Final Report Summary - PRACTICE (Prevention and restoration actions to combat desertification. An integrated assessment)
Responding to desertification by improving the efficiency of land management represents a crucial step towards social welfare in drylands. While science has made noticeable progress in aiding our understanding of the drivers and processes of desertification, local adoption of good practices, the exchange of experience and knowledge, and the incorporation of the human dimension in the solutions often remain limited, compromising the adoption of best practices in prevention and restoration efforts. There is an increasing demand for the development and implementation of appropriate assessment methods to measure progress on combating desertification. The adoption of best management practices requires a good use of the existing scientific and local knowledge, as well as improved understanding on the impacts of the strategies and techniques applied on the target socioecological systems. Both requirements can be met through the systematic and participatory evaluation of the actions applied and further dissemination of the results.
Approaches to the assessment and monitoring of dryland management range from those that focus on particular biophysical properties of the system, e.g. soil erosion, to those that emphasise socioeconomics, e.g. cost benefit analysis. In recent years, focus has shifted to socioecological assessment, which recognises the complex and dynamic relationships between humans and ecosystems. Particular challenges are the integration of biophysical and socioeconomic fields, the identification and selection of a set of indicators that capture key sustainability issues that are manageable and simple enough to be applied consistently and affordably in different regions over long periods of time, but also relevant for each specific ecological and socioeconomic context assessed, and the development of participatory approaches that integrate scientific and local knowledge, as well as the variety of stakeholder perspectives (refer to Bautista and Alloza, 2009). The participation of stakeholders and the incorporation of local knowledge in the assessment of environmental problems and potential solutions have been increasingly demanded by international institutions.
PRACTICE addressed these gaps by integrating evaluation of prevention and restoration practices and knowledge exchange in a process developed by both scientists and stakeholders in an iterative manner. The project gathered scientists and stakeholders grouped in 15 partners from Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America. The partnership included both natural and social scientists and a wide representation of stakeholders in each participant country.
The general objective of PRACTICE was to link scientific and technological advances and traditional knowledge with sound implementation, learning and adaptive management on prevention and restoration practices to combat desertification. The central goal of PRACTICE was to link science to society in order to share and transfer evaluation methods and practices to combat desertification. To pursue this goal, PRACTICE aimed:
1. to create an international platform of long-term monitoring sites (LTEM sites), aimed at supporting future synthetic analysis, improving the accessibility and use of long-term data and disseminating knowledge on best practices worldwide
2. to develop and implement participatory and integrated evaluation tools to assess prevention and restoration practices to combat desertification for croplands, rangelands and woodlands, considering the impacts on socioeconomic status, biodiversity and ecosystem services and documenting best practices
3. to develop education material and translational science strategies and implement innovative participatory approaches to link science to society, to share and transfer evaluation methods addressing and involving stakeholders at all levels.
We established a worldwide platform of LTEMs and an associated information system. The platform included an interactive PRACTICE website hosting the PRACTICE Netweb and a harmonised database on biophysical and socioeconomic data for the whole set of LTEMs. The platform of LTEM sites included 21 sites in croplands, rangelands, and woodlands affected by desertification worldwide. All sites were affected by one or several desertification drivers, such as overgrazing, unsustainable agricultural practices and recurrent forest fires. The prevention and restoration actions undertaken in the sites were related to soil conservation practices, management of salinisation-prone areas, sustainable grazing and range management, fire hazard management and ecosystem restoration.
We elaborated an integrated assessment protocol (IApro) for the evaluation of management actions through a participatory process. IAPro was based on key common indicators that represented key ecosystem services in drylands and site specific indicators identified by local stakeholders that were relevant to the particular context conditions. The project adopted an innovative bottom-up approach to select site specific socioecological indicators to be measured together with the common science driven indicators. IAPro was structured as a sequence of steps.
