Dataset Information

Mapping and assessing ecosystem services for sustainable policy and decision-making in Eritrea.

ABSTRACT: The mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES) is key to inform sustainable policy and decision-making at national and sub-national levels. Responding to the paucity of research in sub-Saharan Africa, we conduct a pilot study for Eritrea that aims to map and assess the temporal dynamics of key ecosystems and their services. We reviewed policy and legal documents, analyzed land cover changes and estimated the potential for ecosystem services supply through an expert-based matrix approach. Our results showed that from 2015 to 2019, the potential supply of the ecosystem services analyzed (e.g., crop provisioning, water supply and recreation) increased, with the exception of wood supply. Overall, our study presents policy-relevant insights as to where to conserve, develop, or restore ecosystem services supply in Eritrea. Our approach is transferable to similar data scarce contexts and can thereby support policies toward more sustainable land development for people and nature.

SUBMITTER: Adem Esmail B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10024525 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mapping and assessing ecosystem services for sustainable policy and decision-making in Eritrea.

Adem Esmail Blal B Cortinovis Chiara C Wang Jingxia J Geneletti Davide D Albert Christian C

Ambio 20230318 6

The mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services (MAES) is key to inform sustainable policy and decision-making at national and sub-national levels. Responding to the paucity of research in sub-Saharan Africa, we conduct a pilot study for Eritrea that aims to map and assess the temporal dynamics of key ecosystems and their services. We reviewed policy and legal documents, analyzed land cover changes and estimated the potential for ecosystem services supply through an expert-based matr ...[more]

PMID: 36933120

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Project description:The ecosystem services (ES) concept has emerged and spread widely recently, to enhance the importance of preserving ecosystems through global change in order to maintain their benefits for human well-being. Numerous studies consider various dimensions of the interactions between ecosystems and land use via ES, but integrated research addressing the complete feedback loop between biodiversity, ES and land use has remained mostly theoretical. Few studies consider feedbacks from ecosystems to land use systems through ES, exploring how ES are taken into account in land management decisions. To fill this gap, we carried out a role-playing game to explore how ES cognition mediates feedbacks from environmental change on farmers' behaviors in a mountain grassland system. On a close to real landscape game board, farmers were faced with changes in ES under climatic and socio-economic scenarios and prompted to plan for the future and to take land management decisions as they deemed necessary. The outcomes of role-playing game were complemented with additional agronomic and ecological data from interviews and fieldwork. The effects of changes in ES on decision were mainly direct, i.e. not affecting knowledge and values, when they constituted situations with which farmers were accustomed. For example, a reduction of forage quantity following droughts led farmers to shift from mowing to grazing. Sometimes, ES cognitions were affected by ES changes or by external factors, leading to an indirect feedback. This happened when fertilization was stopped after farmers learned that it was inefficient in a drought context. Farmers' behaviors did not always reflect their attitudes towards ES because other factors including topographic constraints, social value of farming or farmer individual and household characteristics also influenced land-management decisions. Those results demonstrated the interest to take into account the complete feedback loop between ES and land management decisions to favor more sustainable ES management.

Dataset Information

Mapping and assessing ecosystem services for sustainable policy and decision-making in Eritrea.

Publications

Mapping and assessing ecosystem services for sustainable policy and decision-making in Eritrea.

Similar Datasets

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