• Energy Research

SUMMARYThis article discusses how decentralisation policies are enacted in the planning and implementation of natural resource management interventions in rural Ethiopia. A key element of decentralisation policy is the emphasis on greater participation by local communities. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with government staff and farmers, this paper illustrates how different actors perceive and implement national policy and how these actions affect the longer‐term sustainability of land management interventions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractAn increasing number of research programs seek to support adaptation to climate change through the engagement of large‐scale transdisciplinary networks that span countries and continents. While transdisciplinary research processes have been a topic of reflection, practice, and refinement for some time, these trends now mean that the global change research community needs to reflect and learn how to pursue collaborative research on a large scale. This paper shares insights from a seven‐year climate change adaptation research program that supports collaboration between more than 450 researchers and practitioners across four consortia and 17 countries. The experience confirms the importance of attention to careful design for transdisciplinary collaboration, but also highlights that this alone is not enough. The success of well‐designed transdisciplinary research processes is also strongly influenced by relational and systemic features of collaborative relationships. Relational features include interpersonal trust, mutual respect, and leadership styles, while systemic features include legal partnership agreements, power asymmetries between partners, and institutional values and cultures. In the new arena of large‐scale collaborative science efforts, enablers of transdisciplinary collaboration include dedicated project coordinators, leaders at multiple levels, and the availability of small amounts of flexible funds to enable nimble responses to opportunities and unexpected collaborations.

This paper synthesizes what is known about the physical and biophysical impacts of climate change and their consequences for societies and development under different levels of global warming in Central Asia. Projections show mean temperatures increasing by up to 6.5 °C compared to pre-industrial by the end of this century across the region. Associated physical impacts include altered precipitation regimes, more frequent heat extremes and increasing aridity. Increasing rates of glacial and snow melt could lead to greater river runoff, but also to greater seasonality of runoff in the short term and to decreasing water availability in the medium term to long term. These changes have negative implications for the water availability in the region and for conflicting water demands between agriculture and hydropower. Climate change could mostly decrease crop yields, challenging food security, but in more northern regions there could also be positive effects. Studies on climate change impacts on energy systems are scarce and yield conflicting results, but the more regional study shows decreasing prospects for hydropower. The health of the population is already sensitive to heat extremes and is projected to be exposed to more frequent and prolonged heat waves in the future, among other potential health impacts. While the evidence for a link between climate and migration is weak, the rural-to-urban migration can be especially expected to intensify. The paper concludes that Central Asia will be severely affected by climate change even if the global mean temperature increase is limited to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, due to the potential for impacts to occur simultaneously and compound one another as well as interactions with wider development challenges, while risks will be strongly amplified if this threshold is crossed.

La réalité du changement climatique mondial exige de nouvelles approches scientifiques qui reflètent les échelles auxquelles les changements sont susceptibles de se produire et les nouvelles formes de connaissances nécessaires pour influencer positivement les politiques visant à soutenir les populations vulnérables. Nous examinons certaines des opportunités et des défis présentés par un projet de recherche collaboratif et transdisciplinaire sur l'adaptation au changement climatique en Afrique et en Asie qui a utilisé une approche de point chaud. Un effort à grande échelle pour développer des bases de référence appropriées a été un défi clé au début du programme, tout comme la nécessité de développer des méthodologies innovantes pour permettre aux chercheurs de travailler à des échelles spatiales appropriées. Les efforts visant à faire correspondre la recherche aux échelles biophysiques auxquelles le changement se produit doivent être conscients de l'inadéquation qui peut se développer entre ces échelles régionales et les échelles de gouvernance auxquelles les décisions sont prises. La realidad del cambio climático global exige enfoques novedosos de la ciencia que reflejen las escalas en las que es probable que ocurran los cambios y las nuevas formas de conocimiento necesarias para influir positivamente en las políticas para apoyar a las poblaciones vulnerables. Examinamos algunas de las oportunidades y desafíos presentados por un proyecto de investigación colaborativo y transdisciplinario sobre la adaptación al cambio climático en África y Asia que utilizó un enfoque de puntos críticos. Un esfuerzo a gran escala para desarrollar líneas de base apropiadas fue un desafío clave al comienzo del programa, al igual que la necesidad de desarrollar metodologías innovadoras para permitir a los investigadores trabajar a escalas espaciales apropiadas. Los esfuerzos para hacer coincidir la investigación con las escalas biofísicas en las que se produce el cambio deben ser conscientes del desajuste que puede desarrollarse entre estas escalas regionales y las escalas de gobernanza en las que se toman las decisiones. The reality of global climate change demands novel approaches to science that are reflective of the scales at which changes are likely to occur, and of the new forms of knowledge required to positively influence policy to support vulnerable populations. We examine some of the opportunities and challenges presented by a collaborative, transdisciplinary research project on climate change adaptation in Africa and Asia that utilized a hotspot approach. A large-scale effort to develop appropriate baselines was a key challenge at the outset of the program, as was the need to develop innovative methodologies to enable researchers to work at appropriate spatial scales. Efforts to match research to the biophysical scales at which change occurs need to be aware of the mismatch that can develop between these regional scales and the governance scales at which decisions are made. يتطلب واقع تغير المناخ العالمي مقاربات جديدة للعلوم تعكس المقاييس التي من المحتمل أن تحدث فيها التغييرات، والأشكال الجديدة من المعرفة المطلوبة للتأثير بشكل إيجابي على السياسة لدعم السكان الضعفاء. ندرس بعض الفرص والتحديات التي يطرحها مشروع بحثي تعاوني متعدد التخصصات بشأن التكيف مع تغير المناخ في أفريقيا وآسيا استخدم نهج النقاط الساخنة. كان الجهد الواسع النطاق لتطوير خطوط الأساس المناسبة تحديًا رئيسيًا في بداية البرنامج، وكذلك الحاجة إلى تطوير منهجيات مبتكرة لتمكين الباحثين من العمل على نطاقات مكانية مناسبة. يجب أن تكون الجهود المبذولة لمطابقة البحث مع المقاييس الفيزيائية الحيوية التي يحدث فيها التغيير على دراية بعدم التطابق الذي يمكن أن يتطور بين هذه المقاييس الإقليمية ومقاييس الحوكمة التي يتم فيها اتخاذ القرارات.

The sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) debate, partly rooted in discussions over the Green Revolution, was developed in the 1990s in the context of smallholder agriculture in Africa. In many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, production is still largely rainfed, with the prevalence of significant yield gaps and rapid environmental degradation. Projections indicate that climate and demographic changes will further intensify the competition for freshwater resources. Currently, SAI is centered around predominantly rain-fed agricultural systems, often at a farm and plot scales. There has been increased attention to the improved role of agricultural water management (AWM) to address the daunting challenges of climate change, land degradation and food and nutritional insecurity in SSA. Nonetheless, the supporting frameworks and tools remain limited and do not connect the sustainability assessment and the development of intensification pathways (SIP) along multiple scales of the rainfed irrigation continuum. This paper reviews the gaps in concepts and practices of SAI and suggests a methodological framework to design context-specific and water-centered SIP for the SSA region. Accordingly, the proposed methodological framework demonstrates: (a) how to couple sustainability assessment methods to participatory SIPs design and adaptive management approach; (b) how contextualized sustainability domains and indicators can help in AWM centered SIP development; (c) the approaches to handle multiple scales and water-related indicators, the heterogeneity of biophysical and social settings when tailoring technology options to local contexts; and (d) the principles which enable the SIP designs to enable synergies and complementarities of SAI measures to reinforce the rainfed-irrigation continuum. This methodological framework allows researchers to integrate the sustainability assessment and SIP design, and guides policymakers and practitioners in planning, implementing and monitoring SAI initiatives (e.g., Framework for Irrigation Development and Agricultural Water Management in Africa) across multiple scales.

Ethiopia has decades of experience in implementing land and water management interventions. The overarching objectives of this review were to synthesize evidences on the impact of implementation of land and water management practices on agricultural landscapes in Ethiopia and to evaluate the use of adaptive management (AM) approaches as a tool to manage uncertainties. We explored how elements of the structures and functions of landscapes have been transformed, and how the components of AM, such as structured decision-making and learning processes, have been applied. Despite numerous environmental and economic benefits of land and water management interventions in Ethiopia, this review revealed gaps in AM approaches. These include: (i) inadequate evidence-based contextualization of interventions, (ii) lack of monitoring of bio-physical and socioeconomic processes and changes post implementation, (iii) lack of trade-off analyses, and (iv) inadequacy of local community engagement and provision of feedback. Given the many uncertainties we must deal with, future investment in AM approaches tailored to the needs and context would help to achieve the goals of sustainable agricultural landscape transformation. The success depends, among other things, on the ability to learn from the knowledge generated and apply the learning as implementation evolves

While adaptation to climate change has emerged as a key area of development research, little is known about the enablers and constraints to implementing adaptation-oriented frameworks for research ...