Small scale farming is an important route out of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. However, some types of farming harm the natural services – soil quality, pest control, and pollination - they rely on. Can farming continue to expand and still stay within the limits of the environment? In Ghana, cocoa farming has improved rural livelihoods but likely already damaged ecosystems, whereas in Ethiopia coffee plantations have not. As well as defining the ecological limits in these two systems, this project will look at the key social processes, and...
Full Project List
This section holds information about current and recently concluded ESPA projects.
Six projects, specifically focussed on how ecosystems function to provide services in multi-functional landscapes - so that they can better support enhanced well-being of poor people in low-income countries.
These are three major ESPA projects with a duration of up to 5 years. These projects will form a major part of the ESPA research portfolio, and will provide significant new knowledge on the relationship between ecosystem services and poverty alleviation.
Four Evidence and Impact Research Grants (EIRGs) have been awarded to increase the impact of the ESPA programme through influencing key policy processes during 2012. The projects will run for up to 12 months.
These projects are exploring short-term, innovative concepts and methodologies for ESPA research.
These grants designed to address any significant unmet opportunities which could help put ESPA’s research into use. ESPA also commissioned a small research project to help understand how research is put into use.
The ESPA Directorate’s Open Access Grants were launched to increase the volume of high-quality evidence, attributable to the ESPA programme, being published in open access journals by ESPA-funded researchers.
Grants provided catalyst funding in preparation for submitting a proposal for future ESPA grants.
These projects were designed to strengthen research capacity to tackle the complex problems associated with the sustainable management of ecosystems for poverty alleviation.
This section contains details of the early ESPA Situation Analyses. These projects helped to design the research focus of the ESPA programme.