New MOOC on ‘Transforming development’ launched by Stockholm Resilience Centre and partners, featuring SPACES outputs
On APRIL 30th, 2018, the course “Transforming Development: The Science and Practice of Resilience Thinking” Begins!
The SPACES project will be featured during Module 5 of the course (launched on 28th May)
“The Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, in partnership with the SDG Academy are pleased to announce the launch of our Massive, Open, Online Course (MOOC) entitled Transforming Development: The Science and Practice of Resilience Thinking.
The 7-week course is available for FREE and includes more than 30 lectures featuring leading scientists and practitioners working to apply resilience thinking, covering case studies and examples from every continent in the world, except Antarctica!
More information and a trailer for the course is available here: https://courses.sdgacademy.org/learn/transforming-development-the-science-and-practice-of-resilience-thinking-april-2018
Sign up now to join us when the course begins on April […]
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Uncovering the amazing behind the scenes achievements by Tzunza community to build on SPACES knowledge and dialogues.
Chris Cheupe, April 2018
SPACES spent lots of effort in order to disseminate information with the hope of improving the wellbeing of the people in the study communities. Impact activities which aim at bringing change at the community have been done using both top down (high level workshops) and bottom up (community feedback meeting and dialogue) approaches.
With regard to these impact activities the communities have seemingly done a lot which have remained undocumented. Due to this, it is difficult to gauge the progress and challenges faced by the community members in their effort to apply the knowledge generated from the impact activities.
SPACES project has collected data in the Kenyan coastal sites including Kongowea, Vanga, Shimoni areas and Tsunza. The project has also conducted feedback meeting with these communities with an aim of disseminating its key findings. Apart from generously sharing data with the team members, the community continued with the […]
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A Look Back at SPACES in 2017
In 2017, SPACES focused on communicating research to different stakeholders. As four years of research funding from ESPA (the UK Ecosystem Services from Poverty Alleviation programme) concluded, 30 team members from Kenya, Mozambique, UK and Sweden gathered in Stockholm to work on analyse findings and strategise on impact.
With additional funding from SwedBio and ESPA the SPACES team engaged in in-depth and interactive dialogues with several local communities. In Kenya the dialogues also inspired a play developed by a local community theater group. The dialogues generated suggestions for action such as capacity building on alternative livelihoods and access to financial services.
The outcomes of the dialogues and the SPACES’s research were presented during meetings with 22 key institutions like Pemba Municipality, the Red Cross, and the WWF. These meetings were attended by over 150 staff and associates.
The SPACES team also developed the SPACES Data Explorer which makes data on basic needs, ecosystem services, and wellbeing accessible to a wider audience beyond academia. The tool is based on requests from stakeholders for more accessible ways to share findings. It was presented during the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association Symposium, where SPACES co-hosted a full day special session with ESPA. It was also shared with key stakeholders in Kenya and Mozambique.
SPACES research has also been presented at the Resilience Colloquium, the Resilience Conference, and the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) Conference. SPACES findings highlighting relations between oceans, poverty and wellbeing were also presented at The UN Ocean Conference in New York in June
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SPACES Data Explorer
In May 2017, SPACES researchers received additional impact funding from ESPA to share the project’s knowledge assets. The funding was used to develop SPACES Data Explorer. The idea springs from suggestions that the stakeholders gave in pilot interviews, about sharing findings with graphs and making it more user friendly. The Data Explorer democratizes SPACES data on basic needs, ecosystem services, and wellbeing and makes it accessible for a wider audience beyond academia. The methods used to collect the basic needs data is described in the publication by Chaigneau et al (2018), see here for more information.
The Data Explorer was presented during Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) Symposium in November, where SPACES co-hosted a full day special session with ESPA. It was then shared in 1-1 follow-up meetings with key stakeholders in Kenya and in Mozambique.
Click here to view the Data Explorer.
On the first page of the Data Explorer, you can read about the different datasets and what information is displayed. This is also where you will choose the site or sites you wish to explore on the left handside of the screen. Remember to click Go To Charts!
The first chart that you will come to displays the basic needs that are not met in the site or sites that you have chosen. You can hover over the bars to see the definitions of the basic needs.
Next you can choose to view what impact ecosystem services have on the basic needs. The bar heights will not change, but the colours will. Here it is important to focus on the colours rather than height. Dark green represents an ecosystem service that has high impact on the basic need. In the example below, we see that Mangrove Poles have a high impact on education (females), physical security (males & females), shelter (males & females), food (males), sanitation (males), relationship (males & females). Mangrove poles are used to build house therefore they have an impact on shelter, but they are also sold for money which is used to pay for school fees (education), food, and soap (sanitation). The practice of collecting and harvesting mangrove poles builds relationships. For more information on the connections between the ecosystem services and the impact on basic needs refer to the bottom of the information page on the Data Explorer.
Below the chart, text information on who has access to the mangrove poles appears along with the state of the ecosystem.
This chart shows how males and females perceive an ecosystem service to contribute to their wellbeing. This example shows how octopus is perceived to benefit males and females in Vamizi, Mozambique. 
Happy Exploring! Please email spaces.communication@gmail.com if you have any questions or feedback.
References
Chaigneau, T., Coulthard, S., Brown, K., Daw, T.M. and Schulte‐Herbrüggen, B., 2018. Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services. Conservation Biology https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.13209
