Research Title: Participatory Approaches to Valuing and Modeling Forest Ecosystem Services in Sudan

Contact: s7faalii(at)uni-bonn.de 

Abstract:

Sustaining biodiversity in agricultural landscape is one of the challenges of achieving sustainable development. However, how can we conserve biodiversity without knowing its values? Multiple attempts have been made to quantify ecosystem services to support biodiversity conservation and land use management.  Large body of research has covered ecosystem services valuation but the field has also been criticized for its limited consideration of value diversity among different stakeholder groups. This research aims to valuing and modelling forest ecosystem services, based on different stakeholder perspectives and under different scenarios of forests use. In order to achieve this, participatory research methods will be employed, such as participatory mapping, focus discussion groups, surveys, and participatory scenarios. This research will analyze the ecosystem services valuation methods used in African forests through published literature and then conduct field work in the state of Sinnar, Sudan.

This research project is funded by The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)