We also tested and implemented the IApro in the PRACTICE LTEM sites. The data for the selected indicators together with the collective weights assigned by the stakeholders were used as inputs to provide the outranking of the actions and synthesis of the indicators that contributed to the various outranking relations among the actions. Along the assessment process the local stakeholders made a preliminary, baseline evaluation of the actions and at the end of the process they made a collective re-evaluation of the actions once scientists presented them the results. This last step brought what scientists learned from the stakeholders back to them and brought the science to the stakeholders so that they could make a more informed assessment of the management actions through social learning. Overall, a clear distinction in the evaluation of actions was observed depending on the degree of dependence of local populations' economy on natural resources. Educational materials were produced in the framework of the participatory evaluation activities, in collaboration with the local stakeholders.
Best practices were assumed to dependent on tradeoffs between individual perspectives of stakeholders, in given socioenvironmental contexts, changing with time along with socioeconomic changes.
Sustainable management could benefit from participatory assessment methods that incorporated the knowledge and perspectives of scientists and the stakeholder community. Participatory assessments that promoted social learning had a great potential to increase adoption of good practices. Methods that resulted in social learning also resulted in engagement, a necessary precursor to collaborative decision making and collective action.
Implementation of IAPro facilitated knowledge exchange and learning through the participatory assessment of management actions to combat desertification. This approach was successfully tested in 18 dryland sites distributed across eleven countries, demonstrating its potential for the consistent but also adaptive assessment of a large variety of management actions to combat desertification. The PRACTICE IAPro could be used at larger scales, for instance to help identifying best policies at a national level. Spatial and temporal scale would be determined by the stakeholder platform and the actions and programmes being evaluated. Since IAPro indicators were also sustainable land management (SLM) indicators the protocol could be used to SLM assessment. Similarly, the participatory approach could be adjusted for a priori exploration of alternatives.
Dissemination of lessons learned among local communities and among different sites and the larger desertification community was crucial to further promote knowledge exchange and learning. PRACTICE Netweb was a place where people involved in or affected by actions to combat desertification and land degradation could connect, share their stories and learn from each other.
In order to ensure efficient communication of PRACTICE outcomes to the United Nations' convention to combat desertification (UNCCD) and national action programmes (NAPs), several key UNCCD persons were involved in our activities:
1. in the PRACTICE consortium we included one UNCCD national focal point while another one formed part of the advisory committee and another one participated in one of the coordination meetings. In addition, PRACTICE partners contacted their respective UNCCD focal points to keep them informed about our achievements.
2. The committee on science and technology (CST) chair was one of PRACTICE partners. In the advisory committee we had a correspondent to the UNCCD-CST and in the last coordination meeting we had the participation of a member of the CST staff. One of the members of the advisory board prepared the 'White paper version one on scientific of the set of impact indicators', February 2011, where the PRACTICE approach was considered. This white paper was reported to the 10th conference of the parties (COP-10) held in Korea in October 2011. Finally, COP-10 decided to establish an ad hoc advisory group of technical experts (AGTE) to further refine the UNCCD set of impact indicators with the participation of a member of PRACTICE advisory committee. Moreover, PRACTICE and IAPro were presented in several side events in UNCCD meetings.
In addition, activities to incorporate the PRACTICE approach into national, regional and international policies were undertaken. A document for discussion in a monographic session in the South Africa meeting was prepared. Some identified key elements for PRACTICE application to policies to combat desertification were the following:
1. integrated and participatory evaluation of management actions at the action and implementation scale, which would be the local scale in most cases, in order to learn and inform local, national and regional policies
2. scaling up, consisting in the participatory evaluation of actions to support planning. Participatory evaluation of the large actions taken in the past could provide references for planning future actions to combat desertification. If appropriately adapted and tested, the protocol would be applied at a higher scale, e.g. national issues being assessed in a participatory way
3. a series of dissemination units for the UNCCD and NAP were drafted to be distributed among the focal points from all affected countries in the UNCCD. PRACTICE Dissemination unit number one, conveying the essential of the project objectives and results, was widely distributed among all national focal points and national UNCCD experts in the convention. Further documents were distributed to those experts requesting more information about the project outputs.
4. a synthesis of the PRACTICE results as discussed in the coordination meeting held in South Africa was presented to the Portuguese NAP Committee on 15 June 2012. The Portuguese Committee agreed to apply PRACTICE indicators to past and future projects to combat desertification in Portugal.
