Botswana - Namibia

Currently Proposed Research Projects

 

Dr. Child's NORAD Presentation - Oct06

 

Botswana - Namibia

Funding for an initial field visit ahs been obtained for Summer 2007, additional funding is also to be requested along similar research threads. Currently involved:

Faculty: Dr. Jane Southworth, Dr. Brian Child, Dr. Grenville Barnes, Dr. Michael Binford

Students: Cerian Gibbes, Bill Kanapaux, Andrea Gaughan (who all provided photo's located above - thanks)

1. Brief description of and rationale for the research and education project

The complex interaction between humans and the environment is gaining increasing attention from many different disciplines.  We propose to examine such complex systems in terms of changes in land use, land cover, biodiversity and social and economic systems, by focusing on local communities in southern Africa that are shifting from an extractive (cattle) economy to one that promotes biodiversity and wildlife conservation. This research addresses the complex interactions between land/resource rights, political and economic choices (governance), and the environment.  We take advantage of the changes wrought by innovative and devolutionary policy in Southern Africa to investigate how and why Social-Ecological-Systems (SESs) change in different directions. Through this research we seek to gain a better understanding of the human-environment relationship in an area where there is a strong interdependence between human and environmental systems. Southern Africa is globally recognized for innovative conservation and land use options that promote the value of wildlife as a strategy to maintain or reconvert land from agriculture and livestock to multi-species wild systems.  With a focus on dryland savannas in the emerging KAZA (Kavango-Zambezi) Trans-frontier Conservation Area, the prime objective of this proposal is to measure the ecological footprint with regards to biodiversity, and ecosystem change, resilience and sustainability of land uses based on wild and domestic herbivores.  Taking advantage of the many cutting-edge community conservation projects and the related expertise in this region, a secondary objective is to study the economic drivers of land use change and to evaluate the effects of institutions (such as taxes and subsidies) and the quality of governance regimes on incentive structures.  More specifically we will seek to:

• Understand the role of protected areas in and the dynamics of social-ecological systems (SES)
• Test resilience theory and its potential application. In particular (a) what makes a SES in this region more resilient or innovative, and (b) under what conditions does a SES transform from a state of perpetual poverty and risk of environmental degradation into an economically and socially more productive form?
• What shifts have occurred in the composition and amount of herbivore biomass, and how is this correlated with changes in habitat structure and biodiversity (e.g. birds)?
• Are these changes simplifying ecosystems, and is this affecting the productivity and sustainability of the plants and animals?
• With possible implications for regional climate change, is there a significant in the way wildlife and livestock economies affecting landscape surface temperatures?

