LiveDiverse: Helping to Overcome Combined Biophysical, Socio- Economic and Cultural-Spiritual Vulnerability through Participatory Scenarios

Abstract

"Ecosystems are a form of commons vital to human well-being, both through the intrinsic values that they represent and through the ecosystems services that they can provide. The LiveDiverse project examines the interactions between ecosystems and human livelihoods in four parts of the world, India, Costa Rica, South Africa and Vietnam. The case areas, which are focused in and around water and protected areas, represent a variety of cultural contexts, political systems and climates. The protect uses an approach based on the combination of biophysical, socio-economic and cultural-spiritual vulnerability. The results so far show that the calculation of biophysical vulnerability for the case areas is problematic, as existing methods such as the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) are based on country scale, and not on smaller geographical regions. The results of the work on socio-economic vulnerability demonstrate that in this case vulnerability is a combination of lack of resources, and of strategies to influence households and communities interaction with their environs. Cultural and spiritual vulnerability appear to be dependent on the interaction of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’, the preferences of younger generations, and the level of dependency on traditional methods of production. Through a combination of participatory studies of biophysical, socio-economic and cultural-spiritual vulnerability, the project provides scenarios of alternative future policy options for sustainable development. These include ways of improving rural populations’ livelihoods through better management of the protected areas and the development of systems through which local people receive a larger share of the benefits in return for their active engagement in protection activities."