Breakout session report: Environmental Sustainability and Poverty

1. Breakout session report: Environmental Sustainability and Poverty 2nd GEOSS Science and Technology Stakeholder Workshop August 28-31, 2012 Bonn, Germany Convener: James P. Syvitski, IGBP Rapporteur: Michael Nyenhuis, University of Bonn

2. https://www.lufthansa.com/de/en/Travel-information

3. Scope of session: • Reducing and reversing environmental degradation and alleviation of poverty are urgent global issues, which have a lot in common. However, they are often treated separately(from globalissues.org). This session put a focus on the interlinkages between these issues. • Objective: • Identify the information needs for a better understanding of the linkage between poverty and environmental sustainability.

4. Anantha Duraiappah:The Wealth of Nations – Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 • Alexander de Sherbinin:Spatial Poverty Assessments • Fabrice Renaud: Ecosystems, their Services and Disaster Risk Reduction — Examples from Coastal Areas

5. The Wealth of Nations – Inclusive Wealth Report 2012 • Insufficiency of current economic production indicators (e.g. GDP, HDI) as they fail to reflect the state of natural resources or ecological conditions, and focus exclusively on the short term, without indicating whether national policies are sustainable. • Measuring the wealth of people requires a conceptual framework that takes social and environmental dimensions into account • IWR 2012 features an index that measures the wealth of nations by looking into a country’s capital assets, including manufactured, human and natural capital: the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) • Changes in certain capital assets lead to substitution by and transformation of other capital assets • Results, e.g.: Graph with average annual growth in IWI per capita showed a clear trend of decreasing natural capital (negative natural capital) • Shadow prices are the magic variables, since…….. • Key data sources show gaps and easier access to wider data sources is needed • How do we make the link, since GEO has a focus on natural capital? • Aggregation from ecosystem services to capital has not been done

6. Spatial Poverty Assessments (1/2) • NASA Socioeconomic Data & Application Center (SEDAC) • Focus on human dimensions of environmental change • Integration of social and Earth science data, especially with remote sensing • Direct support to scientists, applied and operational users, decision makers, and policy communities • Why mapping poverty? • Identify hotspots in need of intervention • Understand the spatial correlates of poverty (biophysical, socioeconomic correlates) • E.g. degree of poverty provides more (spatially differentiated) insights into the poverty situation within and across countries

7. Spatial Poverty Assessments (2/2) • Remote sensing applications for poverty research (night time lights; settlements) • Human observing system – what would it require? • Increasing frequency of demographic and health surveys; availability of demographic information • Migration data is a great gap (yet one of the main demographic drivers of environmental change • Data, integration and interoperability (across time, space, and scientific domains) • Growing availability of spatial poverty data (incl. novel data), but gaps remain (globally integrated and harmonized subnational SE data)

8. Ecosystems, their Services and Disaster Risk Reduction — Examples from Coastal Areas (1/2) • Impact of disasters on development gains are often considerable • Did natural features limit the impact? Not easy to answer… • Extreme events affecting Indonesia, Sri Lanka & Japan lead to different reconstruction processes & thus development pathways • In all cases, considering ecosystems in the rebuilding process is a “no regrets” solution • Ecosystems might not stop the next tsunami but… • They will mitigate other higher frequency hazards • Provide livelihoods for communities relying on them • Increase recreational/cultural value of the landscape • The use of ecosystems for DRR can also contributes to: • Sustainable development • Reduce cost of (engineered) DRR infrastructure

9. Ecosystems, their Services and Disaster Risk Reduction — Examples from Coastal Areas (2/2) • Geospatial data are extremely valuable to assess: • The presence/state of coastal ecosystems or their components such as sand dunes, coastal vegetation, etc. • Tracking changes in such systems (temporal and spatial dimensions) • Determining impacts on ecosystems so as to restore ecosystem services as rapidly as possible

10. Discussion • Q-IAHS: definition of human wellbeing; superimposing natural science and social science data particularly relevant; to Alex: why poor areas in rural regions while …..; to Anantha: resources have been mentioned – where is water? • IHDP: wellbeing – conceptual framework is based on the productive base (4 types); water: experts not willing to put up water as a value; chapter on water in the report • Alex: pockets of poverty in areas of wealth; using the indices are not necessarily characterizing the small scale variations • Q-Sybil: to IHDP: time step for change maps? Independent variables – is there autocorrelation? Interconnected globalization – decrease of the index in regions on the expense of other regions? Alex: poverty in relation to access to health care facilities • IHDP: annual for past 19 years; magic variable are the shadow prices; variables are not independent but interdependent; dedicated chapters dealing with feedbacks within and between geographical regions • Alex: no, due to a lack of datasets about to access to health care facilities • Q-Vivian: to Anantha: any account for ecosystem services (which have no value on the market); how is this report getting back into the countries? • IHDP: please name one example for ecosystem services that have no market value? – Vivian: nutrient cycling - No monetary value would be easier to answer. Mentioned examples for non-market values, but stated that these have not been addressed in the report; problems of ecosystem models to model ecosystem services • Alex: poverty atlas