SDGs – Page 2 – SLU's global blog

Is there a definite value of water?

Published 19 March, 2021
By agbn0001

This blog post is written by Jennie Barron, Professor at the Department of Soil and Environment; Agricultural water management, SLU

Water is a multifaceted resource from simply being served our daily glass of water, to the complex flow through the landscapes to produce food, recreation and other ecosystem services. Because of the multiple uses and benefits of water, there are many challenges of valuing and weighting benefits and impacts for the different uses and users.

This becomes evident in times of shocks and in crises. For example such as when the landscape or society runs out of water, as in the extreme drought of 2018 in Sweden, or when 2 billion of people lack health and sanitation facilities to simply wash hands to cope with COVID-19. The past years global and local crises of COVID-19 has left no one untouched. And the crisis of COVID-19, has really reoriented the issue of conversation of water, and the value of water.

The projections of water related crises is on the rise, as food security, sustainable development and climate change takes place. The need to find metrics, process and practise to weight the benefit and impacts of water scarcity will therefore be the key. This year’s World Water Development Report is thus a first step to summarise and synthesise the current perspectives on valuing water. It builds on the recent developments such as the High Level Panel of Water Statement (2018) “Every drop counts” and assessments on water security for food and nutrition by FAO (2020) “ Overcoming water challenges in agriculture“.

Going from high level statements to reality and practise

Agriculture is such sector that is an intense water appropriator globally, both in using rainfall, and extracting water for irrigation. In addition, agriculture can have a negative impact on water quality, as a source of agro chemical pollution both from crop and livestock production. Valuing water for irrigation is a particular challenge, as the fresh water from surface and groundwater sources is contested for many users, including the environment, aquatic benefits and food. However, in regions where many people are affected water scarcity and hunger, the value water might bring into agriculture can make significant livelihood improvements. For example in the work assessing benefits for smallholder farmers in the dry area of Bundelkhand , India led by Garg et al (2020), evidence-based soil and water innovations introduced, improved landscape water use and the farmer incomes by up to 170%. At the same time downstream water availability reduced with 40% in a normal rainfall year. Here a dialogue on upstream benefits and values, may need to be negotiated with downstream users. In a case of livestock systems intensification in Tanzania (Noetenbart et al 2020), choosing the most resource saving option of intensification can have negligible impacts on water use. For example a comparison of livestock production accounting for water appropriation into the fodder, showed that extensive dryland grazing could only marginally increased total water appropriation, whilst improving water productivity with 20-50%, when combining animal health, breeding and feed options. Here the most water demanding livestock scenario was the system with import of high protein (and more water demanding) fodder crops.

Investing to secure water for agriculture is an enabler of development.

Globally, about 40% of food comes from irrigation-dependent crop production systems, helping to support nutritious and all year food supply. Whereas regions and countries are running out of water, we have other regions that could better support irrigation development to adapt to weather extremes and bring both steady supply of food and nutrition and income. In Sub-Saharan Africa, less than 3% of the crop area is under formal irrigation. Yet smallholder farmers are evolving and investing themselves in so-called farmer led irrigation, despite a number of technical , social and financial challenges (Lefore et al 2019).

It is becoming evident that water is a critical enabler in development and Agenda 2030 for human health, incomes, food and nutrition as well as ecosystem services. Water needs to be bothsafeguarded for multiple benefits, as well as negotiated and explored in some cases, for additional uses in anthropogenic landscapes. By opening for reflecting multiple values, we can develop data, tools and weight benefits and trade-offs more just and equal among uses and users. In 2022, it is the +30 years of the Rio Declaration (UN Earth Summit 1992), including the statement of Integrated water resource development (IWRM) Let’s hope that water is back on the agenda for enabling development as, carefully negotiated for its multiple use and value.

What’s cooking at CGIAR?

Published 11 February, 2021
By agbn0001

SLU has a long tradition of partnerships with the CGIAR, both at the institutional and individual scientist-level. The CGIAR is the world’s largest agricultural research and innovation network with 8 000 staff globally, focused on agriculture in low and middle income countries.

The CGIAR is currently reorganizing and has launched a new research and innovation strategy with the aim to transform food, land and water systems in a climate crisis. The One CGIAR vision for 2030 is a world with sustainable and resilient food, land and water systems that deliver diverse, healthy, safe, sufficient and affordable diets, and ensure improved livelihoods and greater social equality, within planetary and regional environmental boundaries. Climate change and the climate crisis is at the forefront of the new strategy that describes the food systems challenges in the contexts of six major regions across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The strategy targets multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and strives to achieve measurable benefits across five Impact Areas: (1) Nutrition, health and food security, (2) Poverty reduction, livelihoods and jobs, (3) Gender equality, youth and social inclusion, (4) Climate adaptation and mitigation, and (5) Environmental health and biodiversity. Three-year investment plans are set up for 2022-2024 and a number of CGIAR Initiatives (research programs) are under development. These initiatives will replace the previous Research Programs (CRPs).

