Valuing the Arc Home

Linking Science With Stakeholders To Sustain Natural Capital

Valuing the Arc is an international, collaborative, research programme, involving experts from: five UK-based universities (University of Cambridge; University of East Anglia; University ofYork; University of Leeds; and, Cranfield University); two Tanzanian universities (University of Dar es Salaam and Sokoine University of Agriculture); the WWF Tanzania Programme Office; and, the Natural Capital Project in the USA, through WWF-US.

UK Team

Tanzania Team

Prof Shadrack Mwakalila
Prof Pantaleon Munishi
Prof George Kajembe
Prof Rogers Malimbwi
Prof Seif Madoffe
Dr Kassim Kulindwa
Dr Boniface Mbilinyi
Prof Felix Mtalo
George Jambiya
Masters Students

Natural Capital Project Team

Dr Taylor Ricketts
Dr Robin Naidoo

UK Team
	Prof Andrew Balmford - Principal Investigator University of Cambridge Andrew is Principal Investigator on the Valuing the Arc programme. His main research interests are in systematic planning, the economics of conservation, evaluating the success of conservation interventions, and exploring how conservation efforts might best be reconciled with other activities, especially in developing countries. Andrew has worked in Africa since 1986.	Top
	Dr Neil Burgess - Programme Coordinator University of Cambridge and WWF-US Neil is the Programme Coordinator of the Valuing the Arc programme, based in Cambridge University. He also works for WWF US and has previously worked in Tanzania, UK and Denmark on a variety of conservation and development projects. His main interests are on protected areas, biodiversity pattern and priorities, and the links between ecosystem services, biodiversity and human development.	Top
	Dr Julian Bayliss - Programme Coordinator and Analyst University of Cambridge Julian is Programme Coordinator (shared with Neil Burgess) and Analyst on the Valuing the Arc programme, based at the Conservation Science Group, Cambridge University. Julian is an experienced conservation scientist and landscape ecologist, and has spent much of his career working on projects in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, and South Africa. His work focuses on protected area management, human wildlife conflict resolution, ecological modelling, and ecological monitoring, with particular interest in African ecology, especially in the conservation of high altitude mountains (>1500m) and tropical wet forest ecosystems. Julian also has a background in GIS modelling towards biodiversity action planning both in the UK and Africa as well as the use of remote sensing in the production of land use databases.	Top
	Prof Rhys Green University of Cambridge and RSPB Rhys's research concerns the effects of human land use and conservation management on populations of birds. He is particularly interested in quantifying and modelling the effects of agricultural management, disturbance, illegal killing and conservation measures on the demography of bird populations and using the insights this provides to devise conservation programmes. Rhys also works on the effects of climate change on bird distributions.	Top
	Prof Kerry Turner University of East Anglia Kerry is Director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) and Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of East Anglia. Kerry specialises in environmental economics, coastal zone and wetland management, conservation economics and waste management research. In 2000 Kerry received a CBE for his services to sustainable development.	Top
	Prof Sue White Cranfield University Sue is the hydrology lead for the Valuing the Arc project and also acts as hydrology advisor to the Natural Capital Project. Sue is a Civil Engineer with a Geography PhD and 30 years of international experience. Her work focuses on catchment scale monitoring and management of water, with a particular emphasis on water quality and sediment. Sue holds the Chair in Integrated Catchment Management at Cranfield and is Head of the Integrated Environmental Systems Institute.	Top
	Prof Jon Lovett University of York Jon is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Director of the Centre for Ecology, Law and Policy at the University of York, England. He is associate editor of the African Journal of Ecology and has spent more than 12 years living and working in developing countries on a wide range of projects and has published extensively on natural resource management.	Top
	Dr Doug Yu University of East Anglia Doug is a tropical ecologist with primary interests in cooperation and biological conservation. His work on the Valuing the Arc project focuses on the ecotourism module. On the pure side, Doug tries to find and test mechanisms that allow the evolutionary persistence of cooperation between species, despite the presence of cheating. On the applied side, he works on the design and discovery of conservation interventions that are effective in low-governance environments, with emphases on indigenous land rights and ecotourism as examples of already-existing institutions that can be used to stabilise land use.	Top
	Dr Ruth Swetnam University of Cambridge Ruth is a geographer and GIS specialist, interested in the application of spatial modelling to environmental processes at a range of spatial and temporal scales (local, national and regional). Her main research interests lie in the fields of landscape ecology, historical geography, land use change and environmental information. Ruth previously worked at the National Remote Sensing Centre, the British Antarctic Survey, and most recently spent 14 years at the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology where she built GIS databases to investigate ecological processes relevant to both fauna and flora. Ruth is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.	Top
