Academic and research capacity development in Earth observation for environmental management

Abstract

Sustainable environmental management is one of the key development goals of the 21st century. The importance of Earth observation (EO) for addressing current environmental problems is well recognized. Most developing countries are highly susceptible to environmental degradation; however, the capacity to monitor these changes is predominantly located in the developed world. Decades of aid and effort have been invested in capacity development (CD) with the goal of ensuring sustainable development. Academics, given their level of freedom and their wider interest in teaching and knowledge transfer, are ideally placed to act as catalyst for capacity building. In this letter, we make a novel investigation into the extent to which the EO academic research community is engaged in capacity development. Using the Web of Knowledge publication database (http://wok.mimas.ac.uk), we examined the geographical distribution of published EO related research (a) by country as object of research and (b) by authors' country of affiliation. Our results show that, while a significant proportion of EO research (44%) has developing countries as their object of research, less than 3% of publications have authors working in, or affiliated to, a developing country (excluding China, India and Brazil, which not only are countries in transition, but also have well established EO capacity). These patterns appear consistent over the past 20 years. Despite the wide awareness of the importance of CD, we show that significant progress on this front is required. We therefore propose a number of recommendations and best practices to ease collaboration and open access.

Woody encroachment and forest degradation in sub-Saharan Africa's woodlands and savannas 1982–2006

“…These biases may be exacerbated in Africa, as mixed tree-grass systems dominate (it is the location of two-thirds of the world's savanna [14]); historical ground data are especially rare; and the capacity of environmental and forestry departments to perform mapping & 2013 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution tends to be limited, with the majority of remote-sensingbased science being performed by scientists from more developed nations, largely independently of local researchers [15] (though some studies are an exception to this [16,17]).…”

Bringing social and cultural considerations into environmental management for vulnerable coastal communities: Responses to environmental change in Xuan Thuy National Park, Nam Dinh Province, Vietnam

“…In keeping with social science thinking on different knowledge systems that exist globally (de Sousa Santos, 2014), the involvement of a team of Vietnam-based scholars was crucial to ensure the study's research design, data collection, data analysis, collation of findings and development of appropriate policy recommendations were all informed by rich contextual knowledge. The unequal power relations that can exist within the process of producing knowledge made it all the more important to involve such researchers with significant knowledge of the Vietnamese social, political and environmental situation in data collection, analysis and the writing-up process as far as possible (see Cassells et al, 2011). Limited time available for data collection 'in the field' and for face-to-face collaborative working to make sense of (and translate) Vietnamese-language data also meant the involvement of a relatively large team of scholars across the research process was necessary to collect sufficiently rich data and analyse it in-depth with the resources available.…”

“…Following , it is thus imperative to acknowledge that a number of people were crucial in producing the knowledge reported here. Cassells et al (2011) argue this is particularly important when undertaking research with collaborators in a 'Global South' context, whose local knowledges and infrastructure may be vital to being able to undertake research in practice. Given that this is the case for our research too, we heed Cassells et al's call to collaborate fully with local scientists so that they too may be listed as authors on the final outputs.…”

WSN infrastructure for green campus development

“…Universities around the world, including in Indonesia, have had efforts to reduce carbon emissions, manage and improve the development of their sustainable campus [1] [2][3] [4].…”