Projects

LASEG's research projects reflect the breadth of our expertise and broad-ranging interests: from indigenous peoples' knowledge and biodiversity conservation policies, to environmental history and climate change adaptation. You can find out more about our ongoing and past projects below, among others.

Ongoing projects

April 2022 - March 2025
  • Drought
  • Amazon

Severe droughts reduce river navigability and isolate communities in the Brazilian Amazon. The most recent drought, in 2023, afflicted more than half a million people in the Brazilian Amazon basin, making it one of the most severe droughts ever recorded. The drought was accompanied by enormous fish kills and the deaths of hundreds of river dolphins, all caused by extremely high air and water temperatures and low water levels in large areas. Tens of thousands of remote rural settlers along rivers were completely cut off from urban hubs and adjacent towns for weeks or months.

April 2024 - April 2029

With over half of the world’s population using social media, the BIG-5 project explores how people connect with nature through five of the largest social media platforms. The project introduces the concept of Digital Relational Values (DRVs), which are positive values shaped within online communities through indirect experiences of nature. By studying these values across different landscapes, social media networks, and languages in Europe, the BIG-5 project aims to understand how these digital interactions can support a more sustainable future.

January 2024 – December 2028
  • Ethnobotany; Tsimane’; Bolivian Amazon; Matching methods; Deforestation; Indigenous Peoples

Using systematic ethnobiological place-based data collection in a unique research site in the Bolivian Amazon with an untapped wealth of baseline information, this project will rigorously assess the processes through which Indigenous knowledge systems change over time, and measure different ecological impacts associated with such changes.

Noviembre 2023-Abril 2025
  • Soluciones basadas en naturaleza
  • Adaptación
  • Vulnerabilidad
  • Buenas prácticas

En España, el cambio climático presenta importantes desafíos, riesgos e impactos que exigen la adaptación y mitigación. Las soluciones basadas en la naturaleza (SBN) son clave para enfrentar estos desafíos debido a su capacidad para proporcionar múltiples beneficios ecológicos, sociales y económicos. Sin embargo, aún no se dispone de un sistema nacional de catalogación de las SBN que contemple las particularidades del territorio, lo que dificulta la implementación del PNACC. Por tanto, el proyecto E:SBN propone la creación de un sistema de identificación, clasificación y catalogación de las SBN en España, que promueva la planificación coherente y maximice su eficacia.

  • Conservation
  • data justice
  • social justice
  • environmental justice
  • political ecology

CONDJUST is an ambitious five year project that seeks to contribute to a new field of enquiry: Conservation Data Justice. It tackles novel topics in Data Justice and apply them to the remote sensing, models and data used to create global maps of conservation priorities; it explores the epistemic communities producing these maps, their policy reach and the governance of this research in the conservation community.

January 2023 – December 2027
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • ethnobiology
  • multi-scaled models
  • geospatial analysis
  • stewardship

This project aims to enrich ethnobiology’s field-based ethos with a global analytical focus, connecting on-the-ground realities with the higher spheres of international decision-making.

01.05.2022 - 20.12.2024
  • Feminist political ecology
  • human-wildlife coexistence
  • rewilding
  • convivial conservation
  • collaboration

The research explores how a female-led collective of sheep farmers in Tuscany adapts to ecological and structural changes by promoting coexistence with wolves through livestock guarding dogs. Using feminist political ecology, it examines gendered experiences of change and the farmers’ identities as pastoralists and nature stewards. It also analyzes their alliance with conservation NGOs, highlighting the complexities of collaboration and the transformative dynamics involving wolves, guarding dogs, and wolf-dog hybrids in fostering coexistence.

01/04/2022 - 31/03/2025
  • Nature-Based Solutions
  • Stormwater Runoff
  • Flooding
  • Sewer Overflow
  • Urban Transformation
  • Social-Ecological-Technical Systems (SETS)

NICHES will demonstrate the capacity of nature-based solutions to mitigate stormwater runoff, flooding and sewer overflow events and highlight transformation pathways to deliver this potential. The project will simultaneously enhance social-ecological qualities and ecosystem services at source and in receiving water bodies.

01-03-2022 until 28-02-2025
  • Ethnobotany
  • Medicinal Plants
  • One Health
  • Planetary Health
  • Ethnomedicine
  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Medical Anthropology
  • Local Ecological Knowledge

This study aims to empirically test a novel model for assessing the resilience of IPLC’s health care system taking a social-ecological lens. It addresses the current need to better understand how Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities' health care systems could adapt to current and future global change.

February 2022 - April 2024
  • Sustainable food
  • public provision
  • food system transitions
  • agroecology

Research into existing initiatives of sustainable food procurement in Spain

November 2020 - April 2022
  • Indigenous and Local Knowledge
  • Policy
  • Networks
  • Participation

Bringing indigenous and local knowledge to climate change policy.

September 2020- August 2024
  • Urban ecosystem restoration
  • nature-based solutions
  • resilient and inclusive cities
  • co-production of knowledge
  • sustainable urban development
  • multi-directional cooperation between EU and CELAC

The INTERLACE project aims to empower and equip European and CELAC cities to effectively restore and rehabilitate (peri)urban ecosystems towards more liveable, resilient and inclusive cities. The ...

June 2020 - November 2023
  • Payments for ecosystem services
  • motivations
  • behaviour
  • institutions
  • Mexico
  • Colombia

How do payments for ecosystem services affect conservation motivations and land-use behaviour? How do local institutions, including land tenure and collective action, moderate the effect of payments on motivations and forest cover?

