CITIZEN-SDSS: Promoting nature-based solutions in degraded landscapes of the Philippines

Background and Objective

The remaining Philippine forest landscapes cover 24% of the country's land area. They are characterized by a high level of endemism but at the same time are threatened by deforestation and forest degradation with long-lasting negative impacts on the ecosystem services they provide. Nature-based solutions encompass a wide range of measures such as forest conservation, reforestation and restoration and can support local livelihoods through community woodlots or agroforestry. They have the potential to safeguard the Philippine’s remaining forest landscapes and to support national wood demands which are currently sustained by industrial timber plantations and imports.

The project CITIZEN-SDSS approaches this gap by combining participatory stakeholder elucidations together with geographic information systems (GIS) and dynamic spatially-explicit modeling both together referred to as spatial decision support systems (SDSS). It develops methodological approaches for making projections on long-term sustainable forest management pathways to support local livelihoods while fostering nature-based solutions at landscape-level. This is important because decision making processes require approaches that are context-sensitive while grounded on scientific rigor.

Target Group

Policy, science, relevant stakeholders of study landscapes, regional and national-level of the Philippines and similar areas of transition 

Approach

Focusing on four case study landscapes in Northern Luzon and Eastern Visayas (each approx. 80-100 km² per landscape), CITIZEN-SDSS analyses future scenarios of landscape management and their impact on ecosystem services (e.g., crop production and wood production, flood protection) using dynamic and spatially-explicit modelling in a co-design and bottom-up process with local communities and stakeholders.

The project develops a methodological framework that relies on a citizen science-driven approach building on bottom-up stakeholder elucidations and open science spatial decision support systems (SDSS), including geographic information systems (GIS) and spatially-explicit land use modelling. It relies on different data types based on household surveys and key informant interviews, focus group discussions, in situ assessments, secondary information from open data repositories and publicly-available information from the LaForeT project.

Our Research Questions

Participatory and scenario-driven land use planning:

• Are there trade-offs and conflicting demands (e.g. land/ resource use conflicts, unclear land tenure and jurisdictional responsibilities) among different stakeholders that need to be solved to ensure long-term sustainable land use management?
• Which ecosystem services or evolving land degradation challenges will deserve attention and have to be prioritised in current and future land use planning?
• Do existing inconsistencies in current policy frameworks or management plans hinder sustainable land use management now and in the future?

Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS):

• What type of normative or deductive information is required for future land use planning by stakeholder groups at different administrative levels (village, municipality, province, region)?
• What are the technological/ socio-economics barriers/ needs for adopting SDSS at local- and regional-level?
• Which SDSS approaches are more appropriate for a use in infrastructure-poor situations (e.g. no internet signal)?