This studentship would support the ESRC funded project “COASTMAN”, which is a joint endeavour with the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) and the University of Cape Coast. COASTMAN’s overarching research question is “how mangrove-dependent coastal communities can become more resilient to climate change”. The primary output of the COASTMAN project will be a co-produced novel Multi-Criteria Decision Support System (DSS) to guide community groups and decision-makers to foster regenerative practices enabling thriving co-dependent human-environment relations in otherwise rapidly degrading coastal mangroves.
The wider research team combines expertise in remote sensing, ecology, fisheries economics and qualitative social sciences. The project is in its initial stages of data collection in two countries, Ghana and Tanzania. Social science data collection will consist of a household survey and establishment of community youth groups for co-production of data and decision-making. The student would co-develop relevant socio-ecological data collection for monitoring the impact of mangrove restoration and conservation activities. They would augment ongoing ethnographic work to ensure community input to a long-term decision support tool and work with remote sensing experts to ensure reliable ground-truthing of observed land cover changes.
The impact of this work would be extremely valuable learning around socio-ecological, co-benefits and trade-offs in mangrove restoration/conservation for vulnerable communities experiencing changing climate as well as a co-produced mechanism for impacted communities to directly influence decision makers.