Two New Research Projects on Climate Change at EfD-CA

EfD-CA at CATIE takes advantage of research synergies in institutional aspects of climate change, biodiversity, and water.

 

One of EfD-CA Center main areas of work and expertise is Socioeconomic dimensions of climate change. Two new opportunities for research have recently emerged to conduct studies on the impact of climate change. One study takes on impacts from climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Costa Rica and the other on "Strengthening research capacity in environmental economics to study the links between water and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean".

The study on climate change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services will provide a synthesis on the knowledge generated in the country about the potential impacts of climate change on biodiversity and terrestrial ecosystem services. The outcome will be a series of recommendations for management and identification of research priorities as well as an analysis of the legal and political forces, both national and international, on issue of biodiversity and climate change with special emphasis on terrestrial and marine protected areas.

This project is conducted in association with the Kenton Miller Latin American Chair for Protected Areas and Biological Corridors and EfD-CA at CATIE with financial support from the Forever Costa Rica Association which manages the public-private conservation initiative developed by the Costa Rican government and its associates (The Nature Conservancy, The Linden Trust for Conservation, The Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, and The Walton Family Foundation). Their goal is to consolidate a marine and terrestrial protected areas allowing Costa Rica to be the first developing country to achieve it as defined by the Programme of Work on Protected Areas (POWPA) under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The “Water study” is a three year partnership between LACEEP, EfD-CA at CATIE and Center of Economic Development Studies (CEDE) at University of Los Andes, with financial support from IDRC’ Climate Change and Water. The project has the dual purpose of promoting research and capacity building on analyzing and evaluating the impact of climate change and water using environmental economics tools. The priorities were defined in a survey with more than forty researchers working on environmental economics from Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) through the Climate Change and Water project in IDRC.

The project is composed of three stages. First, we will focus on identifying and defining a research agenda on extreme events and governance adaptation strategies in water provision and services. For this we will organize a regional workshop with regional and international researchers and relevant stakeholders. The outputs from this workshop are the building stones for the next steps. Second, we will work on developing and designing methodological approaches that will successfully address policy relevant questions on topics identified in the previous stage. Finally, the research activities designed and consolidated in the second stage will be implemented at different sites and countries across LAC.

These new research projects built on our past experiences at EfD-CA on working in institutional and economic aspects of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and water.

For detail information contact:

For the Water and Climate change study: Juan Robalino, Róger Madrigal, and Jorge Maldonado ( jmaldona@uniandes.edu.co)

For the climate change impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services study: Bernal Herrera Fernández or Carlos L. Muñoz Brenes.

Countries
News | 2 May 2011