Capital naturel | EPFL Graph Search

Le capital naturel fait référence aux ressources telles que minéraux, plantes, animaux, air, pétrole de la biosphère terrestre, vus comme moyens de production de biens et services écologiques : production d'oxygène, épuration naturelle de l'eau, prévention de l'érosion, pollinisation des cultures, et même fourniture de services récréatifs, y compris les « services de beauté des paysages ». Le capital naturel constitue une approche d'estimation de la valeur d'un écosystème, une alternative à la vue plus traditionnelle selon laquelle la nature et la vie non-humaine constituent des ressources naturelles passives sans production propre : le capital naturel s'adjoint donc au terme de capital productif. Il s'agit d'une expression quelquefois employée dans certaines analyses économiques qui cherchent à prendre en compte les objectifs de développement durable. D'autres approches existent, comme l'empreinte écologique et l'éco-efficacité. Des études montrent que certaines des composantes du capital naturel mondial décroissent depuis quelques décennies, parfois de façon alarmante. Chez les physiocrates, la terre était considérée comme le seul facteur réel de création de richesse. L'agriculture, qui représentait alors une part très importante de l'activité économique, était pour eux la seule activité productive, l'industrie et le commerce étant classés comme activités stériles, car elles ne font que transformer des matières premières produites par l'agriculture. Dans l'école classique et dans l'école néoclassique, le facteur « terre » n'apparaît pas explicitement dans les facteurs de production. Ces écoles identifient les facteurs capital et travail. La production reposait alors de plus en plus sur les installations industrielles, capital de production que l'on peut augmenter par l'investissement, alors que l'agriculture à laquelle se référaient les physiocrates perdait de l'importance. La « terre » est alors vue comme immuable. La terre n'est pas considérée comme facteur de production, et donc pas comme du capital.

The challenges of impact evaluation: Attempting to measure the effectiveness of community-based disaster risk management

Anthony Christopher Davison, Nicola Mary Banwell, Silvia Hostettler, Alfredo Rafael Kägi Trejo

Although disaster risk management is becoming increasingly important in development cooperation, there is still a lack of robust evidence regarding its effectiveness. Few studies based on a counterfactual have been conducted in the fields of disaster management and disaster risk reduction. This article describes a methodological approach to enabling more rigorous evidence-based decision-making in community-based disaster risk mitigation, and notably for assessing the degree to which it increases preparedness for the adverse effects of hazards in vulnerable communities. The effects of actions designed to reduce disaster-induced loss, damage, injuries, fatalities and resource degradation were evaluated at a Swiss and Honduran Red Cross’ intervention area in Honduras. Our results show that the intervention has had a significant positive effect in three important areas of resilience: knowledge and preparedness (e.g., existence of an early warning system); social cohesion (e.g., community institutions); and management of natural assets (e.g., firewood consumption). Our findings indicate that the intervention program has enhanced the capacities of treated communities to prepare for future hazards and to respond in case of an emergency at both household and community levels.

