Tuesday 1st February 2022, 2pm – 3:30pm, Swan Room Elm Bank
Abstracts
Centre for Business in Society
M Lahandi Baskoro; Benny Tjahjono; Anna Bogush and Macarena Beltran
Understanding The Communication Aspect to the Bioplastics Packaging Consumer
The enormous waste of plastics packaging has already threatened our environment and human health. As an answer to the plastics waste problem, scientists develop bioplastics, a new innovative plastics that are from renewable resources (biomass), or could be composted, or having both attributes. In 2020, the global bioplastics production capacity is 2.1 million tonnes, and the global market is projected to grow 36 per cent over the next 5 years. Nevertheless, confusion among the consumers regarding this new innovative plastics material exists. Furthermore, if not properly disposed, bioplastics packaging could contaminate the plastics recycling stream, releasing dangerous gas to the atmosphere or exacerbating the problem of plastic waste that has polluted our ecosystems in the first place. Therefore it is crucial to communicate the correct information to the consumer. This research will investigate the communication process, communication barrier and communication mechanism to consumers of bioplastics packaging. This study could help consumers in understanding the benefit of adopting the bioplastics packaging also know how to dispose it properly, thus hopefully making a positive impact for our sustainable future.
Centre for Computational Science and Mathematical Modelling
Majdi Fanous and Alireza Daneshkhah
Quantifying the Hydro/morphodynamics Around Mangrove Environments Using Machine Learning
The impacts of climate change, including sea-level rise and changes in the nature of extreme events, such as cyclones and storm surges, are an increasing threat to the world, and specifically to the coastal regions. This is due to the increased land erosion caused by the sea-level rise which is threatening people’s lives and the present ecosystem. Lately, attention has been directed to mangrove environments after studies showed their ability to attenuate waves and prevent erosion due to their complex root structure. Such efforts has also been in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations on the importance of protection and restoration projects of mangrove environments to mitigate climate change impacts. To date, most of the research and experiments conducted to study mangrove environments have been limited by equipment availability, inability to repeat or model several scenarios, and computational cost. However, with improved data quality and availability, recent advancement in data-driven modelling, such as machine learning, could have significant potential to replace the existing numerical models with a fast, accurate, and less complex model. This would help in better understanding the hydro/morphodynamics around mangrove environments, and thus quantify their ability to mitigate climate change impacts.
Sivasharmini Ganeshamoorthy and Fei He
Computational Biology and Gene Network Inference: Study that effects of diurnal asymmetric warming on plant defense and growth
In recent years, climate change is a significant problem that has huge impact on agriculture. To respond to this changing environment, plants modify their genetic expression. Therefore, it is vital to understand transcriptional regulation to cope with diverse environment. Gene Regulatory Network (GRN) represents the blueprint of transcriptional regulations under different circumstances. To overcome this problem, it is essential to predict GRNs in different circumstances such as increase in temperature and pathogen affects. Hence, this study aims to construct predictive GRNs using statistical and machine learning techniques. Finding of this study, highlights the biological interpretation in plants under biotic and abiotic stresses through Gene Regulatory Networks. This is focused on identifying significant genes under various stress conditions. Further traditional breeding and genetic engineering are promoted in this study for plants to survive in this dynamic environment.
Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations
Andrew Powell
Why prepare for a disaster?
What factors explains why some groups and individuals prepare and successfully adapt to the threat posed by natural hazards in the production of their built environment, and others do not?
Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience
Nina Isabella Moeller
Revival of indigenous forest gardens in the Ecuadorian Amazon
As one of the poorest and most biodiverse regions on Earth, the Ecuadorian Amazon is struggling to find solutions to the central dilemma of rural development: economic vs. ecological sustainability. In response, government officials, aid agencies, indigenous federations and the private sector have recently come together to revive, revalorise and reinvent the traditional indigenous agroforestry system – the ‘chakra’ – as a sustainable and economically viable production unit governed by women. In a region ravaged by largely unfettered resource extraction (oil, timber, gold) and intensive agriculture, increasingly threatened by extreme weather, highly vulnerable to pandemics and historically marginalised due to its difficult terrain and indigenous resistance to development, the ‘chakra model’ responds directly to multiple crises and holds promises of prosperity and a resilient, just and culturally appropriate food system. Using a mixed methods approach and building learning alliances with stakeholders, this project explores these promises, and inquires into opportunities and challenges of developing agroforestry value chains in the complex Upper Napo region. It evaluates the potential of scaling-out the chakra model for community resilience and food sovereignty, to create impact in other Amazonian and tropical forest countries.
