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1
General introduction to the BNPP project
To
provide a sound basis for identifying and designing policies and projects
that use forest conservation as a tool for maintaining the level, quality,
and regularity of water flows.
The
focus of this project is to provide a comprehensive assessment of one
aspect of the functional contribution of biodiversity conservation to
rural livelihoods and economic development through an understanding of the
relationships between biodiversity and hydrological processes.
It is supposed – plausibly but without much evidence – that
changes in upland land use practices could conserve biodiversity, help
poor hill-dwellers, and provide ‘bankable’ benefits for downslope
urban-dwellers. But a
rigorous analysis of hydrological functions in highly biodiverse areas is
needed to better understand these relationships. It is also imperative that these functions are examined at
varying scales as changes in land use may have a much greater effect at
the local scale than at the regional scale and larger scale land cover
changes more than likely will have a greater effect than smaller scale
changes.
Are
‘biodiversity conservation’ and ‘watershed protection’ strongly
connected issues that can be addressed simultaneously in a sustainable
development context, or do the issues only overlap in very specific
situations and at specific scales?
The
two ‘activities’ of the project and how they fit together :
Activity
1: Pantropic analysis of where Biodiversity, Poverty and Watershed issues
coincide.
Activity
2: Meso scale analysis of how Land Use change affect Watershed functions
and Biodiversity.
The
BNPP-ASB-FVOB project is primarily concerned with the degree to which ‘land
use change’ in a broad sense of the word will affect ‘biodiversity’
(B) and ‘watershed functions’ (W) in similar ways. Where
the two issues coincide B and W stakeholders can jointly try to influence
land use change decisions.
Two
distinct aspects of this question are:
·
do areas on the globe (within the tropical humid domain) that are
generally recognized to be of high importance for global biodiversity
conservation have an above-average importance for ‘watershed
functions’?
·
does the pattern and type of land use change that occurs within
specific areas affect the B and W in similar ways?
[1]
Adapted from ‘In Brief’ summary written by K. Chomitz 11 July
2002.
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The project tries to
answer these questions in ‘Activity 1’, focused on the
global coincidence of biodiversity hot spots and areas of above-average
significance for maintenance of watershed functions, and ‘Activity
2’, focused more on the processes underlying impacts of land use
change on watershed functions.
In answering the
questions on ‘watershed functions’, it may help to separate the
‘outcomes’ of dynamic landscapes (quantitative indicators) from the
concept of ‘functions’. Functions, like beauty, depend on the eye of
the beholder. Changes in water flow regime that are desirable for some
stakeholders are not desirable for others (for example people living in a
floodplain may find absence of fluctuations of river discharge desirable,
where people who care for the biota living in these rivers may take the
‘natural level of variability’ as their target). Potential impacts on,
and thus perceptions of value to, different stakeholders generally depend
on a combination of the ‘outcomes’, with the opportunity to be in the
right place at the right time (or avoid being at the wrong place at the
wrong time), and technical engineering interventions. We will restrict
ourselves here to a discussion of ‘outcomes’ that stays in the realm
of biophysical landscape models.
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1.
Implementation protocols for
all sub-activities under Activities 1 and 2. These will provide detailed
specification (subject to revision) of the performance of these tasks,
including data sets and variables to be used as inputs, models and
analytic procedures to be applied, outputs expected, geographic scale and
scope of analysis, timing of activities, and assignment of
responsibilities.
2. Technical
reports covering all
activities, detailing data sources, methods and models applied,
substantive outputs, and policy or methodologically relevant conclusions.
3. Spatial
datasets and analyses, with
appropriate metadata, in archival form (e.g. CD-ROM) available by ftp from
a public website: covering the humid pantropics and impact areas,
including an integrated global gridded dataset incorporating key variables
from activity 1A (population, biodiversity, land use change scenarios,
hydrological impact areas, hydrological hotspot areas) for MMSEA and Mae
Chaem watersheds, comparable data where appropriate.
4. Two (or
more) manuscripts of quality
suitable for submission to internationally recognized refereed journals,
possibly with World Bank staff and/or other partners as coauthors.
At least one
manuscript, corresponding to activity 1, should make a significant
contribution to delineating, at the global scale, areas and populations
that are (or are not) at potential risk from the hydrological impacts of
land use change in the study focus areas; and the degree to which
threat-posing land use change also impacts biodiversity.
These results also will feed into the ASB Global Synthesis Report
which, in turn, will contribute to the ASB cross-cutting assessment of
‘Forest and Agroecosystems Tradeoffs in the Tropics’ that has been
selected as a sub-global component of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
At least one
manuscript, corresponding to activity 2, should represent a significant
addition to the methodological and substantive understanding of the
relation among land use change, biodiversity, and hydrological functions
in small and medium basins. The manuscripts should also provide substantive information
on hydrological risks and relevant policies in MMSEA.
5. Two
(or more) ASB policybriefs derived from manuscripts
described above.
At least one brief on
the coincidence of biodiversity-rich rainforest habitats and human
populations ‘upstream’ and the exposure of human populations
‘downstream’ to degradation of watershed functions, with particular
attention to flood regulation, describing implications for policies that
seek to address poverty, biodiversity, and hydrological externalities
through a common instrument. At least one brief focusing on land
management in medium and small watersheds, discussing the need for and
possibilities for policies to shape land use patterns so as to improve
biological, hydrological, and agricultural outcomes.
6. Two policy
seminars (one in Washington, DC, at the Bank, the other in the
Hague at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to report results.
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