The first summer school is in 2020 is planned for a duration of seven (7) days. As the inaugural event in a series of three summer schools, its orientation will be significantly appropriated to tackling conceptual issues on landscape ecology and the SDG Agenda particularly in the context of tropical Sub Saharan Africa (SSA).
It will entail a mixture of high level captivating presentations from experienced scholars, oral and poster presentations from junior researchers, campfire and dialogue sessions, group sessions, field visits and an excursion. Thus, the programme will be initiated with an overview presentation and discussion of the complex issues, processes and contexts of landscape ecology in the development path and SDG agenda for Africa.
The presentation will highlight the states, trajectories and underpinnings unravelling the historical but also projecting futuristic situations under varied socioecological conditions. Current contestations in landscape ecology and sustainability, emerging knowledge, tools and technologies for accelerating the path to resilience will be addressed during the summer school.
A two days field excursion will be organized to mountain Elgon in Eastern Uganda, which is located about 260 kilometers from Kampala. Mt. Elgon presents a great opportunity for studying ecological, sustainability and development issues, owing to
- the landscape, climate, soil and vegetative diversity
- existent stressor and opportunities manifesting inform of perpetual geohazards and agricultural productivity respectively
- population structure and the attendant livelihood strategies
- scientific and development work that has been done by different agencies including IUCN, UNDP, WCS, National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), Makerere University among other. Moreover, Makerere University has a longstanding collaboration with the District Local Governments (DLGs) on Mt. Elgon. Hence, the we will leverage from some existing data, information, knowledge and infrastructure from the above agencies to advance the goal(s) of the summer school.
In the field excursion, the summer school will address complex issues of socioecological connectivity underpinning geohazards, natural resource conflicts, productivity and ecological changes. The participants will collect data and information which will be subsequently analyzed in a multidisciplinary mode, presented and discussed during a plenary. Moreover, the axis from Kampala to Mt. Elgon presents multiple opportunities with a gradient of ecological, social and economic aspects in the SDG agenda which will be studied and discussed by the participants.
The first summer school will cover the following topics
- Introduction: Landscape ecology in the Anthropocene: Perspectives, Contexts, States in SSA
- The scientific niche(s) of landscape ecology in the Sustainable Development Goals. Ecological sciences and territorial governance.
- Socio Ecological Systems (SES) under changing conditions. Cultivating plausible paths to resilience
- Harnessing and integration of Geo-Information Science and Citizens Science for systems resilience and sustainability
- Livelihood and ecological security: Tackling footprints, tradeoffs and interfaces in fragile systems
- Case study presentations by participant premised on their research work and experiences
- Field excursion on Mt. Elgon
- Summer school wrap up, evaluation and planning for the next event