	Dr Andreas Kontoleon University of Cambridge Dr. Andreas Kontoleon is a University lecturer at the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. He holds a PhD in Economics from UCL and his areas of expertise include biodiversity economics, non-market valuation and applied welfare economics.	Top
	Dr Jouni Paavola University of Leeds Dr Jouni Paavola is Reader in Sustainability in the Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, the University of Leeds. His ongoing research examines the role of institutions and social justice in environmental governance, particularly in the governance of biodiversity and climate change. In addition to participating in the Valuing the Arc project, Jouni leads the contribution of the Sustainability Research Institute to a Marie Curie Research Training Network on Multi-level Governance of Natural Resources: Tools and Processes for Water and Biodiversity Governance in Europe . Earlier he was a Senior Research Associate at theCentre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.	Top
	Biniam B. Ashagre Cranfield University Biniam is a Research Assistant at Cranfield University working within the Valuing the Arc project. He completed his first degree in Civil Engineering at Arba Minch University and his Masters degree in Integrated Watershed Management and Hydrology at Cornell University. His previous research experience focused on modelling atmospheric water systems, surface and subsurface water systems and assessing the impact of different management practices and climate change impacts on these systems. Biniam�s role at Cranfield is modelling the hydrological process of catchments in the Eastern Arc Mountains and delivering the model outputs for current conditions and altered land use and climate scenarios to inform ecological and biodiversity, domestic water supply and irrigation studies.	Top
	Dr Brendan Fisher University of East Anglia Brendan has training in environmental engineering, natural sciences and economics. He completed an MSc at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University in 2001 and a PhD at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. His main research is on ecosystems services - how they are produced, utilized and governed across landscapes. For the Valuing the Arc program he is involved in the governance, valuation and scenario building modules.	Top
	Dr Sian Morse-Jones University of East Anglia Sian is a post-doctoral researcher at CSERGE, University of East Anglia. Her work on Valuing the Arc focuses on the economic valuation of ecosystem services, including, carbon, hydrological services, timber, non-timber forest products and biodiversity. Her main research interests include: the economic valuation of environmental goods and services, in particular, the application of stated preference techniques to value public preferences for tropical biodiversity amongst local and distant beneficiaries.	Top
	Dr Marije Schaafsma University of East Anglia Marije joined the project in March 2010 as a post-doctoral researcher at CSERGE, University of East Anglia. Her main research interests include: the economic valuation of environmental goods and services and the distribution of the benefits across different stakeholders, making a link with poverty. She did her PhD at the Institute of Environmental Studies (IVM, VU Amsterdam) on the use of stated preference techniques to value water quality changes, focusing on spatial aspects. In Valuing the Arc she will be looking at the economic valuation of ecosystem services, starting with non-timber forest products.	Top
	Dr Rob Marchant University of York Rob's main interest is researching processes of environmental change and how these are registered by tropical vegetation, how this may respond in a future of uncertain change and how we can use such information for appropriate policy development. His research covers basic ecological data gathering, accessing sedimentary archives of long term change and developing methods to develop an understanding, at an ecologically sensible timeframe, of the events that have shaped the past, present composition and future composition and distribution of tropical ecosystems. Rob is co-ordinating the York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics (KITE), a Marie-Curie funded Excellence Centre, that is combining palaeoecology, biogeography, phylogenetic and modelling studies to explore relationships between ecosystem dynamics, climate change, and human impacts within East Africa.	Top
	Dr Andrew R. Marshall University of York Since 1998, Andy has been involved in ecology and conservation research in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania. In particular he has been investigating the response of animal and plant communities to environmental and human factors. He is now involved in various conservation projects aiming to better understand and protect the rare species and habitats of this area of international importance for biodiversity. His research under the Valuing the Arc project includes establishment of permanent sample plots for long-term sampling of carbon and species community succession.	Top
	Dr Simon Lewis University of Leeds The main focus of Simon's research is on the impacts and interactions of multiple anthropogenic global change phenomena and tropical forests. He is interested in better understanding how humans are impacting on the 'Earth System', specifically the tropical forest biome.	Top
	Dr Philip Platts University of Cambridge Philip has training in mathematical modelling and natural sciences, and specialises in the quantification and representation of spatial processes in the living environment. Since 2006, he has been involved in conservation science projects in East Africa, with a focus on the bioclimatic drivers of species distributions. For Valuing the Arc, he is involved in the biodiversity, hydrology, timber and scenario-building modules, and is helping to facilitate cross-module synthesis.	Top
