Ecosystem services are essential for directly and indirectly assuring the food security and nutritional diversity of rural communities, with major implications for the poorest and most vulnerable households. In this new line of investigation, ecosystem services will be analyzed through the lens of four main dimensions (or pillars) that should be simultaneously present in order to be food secure: availability, access, utilization and stability.

A team of researchers left to the depths of the Colombian Amazon, as part of the first phase of fieldwork for the project ‘Managing ecosystem services for food security and the nutritional health of the rural poor at the forest-agricultural interface”. The fieldwork consists of the use of various participatory methods with different indigenous communities that depend directly and indirectly on the forest to survive.

¿Cómo se sienten las comunidades menos favorecidas de las zonas rurales de Malawi y Colombia acerca de la seguridad alimentaria? Quizás ellas nos puedan enseñar una cosa o dos acerca de cómo sobrellevar los servicios ambientales (SA) amenazados y el cambio climático. O quizás seamos nosotros los que podamos enseñarles una cosa o dos. En realidad no interesa quién enseñe qué o a quién, en tanto todos aprendamos algo al final del día, no es así?

In the Coella and Combeima watersheds (Tolima, Colombia) the narrative of managing the commons is taking a participatory shape. The benefit-sharing mechanism (BSM) is a collective action process where an agreement among watershed inhabitants and stakeholders aims to solve the existing watersheds problems in the region…

What happens to food security and ecosystems services on the forest-agricultural interface?  Over the next four years we’ll be looking at this as part of a grant from the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) program, funded by DFID, NERC and ESRC in the UK.  Our project, conveniently called ASSETS,  will undertake world class research on ecosystem services (ES) for
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See this item on the CIFOR Forests Blog » Online tool helps users map the costs of conserving Amazon forests, on the interactive online tool MAPAZ.  CIFOR leads the new CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (CRP6).  Last week at CIFOR Headquarters a workshop on sentinel sites for the CRP6 was held. CIFOR also conducted
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To further Project AN2’s work-forging the way for the establishment of crucially-needed water management agreements-several CIAT team-members have spent the latter part of March 2011 on an intensive regional tour.

A new paper in Applied Soil Ecology by researchers from CIAT and the University of Western Australia reports that smallholder agroforestry systems can retain relatively abundant, diverse populations of soil invertebrates

The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), a research initiative that represents the largest, most comprehensive investment in the world on water, food and environment research  has identified water use and governance in the Andes, particularly within the agricultural sector  as a significant factor surrounding not only food security, and welfare but also for
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Welcome to the ecosystem services blog from the Decision and Policy Analysis program in CIAT.  We’ll try and keep you up-to-date with progress towards our goals of improving the management of ecosystem services to the benefit of the poor.  Here’s a description of the theme to get started. Theme description: Large and reliable harvests depend
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