In addition to the direct dissemination carried out to the local communities in the LTEMs of PRACTICE through the development and application of the IAPro to combat desertification and the initiatives to convey our results to larger national and international, i.e. UNCCD, scales, the partners of PRACTICE consortium performed several scientific and technical presentations in workshops and seminars and published several scientific papers addressing the scientific community.
Further information about the project background, its activities and the produced documentation could be obtained at http://www.ceam.es/practice.
Approaches to the assessment and monitoring of dryland management range from those that focus on particular biophysical properties of the system, e.g. soil erosion, to those that emphasise socioeconomics, e.g. cost benefit analysis. In recent years, focus has shifted to socioecological assessment, which recognises the complex and dynamic relationships between humans and ecosystems. Particular challenges are the integration of biophysical and socioeconomic fields, the identification and selection of a set of indicators that capture key sustainability issues that are manageable and simple enough to be applied consistently and affordably in different regions over long periods of time, but also relevant for each specific ecological and socioeconomic context assessed, and the development of participatory approaches that integrate scientific and local knowledge, as well as the variety of stakeholder perspectives (refer to Bautista and Alloza, 2009). The participation of stakeholders and the incorporation of local knowledge in the assessment of environmental problems and potential solutions have been increasingly demanded by international institutions.
PRACTICE addressed these gaps by integrating evaluation of prevention and restoration practices and knowledge exchange in a process developed by both scientists and stakeholders in an iterative manner. The project gathered scientists and stakeholders grouped in 15 partners from Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America. The partnership included both natural and social scientists and a wide representation of stakeholders in each participant country.
The general objective of PRACTICE was to link scientific and technological advances and traditional knowledge with sound implementation, learning and adaptive management on prevention and restoration practices to combat desertification. The central goal of PRACTICE was to link science to society in order to share and transfer evaluation methods and practices to combat desertification. To pursue this goal, PRACTICE aimed:
1. to create an international platform of long-term monitoring sites (LTEM sites), aimed at supporting future synthetic analysis, improving the accessibility and use of long-term data and disseminating knowledge on best practices worldwide
2. to develop and implement participatory and integrated evaluation tools to assess prevention and restoration practices to combat desertification for croplands, rangelands and woodlands, considering the impacts on socioeconomic status, biodiversity and ecosystem services and documenting best practices
3. to develop education material and translational science strategies and implement innovative participatory approaches to link science to society, to share and transfer evaluation methods addressing and involving stakeholders at all levels.
We established a worldwide platform of LTEMs and an associated information system. The platform included an interactive PRACTICE website hosting the PRACTICE Netweb and a harmonised database on biophysical and socioeconomic data for the whole set of LTEMs. The platform of LTEM sites included 21 sites in croplands, rangelands, and woodlands affected by desertification worldwide. All sites were affected by one or several desertification drivers, such as overgrazing, unsustainable agricultural practices and recurrent forest fires. The prevention and restoration actions undertaken in the sites were related to soil conservation practices, management of salinisation-prone areas, sustainable grazing and range management, fire hazard management and ecosystem restoration.
We elaborated an integrated assessment protocol (IApro) for the evaluation of management actions through a participatory process. IAPro was based on key common indicators that represented key ecosystem services in drylands and site specific indicators identified by local stakeholders that were relevant to the particular context conditions. The project adopted an innovative bottom-up approach to select site specific socioecological indicators to be measured together with the common science driven indicators. IAPro was structured as a sequence of steps.
We also tested and implemented the IApro in the PRACTICE LTEM sites. The data for the selected indicators together with the collective weights assigned by the stakeholders were used as inputs to provide the outranking of the actions and synthesis of the indicators that contributed to the various outranking relations among the actions. Along the assessment process the local stakeholders made a preliminary, baseline evaluation of the actions and at the end of the process they made a collective re-evaluation of the actions once scientists presented them the results. This last step brought what scientists learned from the stakeholders back to them and brought the science to the stakeholders so that they could make a more informed assessment of the management actions through social learning. Overall, a clear distinction in the evaluation of actions was observed depending on the degree of dependence of local populations' economy on natural resources. Educational materials were produced in the framework of the participatory evaluation activities, in collaboration with the local stakeholders.
