Mass-movement and flood-induced deposits in Lake Ledro, southern Alps, Italy: implications for Holocene palaeohydrology and natural hazards

High-resolution seismic profiles and sediment cores from Lake Ledro combined with soil and riverbed samples from the lake's catchment area are used to assess the recurrence of natural hazards (earthquakes and flood events) in the southern Italian Alps during the Holocene. Two well-developed deltas and a flat central basin are identified on seismic profiles in Lake Ledro. Lake sediments have been finely laminated in the basin since 9000 cal. yr BP and frequently interrupted by two types of sedimentary events (SEs): light-coloured massive layers and dark-coloured graded beds. Optical analysis (quantitative organic petrography) of the organic matter present in soil, riverbed and lacustrine samples together with lake sediment bulk density and grain-size analysis illustrate that light-coloured layers consist of a mixture of lacustrine sediments and mainly contain algal particles similar to the ones observed in background sediments. Light-coloured layers thicker than 1.5 cm in the main basin of Lake Ledro are synchronous to numerous coeval mass-wasting deposits remoulding the slopes of the basin. They are interpreted as subaquatic mass-movements triggered by historical and pre-historical regional earthquakes dated to AD2005, AD1891, AD1045 and 1260, 2545, 2595, 3350, 3815, 4740, 7190, 9185 and 11 495 cal. yr BP. Darkcoloured SEs develop high-amplitude reflections in front of the deltas and in the deep central basin. These beds are mainly made of terrestrial organic matter (soils and lignocellulosic debris) and are interpreted as resulting from intense hyperpycnal flood event. Mapping and quantifying the amount of soil material accumulated in the Holocene hyperpycnal flood deposits of the sequence allow estimating that the equivalent soil thickness eroded over the catchment area reached up to 5mm during the largest Holocene flood events. Such significant soil erosion is interpreted as resulting from the combination of heavy rainfall and snowmelt. The recurrence of flash flood events during the Holocene was, however, not high enough to affect pedogenesis processes and highlight several wet regional periods during the Holocene. The Holocene period is divided into four phases of environmental evolution. Over the first half of the Holocene, a progressive stabilization of the soils present through the catchment of Lake Ledro was associated with a progressive reforestation of the area and only interrupted during the wet 8.2 event when the soil destabilization was particularly important. Lower soil erosion was recorded during the mid-Holocene climatic optimum (8000-4200 cal. yr BP) and associated with higher algal production. Between 4200 and 3100 cal. yr BP, both wetter climate and human activities within the drainage basin drastically increased soil erosion rates. Finally, from 3100 cal. yr BP to the present-day, data suggest increasing and changing human land use.

Pastoral-Farmer conflicts over natural resources in the Lake Rukwa basin : Challenges facing policy makers in Tanzania

Despite the important role that pastoralism plays in supporting rural livelihoods, national economy and diverse ecological services, its capacity to adapt to change is facing many challenges including adverse policy, pastoral-farmer conflicts and recently, adverse climate change. The recurring conflicts between the two groupings are rather a result of a reaction by a community which has been marginalized over the years. A survey to analyze conflicts, institutional frameworks, policies, laws and regulations governing NRs utilization by pastoral and farmers was conducted in the Lake Rukwa Basin in 2008. The study noted violent conflicts and their causes, including the scarcity of NRs, poor local institutional frameworks and deeper socio-cultural aspects among pastoralists and farmers. The conflicts have become major impediments to the developmental activities in the study areas, to a degree that requires intervention. This, therefore, calls for reorganization of local institutional framework, policies, laws and regulations and participatory planning and co-management of NRs as part of conflicts management and sustainable utilization of them. Key words: Policies, Natural Resources, Conflicts, Pastoralism, Institutional frameworks

Natural Resources in 2025 - Implications for Development : Opportunity of a trunaround: An expert reassessment

In recent years developing countries have faced highly dynamic changes affecting their natural resource base and their potential for development. Taking into account these changes in the development context, InfoResources initiated a critical reassessment of the results of InfoResources Trends 2005 and again invited experts from around the world to assess trends that least developed countries are likely to be facing by 2025. The unanimous signal conveyed by the international experts for this assessment is alarming: The degradation of natural resources is progressing. By 2025 it will reach a point where livelihoods in least developing countries will be significantly threatened and an increasing number of agro-ecosystems will lose their capacity to deliver important services. Expected positive social trends will not suffice as leverage to reverse the degradation of natural resources and thus alleviate poverty and hunger. However, the present reassessment clearly reveals that a change in thinking and a shift in paradigms have begun to take place. However, a turnaround can only succeed if the emerging awareness of the need to reorient policy-making and the economy is followed by concrete action. It will be crucial that policies and institutions regain regulating power over greedy economic forces. This reassessment does not claim to be comprehensive. However, the present publication, which synthesises the experts’ inputs, aims at providing food for thought and initiating discussions.

Coupled human and natural system dynamics as key to the sustainability of Lake Victoria's ecosystem services

East Africa’s Lake Victoria provides resources and services to millions of people on the lake’s shores and abroad. In particular, the lake’s fisheries are an important source of protein, employment, and international economic connections for the whole region. Nonetheless, stock dynamics are poorly understood and currently unpredictable. Furthermore, fishery dynamics are intricately connected to other supporting services of the lake as well as to lakeshore societies and economies. Much research has been carried out piecemeal on different aspects of Lake Victoria’s system; e.g., societies, biodiversity, fisheries, and eutrophication. However, to disentangle drivers and dynamics of change in this complex system, we need to put these pieces together and analyze the system as a whole. We did so by first building a qualitative model of the lake’s social-ecological system. We then investigated the model system through a qualitative loop analysis, and finally examined effects of changes on the system state and structure. The model and its contextual analysis allowed us to investigate system-wide chain reactions resulting from disturbances. Importantly, we built a tool that can be used to analyze the cascading effects of management options and establish the requirements for their success. We found that high connectedness of the system at the exploitation level, through fisheries having multiple target stocks, can increase the stocks’ vulnerability to exploitation but reduce society’s vulnerability to variability in individual stocks. We describe how there are multiple pathways to any change in the system, which makes it difficult to identify the root cause of changes but also broadens the management toolkit. Also, we illustrate how nutrient enrichment is not a self-regulating process, and that explicit management is necessary to halt or reverse eutrophication. This model is simple and usable to assess system-wide effects of management policies, and can serve as a paving stone for future quantitative analyses of system dynamics at local scales.

Capitalisation of Experiences of the Swiss Support to Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (SMNR) in Bulgaria

Following the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, Bulgaria has undergone dramatic political, economic and social transformations. The transition process of the past two decades was characterized by several reforms to support democratisation of the political system and the functioning of a free-market economy. Since 1992, Switzerland has been active in Bulgaria providing assistance to the transition process, with support to Sustainable Management of Natural Resources (SMNR) starting in 1995. The SMNR Capitalisation of Experiences (CapEx) took place between March and September 2007, in the context of SDC phasing out its programmes in Bulgaria by the end of 2007 due to the country’s accession to the European Union. The CapEx exercise has culminated in the identification of 17 lessons learned. In the view of the CapEx team, many of these lessons are relevant for countries that are in the process of joining the EU, facing similar democratisation challenges as Bulgaria. Overall, the Swiss SMNR projects have been effective entry points to support areas that are crucial to democratic transitions, namely participation in public goods management, decentralisation, human capacity development in research and management, and preparation for EU membership. The specificity of the Swiss support stems from an approach that combines a long-term commitment with a clear thematic focus (forestry, biodiversity conservation and organic agriculture). The multistakeholder approach and diversification of support between local, regional and national levels are also important elements that contributed to make a difference in relation to other donors supporting the Bulgarian transition. At the institutional level, there are a number of challenges where the contribution of SMNR activities was only modest, namely improving the legal framework and creating more transparency and accountability, both of which are time and resource-consuming processes. In addition, the emergence of competent and sustainable non-government organisations (NGOs) is a complex process that requires support to membership based organisations, a challenge that was hardly met in the case of SMNR. Finally, reform of government institutions involved in management of natural resources is difficult to achieve via project support only, as it requires leverage and commitment at the level of policy dialogue. At the programme management level, the CapEx team notes that corruption was not systematically addressed in SMNR projects, indicating that more attention should be given to this issue at the outset of any new project.

The SOLUTIONS project: challenges and responses for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management.

SOLUTIONS (2013 to 2018) is a European Union Seventh Framework Programme Project (EU-FP7). The project aims to deliver a conceptual framework to support the evidence-based development of environmental policies with regard to water quality. SOLUTIONS will develop the tools for the identification, prioritisation and assessment of those water contaminants that may pose a risk to ecosystems and human health. To this end, a new generation of chemical and effect-based monitoring tools is developed and integrated with a full set of exposure, effect and risk assessment models. SOLUTIONS attempts to address legacy, present and future contamination by integrating monitoring and modelling based approaches with scenarios on future developments in society, economy and technology and thus in contamination. The project follows a solutions-oriented approach by addressing major problems of water and chemicals management and by assessing abatement options. SOLUTIONS takes advantage of the access to the infrastructure necessary to investigate the large basins of the Danube and Rhine as well as relevant Mediterranean basins as case studies, and puts major efforts on stakeholder dialogue and support. Particularly, the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) working groups, International River Commissions, and water works associations are directly supported with consistent guidance for the early detection, identification, prioritisation, and abatement of chemicals in the water cycle. SOLUTIONS will give a specific emphasis on concepts and tools for the impact and risk assessment of complex mixtures of emerging pollutants, their metabolites and transformation products. Analytical and effect-based screening tools will be applied together with ecological assessment tools for the identification of toxicants and their impacts. The SOLUTIONS approach is expected to provide transparent and evidence-based candidates or River Basin Specific Pollutants in the case study basins and to assist future review of priority pollutants under the WFD as well as potential abatement options.