Two PhD positions on governance of ecosystem services in Southern and Eastern Afric

Resilience Science; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 300,000 - 400,000; Full time

Job description

Overview

Two PhD positions at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Applications are due May 2. The positions are with a project Governance of ecosystem services under scenarios of change in southern and eastern Africa, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project aims to address the question: How may ecosystem assessments be best designed and applied for poverty alleviation?

One student will focus mainly on mapping and modelling of ecosystem services drawing on methodologies from the natural and systems sciences, while the other will focus primarily on governance of ecosystem services drawing more strongly on methodologies from the social sciences.

Both students will work on case studies in the Eastern Cape and/or Western Cape regions of South Africa, as well as in Madagascar, depending on their interests and skills. The two students are expected to work closely together to share experiences and insights and to advance social-ecological understanding of the case studies and methods for assessing and managing ecosystem services.

The students will need to spend at least 6 months per year in Stockholm during the first two years and part of the year during the remaining period.

Position 1: Mapping ecosystem services and regime shifts in a poverty context

There are currently a limited range of approaches to measure, quantify, assess and display data on ecosystem services. Many approaches are data intensive and have not to date been widely applied in the management of African ecosystems and services.

This project aims to develop new methods for assessing multiple ecosystem services that can be applied in data-poor contexts. In particular, this project will explore how the “bundle” of ecosystem services associated with a social-ecological system may change under different future scenarios, with particular attention to potential regime shifts—large, persistent changes in social-ecological systems and their trajectories of development (e.g., rangeland degradation, or a shift from subsistence to commercial farming).

Shifts of this kind can have large impacts on ecosystem services and human well-being, and the data collected in this study will contribute to the developing global Regime Shifts Database.

Position 2: Governing ecosystem services and regime shifts in a poverty context

How do bundles of ecosystem services co-vary with local livelihood strategies, ecological knowledge, and social organization? A combination of qualitative and quantitative social science methods and spatial tools such as participatory GIS will be used to identify and map how local ecosystem management, land use, and institutional structures across scales interact with and respond to the dynamics of multiple ecosystem services.

The project will focus on implications for amplifying or moderating the potential for regime shifts, i.e. large persistent changes in ecosystem services. It will also assess barriers and bridges for improved governance of multiple ecosystem services at local and regional scales to support sustainable poverty alleviation in Southern Africa.

The students will be supervised by Dr. Maria Tengö and Prof. Thomas Elmqvist (Dept of Systems Ecology & Stockholm Resilience Centre).