Millions of Africans live in needless poverty and political deprivation.  In the terminology of resilience theory, they are locked into social ecological systems (SES) with deep basins of attraction, from which they are unlikely to emerge (Walker et al, 2004): poverty is endemic and environmental degradation a daily reality. A hotly debated question is whether the savannas of Africa are being irreversibly degraded by heavy livestock pressure (Abel and Blackie, 1989; Schoones, 1994).  Using field data from the 1960s (Child G 1968) aerial photography of corresponding dates, and satellite remote sensing from 1975 onwards, we will develop a methodology to test this assumption.  Land cover is a function of vegetation type, amount, structure and amount of soil exposed, which in turn results in different surface albedo values (reflectivity) and hence changes the surface energy balance, shifting local scale climates and potentially with longer term effects on the regional climate. If degradation is in fact as extensive as we believe it may be, this has implications for regional climate change in an area where droughts can be economically and environmentally devastating.  There is also much emphasis globally on creating parks, and a debate about the effectiveness of community and private parks (Child, 2004). 
Our methodology will draw on the theory and concepts developed in the resilience literature (e.g. Gunderson and Holling 2002) which recognizes the need to focus on social-ecological systems (SES) as one integrated holistic system. Resilient SES maintain their fundamental identity in the face of external shocks. In our context, shocks may be droughts, policy changes or devolution in governance. Data on land and resource rights will be obtained from official government cadastral records and validated through interviews with community leaders.
The study area overlaps the ecotone between the bushland savannas species of southern Africa and mammals like springbok, gemsbok and hartebeest adapted to the drier Kalahari.  The diversity of large mammal species (some 38 species, jackal-sized or larger, cf Smithers) equals or exceeds anywhere else on earth, but is characterized by seasonal and stochastic movement because water is the limiting factor and rainfall is low and highly variable.   Being generally too dry for arable farming, economic activity depends on the use of large herbivores to harvest variable and patchy vegetation.  This area is split by a major barrier in the form of a disease-control cordon fence.  To the north, wildlife roams relatively freely over a vast area through a mosaic of community and state protected areas.  To the south, the landscape connectivity has been disrupted by fencing and cattle posts (i.e. semi-privately owned boreholes), and over 90% of the large mammal biomass now comprises livestock (Griffen, 1999).  Livestock have not co-evolved with these ecosystems, having been introduced no more than 1,000 and perhaps as recently as 300 years ago.  Preliminary fieldwork suggests that both ecosystems are highly stressed, but for different reasons, providing a unique opportunity to study the effects of species mix, stocking rates and connectivity on ecosystem productivity and biodiversity.
  In the north, the elephant populations were extremely low for recorded history, but have expanded at 5-7% per annum since about 1950.  There are now some 186,000 elephants in this area, almost half of the total surviving African elephant population (460,000 animals) (Blanc, et al, 2003).  Concerns about their ecological impact led to heavy culling in Zimbabwe in the 1980s (Child, 1995).  Preliminary field work shows extensive vegetation change along the Chobe river frontage (Child, 1967), with large elephant populations progressively moving west and north along the Linyanti and Kwandu river systems over the next 40 years.  Large numbers only arrived along the Kwandu in Namibia in the last five years, and few have yet moved further north into Angola and Namibia.  Using this gradation in density and time, we expect to be able to correlate elephant density with changes in biodiversity. 
Multiple date (1975-2006) Landsat imagery, MSS, TM and ETM+ (along with aerial photography (1930-70’s) and some MODIS and ASTER image products for 2000-2006 only) will form the basis of the remotely sensed database. In addition to traditional classification techniques (which we feel will have limited applications in this gradient type landscape), we will use a suite of continuous indices: NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), surface temperatures and other derived variables linking directly to type and structure of the vegetation. NDVI and similar indices represent a continuous variable related to productivity of land cover or vegetation biomass, which varies both in space and time. The use of such continuous variables contrasts with more traditional classification schemes, where each pixel (or spatial unit) is represented by a single categorical value (Lambin 1999). In general, the incorporation of both spatial and spectral information into land-cover change analyses greatly improves the amount of information that is obtained (Southworth et al., 2004). For example, Lambin and Strahler (1994) found that changes in the spatial extent are more likely to reveal longer-lasting and longer-term land-cover changes, while spectral differences are more sensitive to shorter-term fluctuations e.g., inter-annual variability in climatic conditions. A temporal analysis will be conducted by subtracting each image pair of dates across time steps. Results across space and time can then be modeled and patterns established.
With the majority of this proposal aimed at measuring the effects of land use change (and, specifically large number of elephant and cattle, respectively) on biodiversity, we will nevertheless initiate an assessment of the social and economic factors that may be driving these changes.  Preliminary work suggests that wildlife has a comparative economic advantage in dryland savannas (Child, 1988; Jansen et al, 1991).  However, this advantage only manifests itself in landholder incentives where the rights to use and benefit from wildlife are devolved, where restrictions on using wildlife commercially or efficiently are removed, and where incentives to adopt land uses based on wild species are not overwhelmed by policies and payments that ‘subsidize’ agricultural practices, including open-access property regimes.  These relationships and factors are illustrated in figure 2.
Using standard social science methodology, we propose to identify and address a complex set of variables including participation, power and performance by working closely with communities. Individual questionnaires and focus group exercises will be use to collect, validate and explain underlying cause-effect relationships in the data.  We will limit the scope of this study to four communities in the KAZA area, but achieve broader goals by collaborating intensively with a parallel initiative (co-led by Child B through SASUSG) that involves young professionals at a number of sites in six countries in the region. 
If we are to understand and manage the causes and consequences of anthropogenic effects on landscapes, it is imperative that we develop approaches to understanding spatial and temporal variation, the processes that produce the patterns that we observe, and the ways in which pattern-process relationships change with scale across both the physical and social dynamics. Remote sensing has traditionally been considered an ideal tool for describing landscape change and patterns and will also be used here to link to social variables. Creating a useable, defendable, interdisciplinary, spatially explicit methodology for such studies is of the highest importance.
      We will combine the spatial data into a GIS with multiple layers for administrative boundaries, various land tenure parcels, roads and rivers, social and agricultural data, and satellite and vegetation data. The GIS will also include separate layers for time series of data. This will allow for analysis of changes in livelihood strategies, land tenure, and land cover in a spatially explicit fashion, in order to see if changes are localized, generalized, or diffusing. A GIS also allows for spatially explicit treatment of network connections, both within and between the socioeconomic, tenure, and biophysical data layers. We will map nodes, connections, and exchanges in order to evaluate spatially the impact of new infrastructure on livelihood strategies (such as by changes in market links), as well as on land cover (as due to new clearing or degradation), and tenure (as through landowner turnover, or parcel subdivision or agglomeration).
In general, integration will be achieved through careful relationship-building and maintenance, by allowing real-life ecological, economic and governance challenges to focus the research questions, by geo-referencing data, and by establishing standardized databases.  Beyond the purpose of this specific project, we expect that this exercise will test (and contribute to) modules that park and community landholders can use to monitor ecosystems, economics and governance.   A regional adaptive monitoring and management system called MOMS (Management Orientated Monitoring System) is already emerging, and over the long term (10-20 years) may be invaluable for scholarship into socio-ecological systems.