The CGIAR will work with regional and national partners including universities and research institutes, business actors, and international partners. Scientists at SLU together with partners in low- and middle income countries from collaborations in research and capacity development are well positioned to contribute to this work. SLU’s global policy for Agenda 2030 points to several opportunities for cooperation between SLU and the CGIAR to contribute to the SDGs. To facilitate and support the dialogue between scientist at SLU and the CGIAR, a one page capacity statement based on SLU’s policy and the CGIAR strategy is made available here.

For more information, please contact the authors:
Ingrid Öborn, Professor at the Department of Crop Production Ecology, ingrid.oborn@slu.se
Ulf Magnusson, Professor at the Department of Clinical Sciences’, ulf.magnusson@slu.se
Sara Gräslund, Head of SLU Global, sara.graslund@slu.se

Covid-19 lessons: Wildlife as our ally, not our enemy

Published 27 May, 2020
By agbn0001

Written by Joris P. G. M. Cromsigt, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, SLU.

The origin of the covid-19 pandemic, like previous major zoonotic disease outbreaks such as Ebola and HIV, has been linked to wildlife and the consumption of wild meat. Although the exact source of covid-19 still is a matter of debate, the repeated emphasis on wildlife as the original source is putting wildlife and the consumption of wild meat in a bad spot. Others, however, have emphasised that the problem is not the eating of wild meat per se. The problem lies in unsafe handling and processing of wild meat as well as in large-scale international trade and wildlife markets that keep wild species under crowded conditions and sell and slaughter wild meat on site. If wild meat is prepared locally immediately after the hunt following normal sanitary standards, the risk of zoonotic disease is negligible. Sweden and its moose harvesting culture are an excellent example of this. The problem also lies in the massive degradation of wildlife habitat, increasing the contact between wildlife and humans and in the management of the livestock-wildlife interface, since zoonoses frequently first jump from wildlife to livestock and then to humans. What I miss in the current debate, however, is the bigger picture. The fact that humans have been destroying wildlife and the ecosystems they live in for over 10,000 years. Below, I argue that this destruction lies at the root of many of our sustainability challenges, including increased zoonotic disease risk, and that solutions for these challenges lie in the large-scale restoration of wildlife and their habitats.

Restoring wildlife to fight zoonotic diseases

Many studies have highlighted that restoration of mammal diversity reduces disease risk, because predators and competing species prevent disease-carrying species to reach high densities and because in diverse communities species vary in susceptibility to infection by a pathogen. A recent meta-analysis by colleagues at my department at SLU confirmed that across the world increasing animal diversity reduces disease risk. Similarly, colleagues showed how predators, such as fox and stone marten in the Netherlands and Tengmalm’s owls in northern Sweden, reduce zoonotic disease risk. Using the owls as an example, they highlight that wildlife may even act as an effective early warning system of future zoonotic disease outbreaks. A recent paper goes even further by linking the Late Quaternary large mammal extinctions to the emergence of > 100 zoonotic disease outbreaks of the last 60 years. The authors suggest that the concept of herd immunity goes beyond human-human interaction and that reduced interaction between human and non-human animals during the last 10,000 years reduced our resistance to emerging zoonotic diseases. This thought-provoking hypothesis remains to be tested, but what these examples really tell us is that we should not treat wildlife as the cause of the pandemic, but rather as part of the solution to fight it. Restoring wildlife communities and their habitats may be a very effective strategy to reduce zoonotic disease risk.

Rewilding as a nature-based solution for global sustainability challenges

I would like to zoom out even further by emphasizing that the current pandemic is not “just” a zoonotic disease problem but also a symptom of the global sustainability crisis. Solutions should thus focus more broadly on restoring planetary sustainability. Recent work suggests that the restoration of wildlife and their habitats can be a major part of these solutions. In the Megafauna & Sustainability unit we study how large mammals can be part of a nature-based solution for several of the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, in the programme Wilder Rangelands, a collaboration with Nelson Mandela University and Utrecht University, we look at the climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits of restoring native wild herbivore communities in African rangeland systems. In another example, we look at the effects of urban rewilding and greener cities on wildlife and people living in these cities.

