ESPA feature in Planet Earth

ESPA Director - Paul van Gardingen
April 6, 2011

ESPA is part of the UK government’s larger Living with Environmental Change programme.

The ESPA programme is featured in this month’s Planet Earth magazine – a free magazine produced by NERC to communicate how environmental research can improve the lives of people all around the world.

In the article on ESPA (pages 6 and 7), I reflect upon my recent visits to each of the ESPA regions at the end of 2010.

During the visits, I was able to meet researchers and stakeholders in places ranging from Peru and Brazil, through to China, Bangladesh, India, South Africa and Kenya.

What I heard from the stakeholders during my visits was just how important ecosystem services are to the lives of the poor and how EPSA research is being received with great excitement.

That’s what we’ve tried to capture in the article for Planet Earth – both the need for ESPA research and the potential to improve peoples’ lives.

The article also illustrates how the livelihoods of poor people are at risk from environmental and social change. In Brazil, I saw a community suffering from the worst drought in living memory and was able to see how this was reducing their ability to benefit from the ecosystem services and the environment around them.

In China, I saw what happens when natural forest ecosystems with high biodiversity are converted into monocultures of agriculture.

My visit to Africa highlighted for me the importance of ecosystem services but also the importance of strengthening the African research and science base to allow Africans to be part of the process of designing solutions for the future in their own countries.

 

ESPA needs to address all of these things in the coming years.

It is crucial that we communicate what ESPA is doing and why its work is so important. That is one reason for having written the Planet Earth article.

We will be encouraging all projects to look for a range of methods to communicate what they are doing as part of the ESPA programme and how they’re doing their ESPA-funded research. One of the roles for the ESPA Directorate will be to support all projects in their communication activities. Very soon the Directorate will publish its draft communication strategy in which we will lay out how we hope to engage with stakeholders around world.

ESPA will encourage all projects to contribute to the design of the communication strategy such that we’re able to meet the needs of all stakeholders, and so that together we’re effective in using ESPA research to improve lives.