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Projects - dr. DA (Dominic) Martin

  • Considering local demand for more effective restoration in Madagascar

    Forests sustain biodiversity, regulate climate, and deliver multiple Nature’s Contributions to People (NCPs), making their persistence essential for sustainable development. Past and ongoing exploitation has reduced forest extent and quality across tropical countries while profits have largely been exported to the Global North. This has benefitted the economies in the Global North that now recognize the urgency of restoring tropical forests as fundamental to sustainable development. However, tree-based restoration often ignores current land use and local demands for multiple NCPs and restoration practices, especially when focusing solely on carbon goals.

    The key novelty of the Demand4Restoration project is the conceptualisation and systematic integration of restoration demand – which we define as the demand for restoration per se, for restoration at certain locations, for certain NCPs, and for certain types of restoration practices by various local, regional, national, and international actors – in restoration science and practice.

    We set out this transdisciplinary project in Madagascar, which has lost 44% of its forest cover over the last 70 years. This highlights the importance of restoring tree-supported NCPs in a country where 75% of people directly depend on nature for their livelihoods.

    Through its transdiscplinary approach, the project enables future restoration interventions to better satisfy local restoration demand co-benefitting biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

    My role: Initiator and project partner

    Academic partners: University of Zurich (Prof Maria J. Santos), ESSA Forêt University of Antananarivo (Dr O. Sarobidy Rakotonarivo; Dr Manoa Rajaonarivelo), Centre Universitaire Régionale de la SAVA (Dr Thio Rosin Fulgence)

    NGO partners: INDRI (Jean-Philippe Palasi), DLC SAVA (Dr James Herrera), TB-SE (Dr Jean Baptiste Ramanamanjato), E-RECODEV (Prof Hery Lisy Tiana Ranarijaona)

    Funding: Solution-oriented Research for Development (SOR4D) program of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

    Duration: 2024-2027

    More information: https://www.sor4d.ch/en/CcUKFvxmyxTGVDL0/project

  • The role of nature for human well-being in the Kilimanjaro Social-Ecological System (Kili-SES)

    Across the world, and increasing demands for natural resources leads to the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, mostly driven by land-use, climate and governance change. A key global challenge is, thus, to develop sustainable relationships between people and nature.

    Addressing this pressing topic requires social-ecological research toward understanding major components of the feedback loop between nature and people, including biodiversity, nature’s contributions to people, human well-being, governance and indirect and direct anthropogenic drivers. However, such integrative social-ecological research approaches are still in their infancy. The DFG-funded research unit “The role of nature for human well-being in the Kilimanjaro Social-Ecological System” (Kili-SES) addresses these challenges at Kilimanjaro, an excellent study region with uniquely large environmental gradients and an unusual variety of stakeholder groups. 

    In synthesis subproject SP7 “Synthesis – Kilimanjaro as an integrated Social-Ecological System”, we will integrate the information gained in SP1-6 to address synergies and trade-offs between components of biodiversity, Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) and multiple constituents of well-being of major stakeholders, to address the natural and social drivers of these relations at the landscape-scale, and to identify opportunities for future decision-making.

    My role phase ll: Co-PI of the DFG Research Unit “The role of nature for human well-being in the Kilimanjaro Social-Ecological System”

    My role in phase l: Postdoctoral Researcher SP7 “Synthesis – Kilimanjaro as an integrated Social-Ecological System”

    Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) / Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

    Duration: 2021-2025 (Phase l); 2025-2029 (Phase ll)

    More information: https://kili-ses.senckenberg.de/en