Our work echoes others that highlights rewilding, i.e., the restoration of wildlife communities and their habitats, as a major natural solution. Rewilding increases the carbon sequestering capacity of ecosystems worldwide, from elephants and other mammals in our tropical rainforests, to wild grazers in the world’s grasslands, and the great whales in our oceans. Closer to home, reindeer help slow-down warming of the tundra in northern Scandinavia by limiting woody encroachment, and increasing surface albedo. Rewilding may also be a sustainable, long-term, solution for managing the risks of wildfires that are increasingly ravaging large parts of the world and even help mitigate the global phosphorus crisis through restoring global nutrient recycling. I could give many more examples.

How covid-19 threatens global wildlife conservation

Despite these examples, we still do not take wildlife restoration serious enough. For many high-level decision makers it remains a “nice to have” that is low on the priority ladder. In fact, the global response to the current pandemic forms a huge threat to global wildlife conservation. The emphasis on wildlife as the origin of covid-19 risks further alienating humans from wildlife, degrading support for its conservation. More urgently, the current pandemic highlights the weakness of a conservation model that depends on income from ecotourism and philanthropy and times of economic prosperity. This model is currently rapidly collapsing due to short- and mid-term travel bans and longer-term effects on economies. Already, in many societies communities are going hungry and increasingly depend on “bushmeat” to survive the crisis. We face a serious risk of conservation entering the dark ages, further marginalising wildlife into increasingly small corners of the world. Ironically, this will likely further increase the risk of future zoonotic pandemics.

The urgency of embracing wildlife as a natural solution to our sustainability challenges

Now is the time to come with a new model to conserve and, especially, restore wildlife. We can no longer accept conservation and wildlife restoration in the margin, for the show or as an indulgence. We need a model that sees the restoration of wildlife and their habitats as a serious natural solution to heal our planet and thus ourselves. Initiatives, such as the EU’s green deal, provide a shimmer of hope but are not enough. We need a serious global “Marshall Plan” for wildlife restoration. Accepting wildlife as a natural solution asks for massive, wide-scale restoration beyond our protected areas and beyond the introduction of certain flagship species. Such rewilding should not be confused with a wilderness without humans but restore a natural world that humans can actively benefit from. Natural solutions are SLU’s core business and it is our responsibility to now speak out and step up. We are in the hot seat in terms of finding more sustainable, nature-based, solutions. The alternative, of course, is driving all remaining wildlife species, and their associated zoonotic diseases, to extinction. I do not want my children to inherit such a world. Solutions towards the current, and future, pandemics do not lie in further alienating us from wildlife. Solutions do not lie in treating wildlife as our enemy, but in embracing it as our ally.

Flowering plants for the fight against malaria

Published 28 April, 2020
By mapg0002

Each year, more than 200 million people suffer from malaria around the world and every two minutes, a child dies from the disease. Globally, an estimated 3.4 billion people in 92 countries are at risk of being infected with malaria and developing disease. In conjunction to World Malaria Day, marked each year on 25 April, SLU Global highlights the importance of research by asking Professor Rickard Ignell about his ongoing and novel research to fight malaria.

Professor Rickard Ignell photographing one of the plants that are included in the study of potential sources of nectar at the Ifakara Institute, Tanzania. Photo: Sharon Hill

Please tell us about yourself, Rickard.

I am professor in chemical ecology, and have been working on disease vectors, predominantly on mosquitoes that transmit malaria, dengue and other arboviruses, since 2005. My group has a keen interest in understanding the ecology and evolution of olfactory (editor’s note: the sense of smell) communication in disease vectors, and we use a cross-disciplinary approach to assess how behaviours of these insects are shaped by various factors. Our fundamental research has been a spring board for us to identify novel tools that can be used to complement current integrated vector management methods. In relation to e.g., malaria control, we have expanded our work in sub-Saharan Africa over that last few years in order to increase the impact of our results.

You have recently received a large grant from The Swedish Research Council for research about utilisation of flowering plants for the fight against malaria. That sounds very interesting! What is it about?

Malaria mosquitoes, along with most other species of mosquitoes, require sugar and other nutrients for survival and reproduction, and obtain these through e.g., floral nectar. Mosquitoes prefer to feed on different flowers, and locate these using their sense of smell. Ongoing research has shown that we can harness the properties of attractive plants for the development of odour-bait technology to be used against both males and females of a wide range of mosquito species. We have also shown that toxic metabolites in floral nectar can have damaging effects on the development and survival of malaria parasites. Using a forensic approach, we will now expand our understanding of which plants are fed upon by malaria mosquitoes in the wild to assess if mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites change their floral preference in a way to self-medicate.

Why is this research important and what do you hope to achieve?

