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Research projects 2
NexusAsia is a 2-year research project funded by the Academy of Finland. The full name of the project is ‘Water-energy-food nexus: a cross-sectoral analysis of large Asian river basins’. The research thus looks at in analytical and cross-sectoral manner the management of water and related natural resources in large Asian river basins, with a focus on transboundary settings shared by several countries.
Team
Marko Keskinen, Olli Varis, Shokhrukh Jalilov
There is an increasing surge in the conflict between farmers and carnivores in Namibia (as well as in many other areas). Namibian farmers are living on the edge between making economic profit or suffering losses from their activities every year. Loss of livestock predated by carnivores (such as lions, leopards, jackals) may significantly negatively affect the unstable economic balance of farmers at the end of the year. As a response, farmers have started to apply an easy-to-implement, yet illegal, solution consisting in the administration of poisons to predated livestock carcasses. Such practice not only kills carnivores, as in the farmers wish, but has repercussions on the entire ecosystem, with vulture species seemingly the most negatively, yet indirectly, affected. This project will use an interdisciplinary approach to understand the factors that most importantly affect the use of poison by farmers in Namibia. It will also allow to quantify and map the use of poison across the country. The map will pinpoint the major hotspots of poison use where conservation efforts should be focused in order to resolve the conflict between farmers and wildlife.
Team
Peter Bridgeford, Holger Kolberg