2. Description of international research and education collaboration and how it is innovative
From a field base in the study area, research on ecosystem dynamics and human systems will be conducted, often in partnership with park officials and regional professionals.  UF faculty will facilitate graduates students and young African professionals (from parallel initiatives) to use standard methods allowing cross-site comparisons.  This is innovative and advantageous is several ways:  the research integrates multiple disciplines by addressing real world problems; academics and students work directly with a highly experienced and world-renowned network of scholar-practitioners, communities and conservation initiatives; and field practitioners gain access to quality scholarship in support of their programs
Southern Africa’s success stems, to a large degree, from the deliberate incorporation of regional scholarship into park and community conservation, with the express purpose of providing informed but instructive criticism.  The weakening of southern African scholarship, much of which was linked to the University of Zimbabwe, threatens the ability of these programs to adapt to emerging ecological, economic and governance challenges.  It also provides a legitimate opportunity for the unique inter-disciplinary and international strengths of the University of Florida’s conservation-related programs to build a synergistic partnership in southern Africa.  One of the PIs, Brian Child, is deeply embedded into this network of scholar practitioners, having spent twenty years implementing incentive-led conservation in southern Africa, including leading the renowned CAMPFIRE program in Zimbabwe, and chairing IUCN’s influential Southern African Sustainable Use Specialist Group.
This project is expected to create long term collaboration, and to put in place the monitoring and adaptive management necessary to understand the complexity of SES. Our skills in economics, institutional economics, property rights, ecology and remote sensing will enable us to develop innovative, integrated, interdisciplinary methods for understanding complex socio-ecological systems and their effects on poverty (political and economic) and environmental sustainability.  We will contribute to the University of Florida’s comparative advantage in inter-disciplinary conservation/development. We have direct links with several donors (World Bank, UNDP, USAID, Danida, NORAD) who are debating land use and governance models (as well as government agencies and NGOs) and see an opportunity to insert quality scholarship into these major investments.  We have relationships with these communities and programs going back more than a decade, and can easily expand the program into at least five southern African countries where we have similar relationships using our linkages with IUCN Southern African Sustainable Use Specialist Group (which the PI currently chairs) and NGOs including WWF and AWF.

3. Unique strengths of the international collaborators and what resources will be provided by them
Southern Africa’s innovative conservation paradigm, including early adoption of the ecosystem approach and community conservation, has given rise to a vast grey and oral scholarship that is largely ignored by international scholars (Barrow and Murphree, 2000).  This empirical successes in ‘sustainable use’, coupled with the conceptual models developed by these “scholar practioners” to guide community and private conservation policy and practice, has nevertheless been influential in shifting the global conservation narrative (Hutton and Dickson, 2000) influencing the narrative of the Convention on Biological Diversity, IUCN’s various resolutions on sustainable use, and even CITES’s operational procedures.    This partnership will provide us with access to a quasi-experimental opportunity to assess biodiversity and sustainability; unique linkages to renowned community conservation programmes; and is expected to create scholarly synergy through the intersection of academic and practioner knowledge networks. 

4. What international experiences will be provided to U.S. students and post-docs at the foreign sites(s)
Graduate students will work closely with cutting-edge community conservation projects and will gain access to some of southern Africa’s most spectacular wildlife parks.  Linkages to highly experienced scholar practioners, particularly through IUCN-SASUSG, will provide opportunities for mentorship, learning and practical experience.  The PI has particular strengths in managing such complex relationships, and will rain graduate students to develop cross-cultural research relationships.  We will team American graduates with young African professionals, developing capacity in cross-cultural learning and cooperation. Post doctoral researchers will be fully integrated into the research and educational components of this project.

 

Research Narrative