NEWS
2nd Garden Route Interface Meeting: Call for abstracts
The Garden Route Interface meeting is an annual event taking place in the Garden Route, providing a forum for researchers and practitioners interested in better understanding and managing (or navigating) SES and their complex interactions and feedbacks. The 2017 meeting attracted 75 delegates and important discussion themes included the establishment of long-term social-ecological research sites, methods for and challenges in studying SES, sustainable resource use, adaptations and transformations in SES, ecosystem services and benefit flows, ways in which people connect with nature, and advice for bridging science-management divides. This year [...]
Call for applications: Honours fellowship in private land conservation 2018
The Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (CST) at Stellenbosch University is offering an honours project to measure the extent to which private protected areas in South Africa are resilient in preventing land use change (i.e., shifts away from natural landscapes to degraded landscapes, farming, urbanization, mining, etc.). This project will use data from an existing spatial database of private protected areas in South Africa, together with existing land cover maps and remote sensing. The successful candidate will be co-supervised by Dr Alta De Vos at Rhodes University, Dr Hayley [...]
Call for participation in a SES modeling workshop
The ARS Africae project (https://www.ars-africae.org/) is running an interdisciplinary workshop on ecological modelling at Wits Rural Facility (near Hoedspruit) from the 27th Feb to the 2nd March 2018. This workshop will introduce multi-agent modeling as an approach for dealing with complex SES; as well as vegetation modeling. This workshop should appeal to participants interested in ecological modelling, as well as stakeholders involved in management. If you are interested, contact Karen Bradshaw (k.bradshaw@ru.ac.za), stating your area of interest and any specific topics for discussion. Funding is also available, for more information [...]
Masters scholarship opportunity at ICLEI Africa
ICLEI Africa, supported by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is offering a Masters Scholarship for 2018 and 2019. The project, funded by the IDRC, to which the Masters students’ research will contribute, is called: Improved Municipal Planning in African CiTies − IMPACT − for a climate resilient urban future, which will be implemented in Malawi and Zimbabwe from 2018 – 2020. The overall objective of this research is to identify and understand how to enable IMPACT mechanisms that contribute to climate resilient development in African cities. IMPACT mechanisms [...]
2 Full-time M.Ed Bursaries at Rhodes for 2018
The SARChI Chair in Transformative Social Learning and Green Skills Learning Pathways at Rhodes University, located in the Environmental Learning Research Centre in the Faculty of Education in Grahamstown, South Africa (see www.ru.ac.za/elrc), has two full time Masters in Education scholarships available for motivated, high achieving scholars with an interest in the above areas. The researchers will be required to undertake inter-disciplinary research, with emphasis on social learning in a food and water security management context. The researchers will be required to undertake rigorous, theoretically strong qualitative research focusing on [...]
RELATED NEWS
ARUA-CD/ACDI Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Climate Resilient African Landscapes (CRAL) The University of Cape Town invites black South Africans interested in working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (PDRF) with a focus in climate change and resilience to apply for the ARUA-CD Postdoctoral Research Fellowship position. The value of the fellowship is ZAR 250,000-300,000 depending on experience and is tenable for 12 months with the possibility of extension for further years subject to satisfactory progress. We aim to attract exceptional scholars who are academically capable and are committed to serving South Africa and the continent [...]
CST to host international Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS)
From January 2019, PECS will be jointly hosted by the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (CST) at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University in Sweden (SRC). PECS is a Future Earth core project which aims to integrate research on the stewardship of social-ecological systems, the services they generate, and the relationships among biodiversity, ecosystems, human wellbeing, livelihoods, inequality and poverty. The CST has a longstanding and close collaboration with the SRC, and is an obvious choice as an additional regional [...]
PhD opportunity with Living Lands
Together with their partner, Commonland, Living Lands is motivated to develop and employ a relevant monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) approach. Their aim is to improve the means of measuring the real impact of the work being done on the landscapes. The Baviaanskloof and Langkloof catchments will be the study sites for this first iteration. The current MEL approach which is used by Commonland and Living Lands, aims to measure 4 Returns (social capital, financial capital, natural capital and inspiration) in 3 landscape zones over 20 years. The [...]
Scholarships available for the 2019 ACDI Masters in Climate Change
The African Climate and Development Initiative has two scholarships available for 2019: one 1-year Coursework, and one 2-year Dissertation Masters in Climate Change and Development. Please see advert below for: ARUA-CD scholarship advert Coursework ARUA-CD scholarship advert Dissertation Closing date: 31 October 2018 No late, incomplete or inappropriate applications will be accepted. Please contact the course convener, Marieke Norton: marieke.norton@uct.ac.za
Postdoc opportunity: Exploring food systems transformations in Africa’s rapidly changing cities
The Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) seeks applications for a postdoctoral fellowship on African city food systems. The research forms part of an international collaborative project under the auspices of LEAP-Agri and includes researchers from South Africa, Uganda, Netherlands and Belgium. The project aims to promote sustainable and nutrition-secure city food systems by developing knowledge and tools for local and national development planning. The research will be undertaken in two case studies (Cape Town and Kampala) and includes: characterizing city food systems through identifying [...]