Research

The BOKU University, in collaboration with Caritas Austria, focuses on sustainable ecosystem management and climate change mitigation in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan. This interdisciplinary project integrates scientific research, community-based approaches, and innovative technologies to address socio-ecological challenges. The primary objectives include improving ecosystem health through conceptual modeling, enhancing community capacity for sustainable practices, and contributing to adaptive management frameworks. Key activities involve the introduction of fuel-efficient stoves to 1,250 households, reducing firewood consumption and CO2 emissions, and piloting sustainable brick production using the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) method. These interventions aim to mitigate deforestation, promote sustainable land use, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 14,860 tons over 5.5 years. Additionally, the project emphasizes reforestation by planting mango trees and establishing community-based nurseries, fostering ecological, economic, and socio-cultural benefits. Scientific research underpins the project, employing tools such as the Drivers–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework and adaptive management principles. This research explores human-induced stressors, indicators, and the impacts of climate change on local ecosystems. Participatory methods, including stakeholder interviews, workshops, and strategic simulations, ensure community involvement and knowledge dissemination. The project aligns with multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including poverty reduction, gender equality, climate action, and sustainable consumption. It also integrates teaching and research opportunities for BOKU students, contributing to knowledge development and capacity building. By fostering partnerships between academia, local communities, and NGOs, the initiative aims to create scalable, sustainable solutions for ecosystem management and socio-economic development in vulnerable regions. This research not only addresses immediate environmental and social challenges but also provides a replicable model for sustainable development in similar contexts globally.

The climate crisis affects already today in particular marginalized groups and will even stronger affect young people in the future. Both groups are not well represented in global climate political negotiation processes and lack modes of participation on the local scale. While education provides scientific knowledge, it lacks imagination to build collectively livable futures. Based on different leverage points, i.e. climate data, the political-institutional setting, actor’s strategies and values as inner and collective images, we explore ideas and concrete strategies for responsible and caring (co-)living in and beyond the city of Salzburg. Together with marginalized young people, activists, artists, educators, social workers and the city administration the project aims to develop climate-social futures through shared imagination and shaping scenarios. We address three questions: 1. What are the needs, interests, strategies and visions of marginalized young citizens and activists in Salzburg when addressing the climate-social crisis in its multi-level dimension? 2. How can shared imaginations of climate-social futures in a diverse community, including marginalized citizens, be created together with arts-based methods? 3. What are the social, institutional and political barriers and possibilities for shaping and implementing climate-social futures? We will examine existing leverage points (understanding of global climate data in its local context, political strategies, needs and values as inner pictures) combined with climate-social future scenarios that are based on imaginative knowledge. We will co-create these scenarios with young people through participatory action research. We will use arts-based approaches which are strongly interwoven with our interdisciplinary and participatory research design. This will provide us with knowledge in the co-creation of climate-social futures and methodologically in the understanding of leverage points.

Africa is among the regions that will be hardest hit by the climate catastrophe, with devastating impacts on livelihoods, food insecurity and human health. Yet, the continent only contributes 3.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and receives only a tiny share of global climate funding. The connection between land and climate is still not receiving adequate attention. The combined effects of increased droughts, desertification, floods, and soil erosion are anticipated to lead to the loss of agricultural and grazing lands, and increased conflicts over resources. Adding to these pressures, the lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are increasingly targeted by transnational corporations: they contain critical minerals for the ecological transition, and their forests and rangelands are seen as strategic reservoirs of carbon to be maximized for carbon offsetting, leading to a new wave of land grabbing. In this context, it is key to keep Indigenous Peoples and local communities on the land, protect their human rights and communal land ownership, and support their efforts to adapt to climate change. While climate projects may create opportunities for women, climate action may lead to an additional care burden for women who are often the main “beneficiaries”or targets of climate interventions (planting trees, protecting water springs, …). At the same time, women remain excluded from land and climate governance and are likely to be more impacted by the climate crisis than their male counterparts. Women are also more affected by loss of agricultural land as they rely on access to land as key means of food production for the family or as a source of income. Land rights, gender equality and climate change are connected in intricate but underexplored ways. Since 2020, the 4 grassroots organizations engaged in the research project on Women’s Right to Communal Land - CNOP-G (Guinea), COFERSA (Mali), KPL (Kenya) and PWC (Tanzania) - have documented and supported efforts to advance women’s right to land within communal land governance systems. In this next research phase, we will further explore the land, gender and climate nexus and refine our collective understanding of women’s right to land in the context of the climate crisis.