant policy and programme documents. Whilst the climate adaptation agenda emerged in all three countries around 2007–2009, associated with multilateral funding initiatives, the rate and nature of progress has varied—until roughly 2015 when, for different reasons, momentum slowed. We find differences between the countries in terms of specifics of how they operated, but roles of two factors in common emerge in the evolution of the climate change adaptation agendas: national leadership and allied political priorities, and the role of additional funding provided by donors. These influences lead to changes in the policy and institutional frameworks for addressing climate change, as well as in the emphasis placed on climate change adaptation. By examining the different ways through which ideas, power and resources converge and by learning from the specific configurations in the country examples, we identify opportunities to address existing barriers to action and thus present implications that enable more effective adaptation planning in other countries. We show that more socially just and inclusive national climate adaptation planning requires a critical approach to understanding these configurations of power and politics.

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Earth System Governance in Africa: knowledge and capacity needs

Cited by 17 publications

References 16 publications

‘Mind the Gap’: Reconnecting Local Actions and Multi-Level Policies to Bridge the Governance Gap. An Example of Soil Erosion Action from East Africa

‘Mind the Gap’: Reconnecting Local Actions and Multi-Level Policies to Bridge the Governance Gap. An Example of Soil Erosion Action from East Africa

Three Approaches to Restoration and Their Implications for Social Inclusion

Evolution of national climate adaptation agendas in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia: the role of national leadership and international donors

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