Suchergebnisse

Many rural poor and marginalized people strive to make a living in social-ecological systems that are characterized by multiple and often inequitable interactions across agents, scale and space. Uncertainty and inequality in such systems require research and development interventions to be adaptive, support learning and to engage with underlying drivers of poverty. Such complexity-aware approaches to planning, monitoring and evaluating development interventions are gaining strength, yet, there is still little empirical evidence of what it takes to implement them in practice. In this paper, we share learning from an agricultural research program that used participatory action research and theory of change to foster learning and support transformative change in aquatic agricultural systems. We reflect on our use of critical reflection within participatory agricultural research interventions, and our use of theory of change to collectively surface and revisit assumptions about how change happens. We share learning on the importance of being strengths-based in engaging stakeholders across scales and building a common goal as a starting point, and then staging a more critical practice as capacity is built and opportunities for digging deeper emerge.

The marine biodiversity in the Coral Triangle sustains the livelihoods of roughly 100 million coastal people, yet this region is under threat from numerous local and global stressors. Regional actions underway to address coastal and marine degradation and an improve understanding of the social-ecological links between people and their environment. Economic assessments of coral reef provisioning services afforded to rural communities in Solomon Islands identified a diverse range of fisheries-based (fish, seaweed, clam, trochus, crayfish and shells) and coral-based (sand, rubble, stone, and corals for lime, aquarium and curio trades) products. Fisheries products (in particular reef fish) were important for both village subsistence and cash economies, providing the equivalent of US $5173 (7515) annually per respondent. In contrast, coral products contributed the equivalent of US $2213 (7396) annually per respondent, primarily to cash economies, particularly in study villages located in close proximity to national markets. Extractive coral activities have the potential to reduce reef resilience, diminish the viability of fisheries and so compromise the livelihoods of dependent communities. Improved management, legislative review and livelihood diversification strategies are likely to be required to manage coral reefs and the ecosystem services they provide across the Coral Triangle region