The designation of protected areas and of regions of special conservation interest has gained due relevance across the globe, particularly in the past three decades. Territories covered by protected areas are steadily expanding. Within this framework, numerous international strategies define the importance of Capacity Building and Training as the key challenge of the 21st century. The Training Masters in Ecosystem Services Management in Protected Areas (ECOSERVE) aims at developing an innovative practice-oriented MSc programme according to Bologna criteria in the field of protected areas management, and at meeting sustainable development and labour market needs through networking activities. ECOSERVE will be a qualitatively new MSc programme implemented in higher education institutions of the Russian Federation and Mongolia, strengthening their educational partnership with non-academic partners in the field of protected areas management and responding to demands for professionals of public services, private service providers and tourism businesses. It will contribute to adapt land management strategies to the actual changing natural drivers, such as climate, in alignment with global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The program knowledge base, materials and courses in Russian, Mongolian and English, will be continuously updated and disseminated through a network of resources centres of protected areas in Partner country HEIs, promoting inter-regional cooperation in environmental protection, nature and biodiversity conservation issues, and management.

Team

Cristina Vega

The TAITASMART project, a research and development project of the University of Helsinki aims to develop a climate-smart landscape framework in Taita Taveta County, Kenya, to take into account both the needs of climate adaptation and mitigation, and sustainable agriculture supported by ecosystem services. For this purpose, the project will study land cover changes, land-atmosphere interactions, soil-crop system functioning, and climate smart landscapes for sustainable development, and build capacity in climate-smart practices.

Team

Petri Pellikka, Laura Alakukku, Timo Vesala

The main objective of the ValBio3D project is to develop sustainable and 100% biobased composites based on agroindustrial residues, addressing the bioeconomy of the future. Sub Goals: 1. Develop novel routes for production of a bioplastic based on agroindustrial residues 2. Develop processes for production of sustainable nanofibres suitable as reinforcement of bioplastics in structured biocomposites and as a main component in bioapplications 3. Develop novel routes for functionalizing nanofibres and bioplastic for optimal adhesion in the biocompounds 4. Develop prototype biocomposites based on 3D (bio)printing as a novel technology 5. Perform a lifecycleassessment (LCA) of biocomposites

Team

Dr. Maria Christina Area, Dr. Gustavo Ciudad, Heli Kangas, Dr. Claudia Schirp, Dr. Gary Chinga Carrasco, Isabel Quispe, Marcelo Miguel Melnechuk, Gorm Bruland

The main aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to enhance the understanding on the long-term impacts and effectiveness of Educational Programmes implemented in Natural Protected Areas as a biodiversity conservation strategy - including impacts on Local Environmental Knowledge. To do so, particular Educational Programmes implemented in Protected Areas in Finland and Madagascar have been selected as case studies context, providing a socio-ecological system approach, including human-wildlife conflicts, and also local community participation and LEK integration possibilities.

Team

Dr. Mar Cabeza, Dr. Aili Pyhälä

Improving our understanding of human-environment relations, and particularly of human motivations, rationale and management regimes, is paramount to the success of any biodiversity conservation initiative involving local communities. By comparing approaches, challenges and successes across case study sites, this research aims to identify those contextual settings, socio-cultural traits, incentives, and practical tools that best foster optimum long-term integration of biodiversity conservation and local wellbeing.

Team

Anita Heim; Attila Paksi; Aina Brias; Marketta Vuola; Mohammad Mozumder

To support and strengthen the capacity of Hamelmalo Agricultural College (HAC) so that it can contribute to increasing agriculture productivity and enhancing environmental sustainability, through their education mission by meeting ecological, economic and social needs and by building of new multidisciplinary partnerships and networks and strengthening of the existing ones.

Team

Mohamed Elfadl, Semere Amlesom, Juha Helenius, Mike Starr, Markku Larjavaara

Farmers using poison to control livestock predators is a major threat to vulture populations in Namibia and across Africa. In order to develop effective conservation strategies, it is important to understand the socio-ecological drivers that trigger poison use by farmers. While we know what these drivers are on the commercial farms of Namibia, the situation in the communal farmlands is not well understood. We aim to interview communal farmers in order to understand how frequently, why, which and how poisons are used. We will also assess the perception of communal farmers towards vultures and their conservation.

Team

Christie Craig, Robert Thomson, Holger Kolberg

Enhancing food and nutrition security via 11 sub-research projects ranging from processing of fermented dairy products in Kazakhstan and identificaiton of Lactid acid bacteria to, cyroconservation of native poultry breeds, to behaviour of dairy cattle, to assessing quality of meat of native cattle breeds, assesing of quality of honey, gene identification for disease-resistant strains of apples, use of plants in soil remediation etc.

Team

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

Because of the huge species diversity of Amazonian forests, it has been difficult to obtain a general idea of their environmental and floristic variation among sites. This makes it difficult to allocate suitable land uses to areas with different productivity, to adapt the management systems to local ecological conditions, and to identify habitats of high conservation value. Understorey plants (such as pteridophytes) can be used as indicators to rapidly and at relatively low cost evaluate the ecological conditions and species composition of a given rain forest site. The present project will design a species identification tool that conveys to the users of the indicator species approach 1) the knowledge on how to identify the indicator species, and 2) the information on what kind of environment or forest each species indicates. In order to be useful for people who are not plant specialists, the identification tool will be interactive, easy to use, free of botanical jargon, richly illustrated and freely available on the internet.

Team

Hanna Tuomisto, Gabriela Zuquim, Glenda Cárdenas