Capacity Building

ESSA aims to assess and model environmental changes and their effect on local climate and ecosystem service provision in support of climate-smart landscape development and climate change mitigation efforts in semi-arid areas in Kenya and Ethiopia. ESSA also aims to assess possible solutions for diversifying livelihoods based on the factors through existing approaches like plant-based approaches integrating with GIS, RS (working with WP4). To address this, data-driven land use/cover change, biophysical change, and energy flux models will be used; and ecosystem degradation, thresholds levels and indicators, and linkage with land use and livelihood patterns will be assessed. Remote sensing satellite imageries (e.g., Landsat 8, Sentinel 2) and derived products in WP2 (e.g., land use/land cover maps, digital elevation and surface models from Lidar) will serve as input data for the models and land degradation threshold. These activities will be performed to answer three specific questions:

1. which areas are more suitable for apiculture and impacts of land use dynamics on this beekeeping livelihoods
2. how much was the impacts of land use and management practices on the local climate
3. what are the rates and trend of land use/cover change and the drivers of changes; if current trends persist, what will be the land use/cover and how this will impact the ecosystem
4. how are ecosystem degradation, land use, and livelihood trends linked, and whether environmental thresholds surpassed in the region.

The project aims to build capacity in four different levels:

1. Capacity of stakeholders in project sites in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas in Kenya and Ethiopia in beekeeping and other diversified livelihood options with special attention to both female and youth.

2. The various enterprises, associations identified are the beneficiaries applying the improved methods and approaches of the project.

3. We will have a significant focus also in north-south training of MSc, PhD and postdoctoral students. Students from Kenya and Ethiopia will carry out

    during the project studies at UH in Helsinki and IHE in Delft as well as with icipe and ILRI in Nairobi. In addition, there will be several MSc and PhD

    students in AAU and UoN carrying out their studies and preparing their MSc and PhD theses within the project topics.

4. Last, but not least is (4) capacity building for governmental staff in Ethiopia and Kenya going to be trained in implementing climate smart landscape

    framework and in the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing.