Can a combination of University College London’s ExCiteS Group’s and Mapping for Change’s tools (Sapelli, Geokey and Community Maps) and engagement methods enhance more resilient farming practices in Nigeria?
This is the question that we’re trying to answer with eCSAgri, a six-month pilot led by our colleagues at University College London in conjunction with the Nigerian Environmental and Economic Resource Centre (EERC). We’re aiming to support three small communities of Nigerian smallholder farmers in working towards a productivity-enhancing, ecosystem-friendly and climate change resilient farming system: Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA). Our main research objectives are:
- To understand the key indicators for CSA implementation and monitoring in smallholdings within the study area.
- To investigate which land use data the SHFs can capture with an appropriate use of our technology in their social and cultural context.
- To investigate how our combination of digital tools and methods can enhance collaboration and enable authorities and scientists to provide relevant and timely advice to smallholder famers.
Our role
Together with ExCiteS researchers, we will be training the EERC team in the uses, adaptability and applications our technologies. We will support our Nigerian partner in engaging the farmers and stakeholders as well as to co-design and implement the data collection. We will build Community Maps to provide meaningful visualisations of both existing datasets and newly data generated by the farmers. Finally, we will be in charge of the evaluation framework that will provide information about the project impact and success. The results of this project will pave the way for other large-scale research into mapping, visualisation and protocols for Climate Smart Agriculture across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Related Projects
Kampala NOSES; Network for Odour Sensing Empowerment and Sustainability.
Kampala NOSES is a pilot project that seeks to introduce novel ways with which to monitor and record odour issues across Kampala. All key stakeholders, from policy-makers to public sector administrators, from academics to industries and the community at large are needed to create a longer-term vision of implementing new environmental reporting and governance mechanisms.
Citizen Science Used to Map Community Air Quality
In 2009, Mapping for Change supported communities across London to measure and map local air quality. Use of a ‘citizen science’ approach meant local residents in seven locations were able to collect data, then see the real results of their monitoring activities, and subsequently embark on a campaign to see the serious results addressed.
Science in the City 2
The City of London Corporation and Mapping for Change are teaming up once again to conduct a citizen science project to monitor air quality in the capital city and evaluate the recent changes made in the area. The project will seek to understand the impacts that public participation and citizen science have on environmental issues.