Relating Biodiversity to local livelihood and new method of its assessment.
The Landscape information required:
Much of this information is already available in global databases; when businesses select data for landscape-scale or global analysis they need to be careful about data consistency, geographic variation and coverage. Nowadays business look beyond its immediate footprint to a broader landscape level of impacts and dependencies. Businesses are increasingly trying to integrate sustainability in their operations, and talking increasingly about ‘business models’
Example :
ITC’s philosophy is based around the idea of “producing the buy” rather than simply buying the produce. In line with this thinking, it has supported 48 of its chili farmers in becoming Rainforest Alliance Certified farms, ensuring that the high environmental and social standards they value are met.
https://www.2degreesnetwork.com/groups/2degrees-community/resources/do-sustainable-farms-mean-sustainable-supply-chains/
At what level of this assessment do you imply?To the best of my knowledge, a participatory two-phase household survey remains the best. The results always reflect individual,communal or national livelihood outcomes depending on your assessed parameter and target group.This allows you to include socio-economic, political and environmental factors into your biodiversity livelihood assessment model in some form of a nested hierarchy.
This hierarchical model involves; which biodiversity is available within the assessment area (time frame,weather conditions,political climate, culture, beliefs, religion,social status of locals and indigenous knowledge)
The next factor in the model deals with which biodiversity is accessible (why is it accessible,when is it accessible,how is it accessible,what makes it accessible).
The last factor deals with biodiversity utilization (what facilitates biodiversity utilization,how local people utilize biodiversity and for what purpose)
I'm not clear about your goals and context for this, but we did some work on these topics a few years ago that produced a range of methods and publications that may be of interest. There are quite a lot of others at my page that may be useful if you can adapt them to your own needs.
Data Exploring Biological Diversity, Environment and Local People...
Article Diversity of locally useful tropical forest wild-plants as a...
Article Falling Back on Forests: How Forest-Dwelling People Cope wit...
Article The Value of Tropical Forest to Local Communities: Complicat...
Firstly, by establishing whether diversity (number of species/unit area) or specific marketable (biological) commodities (timber, fuel wood, mushrooms, game, fish, medicine, pasture and so on) are at stake by expansion of farming, mining, tourism, protected areas, hydropower or other activities in the same spot.
Secondly, by organizing harvesters of bio-commodities beyond "communities", "people", "household" into legal persons (e.g. private or public law association) with registered use or ownership rights of the commodity to avoid tacit de facto expropriation without compensation by state, corporation or both in close cooperation.
In my experience, the full biodiversity seems rarely at stake, with the notable exception of eco-tourism, hunting.and/or gathering.
Article What Drives Conversion of Tropical Forest in Carrasco Provin...
Article The living commons of West Tyrol, Austria: Lessons for land ...
I thank all you that responded to my question. Your answers have in no small measure enabled me to focus more properly in tackling the research at hand. Thank you all once more.
FRLHT (Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions), Bangalore, India has done work on this aspect, you may please contact them.
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