Malaria prevention and control strategies have resulted in a remarkable reduction of malaria mortality and morbidity throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades. However, over the last five years this impact has stalled, and we are now witnessing an increase in malaria in part of sub-Saharan Africa. Factors contributing to this include both physiological and behavioural resistance among the malaria mosquitoes, which has led to a need to control mosquitoes outside for which there currently are limited tools available. We have in a recent study shown that we can drastically reduce malaria incidence through mass trapping of mosquitoes by using an attractant that targets a broader spectrum of female mosquitoes. The floral attractant, which we now have available, increases this spectrum to include males, and we thereby have a better way of controlling the entire population of mosquitoes at a local scale. While the work we will do on toxic metabolites is still at an early stage, we hope that this research in the long run could provide leads for the development of drugs for the treatment of malaria.

How does this research differ from other research on combating malaria?

Until now the only viable option for controlling malaria has been to target the mosquito vector, partly due to the rapid development of resistance of the malaria parasites. The novelty of our research is that we embrace the natural ecology of the malaria mosquitoes in our efforts to identify novel tools for their control.

Anything you would like to add?

We are grateful for the support from various funding sources, including e.g. the Swedish Research Council (VR), which continues to support us over the years. This long-term funding has allowed us to generate a much-needed understanding of the ecology of malaria mosquitoes, which we now can use and share with our collaborators. There is, however, a need to increase our efforts, which we hope to achieve through increased collaboration both within SLU and other partners, but within academia and industry.

Thank you Rickard and good luck with your research!

Written by Malin Planting, communication officer, SLU Global.

Agroforestry – an act to fight climate change?

Published 22 April, 2020
By agbn0001

Written by: Agnes Bondesson, communication officer at SLU Global, Swedish University of Agricultural Sceinces

Agroforestry - pines and cotton — Agroforestry with pine and cotton
Photo: National Agroforestry Center/Wikimedia commons

22nd of April is every year dedicated to our beloved earth, so called Earth day. SLU has research projects in a wide range of areas and today it is time to give attention to one of them, agroforestry. This is a method where trees are planted among crops and animals and it is seen as a sustainable nature-based solution which can contribute to several of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Agroforestry provides various ecosystem services which are beneficial both locally and globally in the fight against climate change. This way of farming can limit the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by binding carbon and nitrogen in vegetation and soil. At the same time, the cultivation system contributes to positive effects in the local area, as trees shade, bind soil and increase resistance to pests, drought and floods, as well as providing access to firewood and a variety of nutritious food. It creates a favourable microclimate around the trees for a variety of flora and fauna.

SLU has several research projects running about agroforestry, many in collaboration with other universities and organisations around the world. SLU Global asked Ulrik Ilstedt, researcher at SLU, a few quick questions about agroforestry.

1. How does SLU work with research in agroforestry?

There are many people at SLU who work with different aspects of agroforestry in low-income countries, both from economic, social and environmental aspects. I myself have worked mostly with how agroforestry can contribute to carbon binding and how it also affects the water balance. Especially the water balance has been a much debated issue where hydrologists have previously thought that all trees – in forest or agricultural land – have a negative impact on water supply as trees use more water than grass and crops.

For tree planting organisations and the general public it has been difficult to realise that forests are bad for water supply. Many people think of the forest as a sponge that sucks in water. Instead, we have developed a new theory in which we believe that indeed the trees’ soil-improving ability can contribute to more water entering the soil and groundwater but up to a certain limit. If the trees grow too fast and too dense, their water consumption will take over and there will be water loss compared to pure agricultural land.

2. What are the benefits in a global sustainability perspective?

You can get a productive and sustainable cultivation system that can at the same time maintain many environmental values, such as biodiversity, water regulation and carbon storage. Because the trees contribute to soil improvement, farmers who are poor can cope with less or no commercial fertilizer. There are also advantages to being able to get different alternative products from the same fields and to spread risks.

3. What projects are SLU currently running?

One of the larger collaborative projects led by one of my colleagues, Gert Nyberg, where several researchers from SLU work together with other universities, is about studying different aspects of an area in Kenya. The organisation Vi-agroforestry previously used the area to influence how the pasture was organised. Through a better organisation of the pasture with fences, grass and trees could come back into the area and the pasture became more productive. This collaboration project is now being developed in other areas with both Swedish and international partners.

I myself would be particularly interested in continuing with the water issue. We now know that it is possible to grow trees and at the same time increase the water supply. Can we improve the groundwater supply further through maintenance with for example what kind of trees we use, if we prune them and how the trees are spread.

4. If you mention some positive effects with agroforestry, what would it be?

Agroforestry can contribute to many of the Sustainable Development Goals, for example to combat poverty and hunger (# 1 and # 2), better access to water (# 6), to help us combat and manage climate change better (# 13) and to contribute to higher biodiversity (#15). Agroforestry can also contribute to give women more time and opportunity to develop and take control of resources.

More information:
News page at SLU website
Debate article at Aktuell Hållbarhet (Swedish)