Pauline Long’or Lokidor
Modelling Nature-Based Solutions to control flooding in Kibera informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya
Africa is rapidly urbanising, and its population growth is expected to triple by 2050. The combined pressures of urbanisation and climate change have an influence on the ecosystem and the services it provides. As a result, there are additional dangers, which include, but are not limited to, greater flooding risk, economic disruption, and environmental concerns. Furthermore, poor housing and sanitation, high poverty levels, and insufficient traditional drainage systems make communities more prone to flood risk, particularly in informal settlements and refugee camps, exacerbating the effects, and impeding the recovery process. Cities in Africa must develop and adopt sustainable solutions such as Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) in order to mitigate the impacts of urbanisation and climate change. Evidence suggests that NbS have the potential to reduce flooding risk while also providing additional benefits to the ecosystem and biodiversity. However, despite successful demonstration projects across Europe, Asia and United States, application and implementation of NbS in Africa, specifically in informal settlement remains limited. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the potential of NbS in controlling flooding in informal settlement in Africa, a case study of Kibera informal slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
Peter Hollings
Using Nature Based Solutions to treat New and Emerging Pollutants in Informal Settlements
Informal settlements, such as slums, favelas, and shanty towns often lack any sort of established drainage or sewage as these settlements lack government oversight and are often erected by the residents themselves. As a result, greywater (which consists of household wastewater that does not contain faeces or urine) is generally disposed of by simply dumping buckets outside of the home. Greywater is polluted with many chemicals, including many known as new and emerging pollutants (NEPs) which are simply pollutants which are not traditionally studied or monitored. This polluted water will then flow without treatment before finally entering a water course. The presence of stagnant greywater also invites and encourages pests, such as mosquitos, to breed which causes further detriment to informal settlement residents and their environment. This research aims address the release of NEPs into the environment by greywater and tackle the lack of drainage in informal settlements through testing the feasibility of nature-based solutions to remove NEPs from greywater. The nature-based solutions will be constructed based on a case-study settlement on Langrug; South Africa and will use attempt to use materials that are both cheap and sustainable from a South African perspective.
Jason Hoepfl
Governing the Rangeland Commons of South Africa: The Implications of Institutional Contestation, Power and Social Complexity for Sustainable Governance and Future Livelihoods.
Communally held grasslands provide numerous resources and ecosystem services vital for South Africa’s poorest communities. However, long histories of dispossession, overcrowding, racialised policy and institutional struggles have resulted in degradation and contestation over these resources. This poses significant challenges for sustainable governance and livelihoods. In the post-1994 democratic era, struggles between old and new institutions (government, traditional authorities, non-governmental and grassroots organisations) are particularly complex. Contested authority, legitimacy and jurisdiction make it difficult to determine exactly who has local control over grassland resources. This can exacerbate existing inequalities, cause conflict and continue the exclusion of marginalised groups. This research critically assesses the ways local residents in three communities engage with institutions to formally and informally access grassland resources – drawing on existing rights, social norms, convention, kinship networks, capital and other mechanisms to do so. It utilises methods including focus group discussions, key informant interviews, participatory mapping and photovoice to help understand the milieu of relationships, structures, power dynamics and meaning-making that shape local resource use. Understanding how resource users navigate this social and ecological complexity can help explain why the benefits of resources continue to be distributed unequally, and the associated challenges this poses for cooperative and sustainable governance.
Behnam Mirgol, Bastien Dieppois, Jessica Northey and Jonathan Eden
Understanding future impact of climate change on agricultural productivity and practices in northern Africa
Without climate risk management and adaptation, the progress made in pursuit of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the GCRF areas, will increasingly come under threat in Africa. This is particularly true in northern Africa, where the impact of climate change has been little studied, despite recurrent food crises and water scarcity triggered, or exacerbated, by climate variability and extreme events (e.g. droughts, excessive rains). This project aims to develop a new framework for assessing future risks on agricultural productivity and practices, which would be suitable for national- and community-level adaptation to climate change. This will be achieved by: i) Improving our ability to predict future climate change in northern Africa and its impact on agricultural productivity using regional climate modelling, crop growth models and advanced statistical analysis. ii) Analysing the degree to which national organizations and communities have adapted to historical changes in climate, and developing adaptation scenarios for the coming 50 years.
Yitbarek Weldesemaet, John Wilson, Carlos Ferriera and Katharina Dehnen Schmutz
The governance of tree planting schemes
Tree planting is often seen as a sustainable option to alleviate the undesirable aspects of global environmental change. However, tree planting schemes are often complex, involving social, political, economic, technical, and biological dimensions. To improve the performance of tree planting schemes, governance tools and frameworks have been developed by different stakeholders over the past few years. In this paper, we searched five databases and after screening the abstracts and full-texts found 103 publications of primary studies, reviews, books, dissertations, and working studies conducted in six continents. The publications contained relevant insights on tree planting schemes governance practices, processes, tools, framework and guidelines. Applying the Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome (PICO) model, we systematically reviewed key issues and thematic concepts underpinning tree planting schemes and categorised these into five overarching structural components (initiation, planning, intervention, monitoring and evaluation, and sustainability) and four determinant factors (actors, resources, information, and legal instruments). Using these, we propose a governance framework for tree planting schemes with guiding criteria for each combination of structural components by determinant factor. We propose that the framework’s flexibility, clarity, and inclusiveness can help guide the governance of tree planting schemes and how they can best address the challenges of global change and sustainable development.