	Dr Antje Ahrends University of York Antje's main research interests are conservation biogeography, vegetation ecology and tropical forestry. After a short spell of vegetation research in Patagonia, she worked in sustainable development and conservation projects with for the German BirdLife partner NABU in Kenya, and subsequently researched illegal logging and forest degradation with WWF and TRAFFIC in Tanzania. Following a scholarship at the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre working on 2010 biodiversity indicators, Antje joined the York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics (KITE) for her PhD. For the Valuing the Arc Programme she is looking at patterns in forest disturbances and plant diversity.	Top
	Jonathan Green University of Cambridge Jon is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. His work focuses on how to collect and integrate information on conservation costs and biological processes into conservation planning and ecosystem service valuation. In particular, he is working to developing mechanisms for data-sparse areas that recognize and reduce the various negative impacts that conservation costs have on different groups of people and to find ways to effectively target specific ecological and evolutionary processes in conservation planning. He is supervised by Prof. Andrew Balmford and Prof. Kerry Turner and is supported by a Miriam Rothschild Studentship.	Top
	Simon Willcock University of Leeds Simon's main research interests are the effects of climate and disturbance, both natural and anthropogenic, on tropical forest characteristics. After a short spell working with Operation Wallacea assessing the impact of recreational SCUBA diving on coral reef health, Simon joined the Valuing the Arc Programme for his PhD. For the Valuing the Arc Programme, Simon is involved in both the carbon and the timber modules.	Top
Tanzania Team
	Prof Shadrack Mwakalila - Programme Coordinator WWF Tanzania Programme Office Prof Mwakalila's role in Valuing the Arc is project coordination, research support and to provide the critical linkage between the programme and the relevant policy processes in Tanzania. His main research interests are hydrology and water resources management including institutional, socio-economic and environmental impacts. Prof Mwakalila has a PhD in Applied Sciences: Hydrology, and Masters degrees in water resources engineering and in agricultural engineering.	Top
	Prof Pantaleon Munishi Sokoine University of Agriculture	Top
	Prof George Kajembe Sokoine University of Agriculture	Top
	Prof Rogers Malimbwi Sokoine University of Agriculture Rogers Ernest Malimbwi is Professor in Forestry at Sokoine University of Agriculture. He is a specialist in Forest Resources Assessment, a visiting professor at Makerere University, Uganda and at Bunda Colledge of Africulture, Malawi. Prof Malimbwi has led several forest inventories in Tanzania. In Valuing the Arc Project he is Component Leader in timber resources assessment.
	Prof Seif Madoffe Sokoine University of Agriculture	Top
	Dr Kassim Kulindwa University of Dar es Salaam	Top
	Dr Boniface Mbilinyi Sokoine University of Agriculture Dr Mbilinyi received his Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Engineering at Sokoine University of Agriculture in 1990. He completed his MSc. in Rural and Land Ecology Survey at the International Institute for Aerospace Survey (ITC), Enschede, the Netherlands in 1994. He completed his Ph.D. in natural resource management at the Berlin Technical University, Germany in 2000. Dr Mbilinyi is a member of Soil-Water Management Research Group of the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SWMRG), Soil-Water Management Network of ASARECA (SWMnet) and Tanzania Society of Agricultural Engineering (TSAE). His main research interests include: soil water management, including rainwater harvesting; natural resources management; applied remote sensing and GIS; and, climate variability and change.	Top
	Prof Felix Mtalo University of Dar es Salaam	Top
	George Jambiya WWF Tanzania Programme Office	Top
;	Masters students SUA and UDSM (from second from left) Joseph Makero, Deo Shirima, Christine Mohammed, Birhanu Zemadin, Mhujii Kilonzo.	Top
Natural Capital Project Team
	Dr Taylor Ricketts Director, Natural Capital Project and WWF US Taylor is the Director of the Conservation Science Programme at World Wildlife Fund. He leads a broad range of scientific activities at WWF, from conducting research on the scientific principles underlying conservation to providing technical assistance to conservation programs on the ground. Taylor's research currently focuses on economic benefits of conservation to people: the "ecosystem services" provided by forests, wetlands, and other natural areas. He served as a Convening Lead Author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and is co-founder of the Natural Capital Project, a partnership among WWF, The Nature Conservancy, and Stanford University map ecosystem services, estimate their value, and use this information to inform and finance conservation investments.	Top
	Dr Robin Naidoo WWF US Robin's main research interests focus on integrating economic costs and benefits into ecoregion planning and conservation. He has mapped the economic costs and ecosystem values of conservation at both the landscape scale, including sites in Uganda and Paraguay, and at the global scale. Naidoo received his Ph.D from the University of Alberta with the co-supervision of professors in the Biology and Rural Economy departments. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals in both economics and ecology.	Top

Updated 15/09/11