2020

The Mekong Delta Research Project as a Tool for Building a Pedagogical Approach

Sylvie Tram Nguyen

As an opportunity to discuss “Teaching in Research,” at EDAR’s Fourth Rencontre, I will be sharing my past experience in teaching without a Ph.D. and why I have decided to invest in obtaining a Ph.D. I shall discuss the differences between teaching with and without a Ph.D., and how a Ph.D. would serve to better define my contribution as an educator. Whereas the first part of the paper addresses the questions of the corresponding relationship between teaching and research, the body regards a discussion of the start of my Ph.D. research, and how my topic is currently positioned as a means of bridging the gap between a contextual territory and how it may be reframed to explain a hypothesis or theoretical viewpoint. As an urban designer who quickly transitioned into a career in teaching at university, the extent of my pedagogical approach was limited due to how knowledge was further obtained – through an ad-hoc accumulation of knowledge found in books, journals, and articles. In hindsight, there was a lack of critical knowledge direction and theoretical approach (found in a curriculum), that would offer more guidance and shed light into relevant schools of thought, and pedagogical approaches related to my research interests. Without experiencing the rigor of knowledge building via the Ph.D. research process, a-priori assumptions on pedagogy offered no additional perspectives to a given theory. The paper argues the reason why arriving at a complete Ph.D. research project would allow one to gain the required tools into becoming a more qualified professor. The rigorous and iterative process of re-organizing information to build one’s framing of a situation at hand creates one’s critical stance or hypothesis, whereby to address present and future challenges in the field. A Ph.D. can unlock the tools necessary pedagogically, to build the kind of criticality desirable in an academic. My research topic in the Mekong Delta currently serves as a process for building my pedagogical knowledge and understanding. The Mekong Delta traverses six Asian countries starting from the Tibetan plateau and ending in the South China Sea, which positions it in relation to multiple urban-rural realities. With increasingly unpredictable tropical climates, changing river flows and coastal levels; water resources in South East Asia are increasingly squeezed as nearly 70% of freshwater is channeled into industrial uses in agriculture and food production-related processes. The settlements in the Mekong rely on access to vast landscape resources, including access to water, currently treated as an open and limitless resource. The natural assets of the Delta’s ecological landscape have been increasingly harvested by processes of industrialization and urbanization, resulting in a kind of diffused organization between settlement patterns, water systems, and agricultural fields. The current proposal is a study of the relationship between the peri-urban regions and the Deltaic water systems. Rapid sea-level rise in the Delta is the cause of drought and salination of the once fertile soils. Artificial alterations of the rivers and estuaries are increasingly tempering with the Delta’s ability to naturally support the cultivation of landscapes, significantly decreasing fertile land for agriculture, aquaculture and other food production. The research proposes to territorially reveal the process leading to such detrimental conditions of the Delta and to shed light on reversal processes in adaptation for the future. The research project will only be more applicable as a teaching tool if it bridges the gap between global issues, theoretical concepts and concrete examples found in local realities. The theoretical phenomena in which I am further investigating in the Mekong Delta regards Desakota, defined by Prof. Terry McGee. Moreover, my theoretical perspective and territorial approach are based on Prof. Paola Vigano’s Citta Diffusa model; whereby existing patterns of dispersed urban settlements are rooted in an isotropic valorization of water networks and related ecosystems. These serve as my pedagogical approach and hypothetical position for addressing the Mekong’s territories. An analytical approach to mapping territory is proposed as a means to produce knowledge about how the territory has transformed over time. And the reframing of the currently separate processes of water infrastructure, and Desakota expansion shall be revealed from the local perspective. The hope is that the first-hand experience gained in building the thesis project would foster a critical understanding, through the process of linking a concrete territorial situation to existing urban theory. A completed Ph.D. would offer a means of teaching specifically based on my pedagogical approach; with a newfound theoretical perspective whereby to frame and deconstruct existing theoretical works in the field.

2019

Natural capital data visualization to promote sustainable decision making

Charlotte Gisèle Weil

In order to develop approaches to manage environmental assets sustainably and take nature more into account in major decisions, natural capital assessments reveal the specific benefits provided by nature. Effective communication, including clear visualization of natural capital assessments results, is crucial to influence decision-makers (make informed and sound decisions). . However, no methodology guidance document yet exists to support analysts in synthesizing their results, and tools are scattered. The present work aims to fill this gap. First, it gathers the existing knowledge on design strategies for displaying complex information through a literature review and surveying analysts in the field. Complex information refers here to the specificities of natural capital data, i.e typically multiple versions of spatial data, pertaining to several objectives and scenarios, accounting for uncertainty. Secondly, this work scopes the gaps in the field by analyzing and prioritizing the visualization needs, through a survey and interviews. These lead to the development of a toolbox to guide analysts in their task of communicating natural capital information. Furthermore, an innovative tool to display natural capital results, combining knowledge from previous points in the form of a user-friendly, ready-to-use (prototype of a) web application is suggested. In an interactive dashboard combining multiple linked views, this tool allows visualization of tradeoffs between objectives, comparison of scenarios and assessment of uncertainty.

2017

The Mekong Delta Research Project as a Tool for Building a Pedagogical Approach

Sylvie Tram Nguyen

2019