Exploring the future land use- biodiversity-climate nexus in East Africa: an application of participatory scenario analysis
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Date
2015-11
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Whiterose University
Abstract
Climate change and land-use-land-cover
change (LULCC) are expected to have major
impacts on global biodiversity. In highly diverse
tropical moist forests, future biodiversity
trajectories will also depend on political
and societal will to undertake the changes
needed to reduce those impacts. We present
a framework to build participatory spatially-
explicit scenarios that can be used to analyse
the biodiversity-climate-land-change trade-
offs, and we applied at different scales in East
Africa. In Tanzania, under the business-as-
usual pattern of economic growth, the Eastern
Arc Mountains forests and biodiversity will be
heavily impacted on, with increasing pressure
on protected areas. Increasing variability of
rainfall and temperature are likely to impact
on where the LCLCC are going to be, with
the mountains likely to be refuges that are
even more important for local communities.
That may intensify impacts on biodiversity.
In Taita Hills (Kenya) and Jimma Highlands
(Ethiopia), stakeholders expected that
adaptation interventions to climate change
would generally improve biodiversity state.
Preliminary data on birds community diversity
in Taita Hills showed that though agroforestry
system supports higher diversity than natural
forest, species richness of rarer forest
specialists remained highest within natural
forests.
Anticipating
future
conservation
and
agriculture interaction under climate change
may contribute to set spatial priorities for
intervention sites. Further investigations are
required that could benefit from integrating
local stakeholders’ perceptions and visions for
the future.
Description
Article
Keywords
Climate change, Land use