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The impact on human health of restoring degraded African drylands
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
This multi-country project aims to establish the health benefits of large-scale land restoration in Africa's Sahel region. We will leverage the Great Green Wall (GGW) of Africa initiative, the largest land restoration effort in the world, as a natural experimental system. Drylands host nearly 40% of the global population. The GGW and other similar land-restoration efforts currently underway around the world are set to reshape landscapes and the lived experiences of billions of people globally. Such restoration efforts are increasingly being regarded as potential 'Nature-based solutions' as the world seeks to confront and adapt to the triple challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and food security. At present however, human health considerations play a very minor role in the design and implementation of restoration projects, including the GGW. This project aims to fill this critical gap, to ensure restoration projects can maximally serve human health alongside other objectives. We will use a novel combination of activities spanning 4 integrated work packages to do this. Briefly, WP1 will comprise a literature review and community consultations to develop an iteratively refined, gender-sensitive logic model describing the causal linkages between dryland restoration and human health. This will guide the project by helping to refine key hypotheses and identify a suitable subset of secondary health outcomes to be evaluated in subsequent WPs. In WP2 we will collate as much existing data as possible for GGW countries to conduct a Sahel-wide village-matched health impact evaluation. The primary outcome to be investigated will be weight-for-age z score (WAZ) of children (0-59 months) as a measure of acute nutritional status. A subset of secondary outcomes in children and women emerging from WP1 as of particular relevance will also be considered. We will compare health outcomes between communities with and without GGW activities to evaluate the health impacts of restoration. WP3 will be a follow-up of WPs1-2 in which we will conduct a more targeted, community-prioritised, village-matched health impact evaluation with primary data collection in three focal countries (The Gambia, Senegal, Burkina Faso). Based on our current understanding of the linkages between health and environmental restoration, these are likely to include other anthropometric measures (e.g., height-for-age z score, HAZ), and outcomes reflecting risk factors on the nutrition, infection and mental health / well-being pathways. We will again focus on children and non-pregnant women. Some secondary outcomes require collection of biological samples from children for laboratory analysis. Follow-up sampling will give information on seasonal effects and an opportunity to compare child growth over a 12-14 month period between groups with and without GGW interventions. WP4 comprises a set of integrating tasks aimed at marrying the results of the health impact evaluations with current activities guiding the design and implementation of the GGW and understanding the role of and benefits to health of completing the GGW. With an anticipated cost of around $50 billion to reach its 100 million hectare target of restored drylands by 2030, it is essential for health impacts (benefits and costs) to be brought into existing decision-support tools for applied purposes. We will do this via a combination of steps from health economic evaluation, cost-benefit and trade-off analysis, and systems and scenario modelling in the context of a changing climate. In all WPs, our Project Partners and Scientific Steering Committee will further ensure local relevance and streamline the research-to-practice pipeline, enhancing impact.
Sustainable, Holistic and Inclusive Energy Systems for Well-being (SHINE)
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Communities are built around shared resource of commodities. Today, no commodity is more important than energy. Energy access, clean energy and energy cost link multiple Sustainable Development Goals, including climate action, health and gender equality. Communities with clean, cost-effective and reliable energy sources can thrive, supporting education, healthcare and equal gender opportunities. Conversely, communities without clean energy access must rely on labour intensive, dirty fuels for lighting, cooking and heating. These have detrimental impacts on well-being for hundreds of millions of people globally. Energy systems are often designed with linear goals (e.g. number of households connected to a grid) without consideration of just, effective, energy transitions. This marginalises communities: linear goals do not align with community needs, working directly against the Ayrton theme of Inclusive Energy and Leave No One Behind. This proposed research addresses this Ayrton theme, creating a transdisciplinary well-being design framework that considers socio-economic, environmental, health and technological conditions, to improve inclusion and sustainability of energy access interventions. Focussing on The Gambia and Ghana, this research will answer the question: To what extent does the utilisation of a well-being framework act as a driver for sustainable energy system design and enable an inclusive energy transition? Local research institutions MRC Unit The Gambia, University of The Gambia, Mbolo Association, and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana are proposal co-creators and will direct this into relevant Africa-centric research. The following objectives are proposed: Understand success, failure and the well-being impacts of energy interventions by reviewing and mapping previous energy access initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. Create a holistic well-being framework, utilising transdisciplinary methodologies to transform energy system design (SHINE framework). Pilot the SHINE framework on small-scale energy interventions in energy vulnerable communities in The Gambia and Ghana. Evaluate the usability and outcome of the SHINE framework on overall energy system design. Capacity building and knowledge transfer to local, national, and international stakeholders, to secure scalable, sustainable impact of the SHINE framework. Using a case control methodology, we will pilot the SHINE framework through energy interventions with off-grid communities. Analysis themes of gender and social inclusion; climate; health; policy and economic; and technology will impart the SHINE framework on energy system design. Monitoring, through quantitative and qualitative data collection, will highlight the intervention’s efficacy, scale and performance. The anticipated outcomes of this programme are: Creation of an interdisciplinary well-being framework that drives energy system design for inclusive energy transitions (SDG7.1 7.A). Open datasets (socio-economic, gender and social inclusion variables), reporting energy situations of off-grid communities and the well-being impact of energy interventions (SDG7.1, 7.2, 7.3 7.A). A policy brief, highlighting opportunities of a well-being framework to create an environment for effective, impactful energy interventions (SDG7.B 13.2; 13.B). A technology/knowledge transfer programme to build skills, capacity and capability of stakeholders, local communities and women entrepreneurs (SDG7.A, 13.3, 13.B) SHINE’s impact will enable designers and implementers to incorporate, increase and measure inclusivity, health, sustainability and other multi-dimensional wellbeing impacts. This will provide a clear pathway for just energy transition in The Gambia and Ghana. SHINE will work towards all SDG7 targets, providing a framework for energy service providers to follow, whilst contributing to SDG13 targets for climate action and climate education for adaptation, resilience and reduced impact of changes (13.1,13.3).