Best practices were assumed to dependent on tradeoffs between individual perspectives of stakeholders, in given socioenvironmental contexts, changing with time along with socioeconomic changes.
Sustainable management could benefit from participatory assessment methods that incorporated the knowledge and perspectives of scientists and the stakeholder community. Participatory assessments that promoted social learning had a great potential to increase adoption of good practices. Methods that resulted in social learning also resulted in engagement, a necessary precursor to collaborative decision making and collective action.
Implementation of IAPro facilitated knowledge exchange and learning through the participatory assessment of management actions to combat desertification. This approach was successfully tested in 18 dryland sites distributed across eleven countries, demonstrating its potential for the consistent but also adaptive assessment of a large variety of management actions to combat desertification. The PRACTICE IAPro could be used at larger scales, for instance to help identifying best policies at a national level. Spatial and temporal scale would be determined by the stakeholder platform and the actions and programmes being evaluated. Since IAPro indicators were also sustainable land management (SLM) indicators the protocol could be used to SLM assessment. Similarly, the participatory approach could be adjusted for a priori exploration of alternatives.
Dissemination of lessons learned among local communities and among different sites and the larger desertification community was crucial to further promote knowledge exchange and learning. PRACTICE Netweb was a place where people involved in or affected by actions to combat desertification and land degradation could connect, share their stories and learn from each other.
In order to ensure efficient communication of PRACTICE outcomes to the United Nations' convention to combat desertification (UNCCD) and national action programmes (NAPs), several key UNCCD persons were involved in our activities:
1. in the PRACTICE consortium we included one UNCCD national focal point while another one formed part of the advisory committee and another one participated in one of the coordination meetings. In addition, PRACTICE partners contacted their respective UNCCD focal points to keep them informed about our achievements.
2. The committee on science and technology (CST) chair was one of PRACTICE partners. In the advisory committee we had a correspondent to the UNCCD-CST and in the last coordination meeting we had the participation of a member of the CST staff. One of the members of the advisory board prepared the 'White paper version one on scientific of the set of impact indicators', February 2011, where the PRACTICE approach was considered. This white paper was reported to the 10th conference of the parties (COP-10) held in Korea in October 2011. Finally, COP-10 decided to establish an ad hoc advisory group of technical experts (AGTE) to further refine the UNCCD set of impact indicators with the participation of a member of PRACTICE advisory committee. Moreover, PRACTICE and IAPro were presented in several side events in UNCCD meetings.
In addition, activities to incorporate the PRACTICE approach into national, regional and international policies were undertaken. A document for discussion in a monographic session in the South Africa meeting was prepared. Some identified key elements for PRACTICE application to policies to combat desertification were the following:
1. integrated and participatory evaluation of management actions at the action and implementation scale, which would be the local scale in most cases, in order to learn and inform local, national and regional policies
2. scaling up, consisting in the participatory evaluation of actions to support planning. Participatory evaluation of the large actions taken in the past could provide references for planning future actions to combat desertification. If appropriately adapted and tested, the protocol would be applied at a higher scale, e.g. national issues being assessed in a participatory way
3. a series of dissemination units for the UNCCD and NAP were drafted to be distributed among the focal points from all affected countries in the UNCCD. PRACTICE Dissemination unit number one, conveying the essential of the project objectives and results, was widely distributed among all national focal points and national UNCCD experts in the convention. Further documents were distributed to those experts requesting more information about the project outputs.
4. a synthesis of the PRACTICE results as discussed in the coordination meeting held in South Africa was presented to the Portuguese NAP Committee on 15 June 2012. The Portuguese Committee agreed to apply PRACTICE indicators to past and future projects to combat desertification in Portugal.
In addition to the direct dissemination carried out to the local communities in the LTEMs of PRACTICE through the development and application of the IAPro to combat desertification and the initiatives to convey our results to larger national and international, i.e. UNCCD, scales, the partners of PRACTICE consortium performed several scientific and technical presentations in workshops and seminars and published several scientific papers addressing the scientific community.
Further information about the project background, its activities and the produced documentation could be obtained at http://www.ceam.es/practice.