HSD: The Role of Natural Resources in Mitigating Political, Environmental, and Health Shocks to Extremely Poor Households in Southeastern Africa

Woodwell Climate Research Center, Inc., Falmouth MA

Investigators

Abstract

The specter of extreme poverty haunts the process of economic development. More than a billion people, some 20 percent of the world population, live on less than one dollar a day; most of them in rural conditions where natural resources provide a tenuous but vital lifeline. In conditions of extreme poverty, disruptions to the natural resource lifeline are acute, whether from shocks associated with political factors like wars or poor governance, environmental factors like drought or floods, or health-related factors like HIV or malaria. The lack of financial or other buffers exaggerates the effects of system shocks and changes household survival strategies. In this research project, the investigators hypothesize that the fundamental design and valuation of protected areas can be updated to mitigate the effects of these systems shocks. This project will integrate health, climate change, ecology, remote sensing, history and economics to develop the scenarios required to accurately forecast future resource use. Located in two study sites in Central Mozambique and Western Uganda, the research will be undertaken in some of the most vulnerable and resource-dependent societies on earth. The interdisciplinary nature of the research will involve several different methods of analysis: (1) a reconstruction of resource use history during times of stress and mapping temporary migration patterns; (2) an economic analysis of the role and value of natural resources in the household strategies and the effect of resource shocks to this strategy; and (3) a spatial analysis of the location and likelihood of resource use based on current conditions and the simulation of scenarios based on government, health, climate and economic changes. The investigators expect to extend traditional static mapping that simply locates poverty and other similar conditions by creating a dynamic model that will assess changes in population and resource demands over time. This research will bring new light to strategic resource use planning and protection by basing it on a convergence of perception, empirical analysis, and forecasted conditions. Forecasting resource demands under different shocks, providing accurate valuation of those resources, and tying it together in a new protected area paradigm in which set aside value includes possible temporary access is expected to encourage the long-term economic viability of resource protection. The research will develop a means to link non-market household activities with resource value. It therefore should facilitate the development of effective protected-area strategies and identify alternative investments that may reduce the demand for park resources. A focus on U.S. graduate and undergraduate education and training will be complimented with an emphasis on local counterpart researcher involvement. The results and raw data will be made widely available to government and international agencies. An award resulting from the FY 2006 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.