Socio-ecological resilience in the face of global environmental change in heterogeneous landscapes – building a common platform for understanding and action (SGP-HW 090)

Project information

Executive Summary

We propose the construction of a shared platform to understand socio-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity in the face of rapid large-scale environmental change. This will include the co-production, between scientists and a wide range of other stakeholders, of a shared framework, a set of research questions and a detailed path for their implementation in empirical research, practice and policy. The specific context will be ecologically and socially heterogeneous seasonally-dry forests of South America, subjected to rapid change mainly due to global climatic, ecological and social drivers. To that end, we have assembled a network involving social, natural and interdisciplinary scientists from 8 academic institutions in 4 countries, and >15 governmental and non-state stakeholders.

During the 2-yr Small Grant period, we propose to nurture the network by carrying out multi-stakeholder workshops in 4 different seasonally-dry forest locations of Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. These workshops will contribute to the co-construction of a shared knowledge platform and the identification, through a process of co-design with multiple stakeholders, of key issues and questions relating to resilience and adaptive capacity to global change. These outcomes will be the pillars of a second, longer-term larger-budget project, involving a larger number of scientists, stakeholders and territories, and aimed at empirically testing the co-designed questions resulting from the Small Grant project. Added short-term outcomes will be scientific and multi-sectoral synthesis products on ecological and social resilience, and on the practice of transdisciplinary co-design.

Results

This project is building a shared platform to understand socio-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity in the face of rapid large-scale environmental change. This will include the co-production, between scientists and a wide range of other stakeholders, of a shared framework, a set of research questions and a detailed path for their implementation in empirical research, practice and policy.

The science being carried out by the team is intended to be relevant to different stakeholders, such as decision-makers in the different governmental bodies, as well as medium- and large-scale agricultural producers, small-scale diversified producer, peasants and farmers, and different civil society organizations working on human and natural wellbeing in the territories. Through the project’s stakeholder workshops, the PIs have already started engaging stakeholders who, to a large extent, don’t often find themselves together at the table.

Researchers have issued a climatology baseline report for a region of Argentina including Cordoba and Copo; similar reports being developed for other regions.

Outreach

Investigators

Principal Investigator

Argentina:

Sandra Diaz, IMBIV (CONICET- UNC)
E-mail: sandra.diaz@unc.edu.ar

Co-Principal Investigators (co-PI)

Argentina

Daniel M. Cáceres, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
dcaceres@agro.unc.edu.ar

Matías Mastrángelo, Unidad Integrada Balcarce (INTA - UNMdP - CONICET)
mastrangelo.matias@inta.gob.ar, matimastra@gmail.com

Natalia Pérez Harguindeguy, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
perez.h.natalia@gmail.com

Carolina Vera, Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA) / Universidad de Buenos Aires - CONICET
carolina@cima.fcen.uba.ar

Brazil

Pedro H. S. Brancalion, Universidade de São Paulo
pedrob@usp.br

Canada

Yann le Polain de Waroux, Institute for the Study of International Development & Department of Geography, McGill University
yann.lepolaindewaroux@mcgill.ca

Colombia

Olga L. Hernández-Manrique, Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt
ohernandez@humboldt.org.co

Students