March 2020 - February 2022
  • Rural vulnerability
  • Climate change
  • Depopulation
  • Unequal trade
  • Exposure
  • Sensitivity
  • Adaptive capacity

Un índice de vulnerabilidad socio-ambiental para apoyar en el diseño de nuevas políticas de desarrollo rural en España

Past projects

Project dates
  • MOOC
  • LICCI
  • Climate change
  • IPLC

LICCI MOOC

October, 2020 - November, 2023
  • Living rural heritage
  • mountains
  • agro-forestry-pastoral practices
  • cultural memory
  • participation

The project will research and develop a ‘living heritage’ approach to conservation, promoting the ‘protection through use’ of upland environments and adjacent rural areas.

April 2020- July 2021
  • Urban and rural commons
  • social and solidarity economy
  • community-led organisations
  • co-production
  • public administration

The project aims to improve the understanding of the commons in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona to contribute to better promote collaboration between local governments and community-led ...

September 2019 – May 2022
  • Artistic activism
  • environmentalism
  • gender and diversity
  • environmental conflicts

Understanding the role of cultural expressions, arts and multimedia in upholding transformations in water-related conflicts

April 2019 – April 2023
  • Environmental Justice
  • Urban Ecosystem Services
  • Urban Green Infrastructure
  • Equity

What is the contribution of Ecosystem Services to the creation of sustainable, just and resilient cities? An environmental justice perspective

February 2019 - December 2019
  • Montenegrin ICCAs/commons
  • Pastoralism
  • Mediterranean Mountains
  • Heritage
  • Transdisciplinarity.

Exploring the possibilities of a paradigmatic pastoral common of Montenegro and its natural and cultural ‘heritage’ values

January 2018 - January 2022

Research, innovation and social responsibility framed around the concept of telecoupling.

January 2018 - December 2021
  • Environmental history
  • historical climatology
  • Barcelona
  • Little Ice Age
  • history of science

How knowledge about urban water supply was codified and transmitted during Barcelona's Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD)

December 2017 - December 2019
  • Climate Change
  • Climate Justice
  • Collective Action
  • Community-Based Adaptation

How do communities work together to adapt to sea-level rise? Do the collective actions they initiate and engage in produce fair outcomes?

November 2017 - November 2020
  • Cultural Landscapes
  • Morocco
  • Mediterranean
  • ICCAs/Commons
  • Bio-cultural diversity.

Communal governance systems for the sustainability of cultural land use practices securing biodiversity

October, 2017 – September, 2022
  • Pastoralism
  • Ecosystem services
  • customary-based governance
  • in-situ biodiversity conservation

Spearheading heritization procedures for conserving and supporting pastoral ICCAs in Mwanda-Marungu, Taita hills, Kenya

May 2017 - October 2019
  • Hispano-Moroccan ICCAs/commons
  • Pastoralism
  • Mediterranean Mountains
  • Heritage
  • Transdisciplinarity

Studying the performance of Hispano-Moroccan pastoral commons and their natural and cultural ‘heritage’ values

April 2017 - March 2020
  • Social-Ecological Mountain Systems
  • Community Conservation
  • Agdal
  • Argan Biosphere Reserve
  • Participatory Governance
  • Ethno-Ecology
  • Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Local and global approaches to sustainable territory management in the Arganeraie Biosphere Reserve, Morocco

01/12/2016 - 30/11/2020
  • Green and Blue Infrastructure
  • Social-Ecological Systems
  • Ecosystem Services

ENABLE aims to advance knowledge of how to design and implement green and blue Infrastructure in a way that maximizes its potential to deliver numerous social and environmental benefits

December 2016 - December 2017
  • Agricultural Intensification
  • Ecosystem Services
  • Poverty Alleviation
  • Land Sharing
  • Land Sparing

Synthesizing the effects of agricultural intensification on ecosystem services and poverty alleviation.

November 2016 – October 2020
  • Nature-based solutions
  • Urban Green Infrastructure
  • Urban re-naturing
  • Urban innovation

Examining the performance of nature-based solutions in cities to respond to urban sustainability challenges

January 2016 - December 2019
  • Human-environment relations
  • Landscape
  • Diachronic
  • Mediterranean
  • Bio-cultural diversity.

Identifying the socio-ecological dynamics of agroecosystems, agrobiodiversity and anthropised landscapes of the Mediterranean

November 2015 - October 2017
  • Ecosystem Services
  • Poverty
  • Development
  • Discourses
  • Networks

Parsing out debates over ecosystem services and poverty

September 2015 – October 2020
  • Pastoral resources management
  • Customary-based management of commons
  • ICCAs
  • Agro-pastoralism
  • Wahehe

In-depth ethnographical description and eco-anthropological analysis of the customary-based management system of pastoral resources among the Wahehe, agropastoral group of Iringa region, Tanzania

July 2015 - June 2018
  • Biodiversity Offsetting
  • Environmental policy
  • Spain
  • United Kingdom
  • European Union

Analyzing the implementation of habitat banking in Spain and the UK, and controversies over this policy at EU level.

January 2015 – December 2019
  • Agroecology
  • Traditional Knowledge
  • Citizen Science

This project evaluated citizen science as a tool to increase and diversify participation in traditional ecological knowledge conservation.

  • Collaborative management
  • mental models
  • protected area
  • outcomes
  • shared understanding
  • small-scale fisheries
  • social equity
  • systematic review

Advancing co-management research through a systematic review and case study research, the dissertation shows that co-management can indeed deliver positive social and ecological outcomes and it highlights the importance of social equity and social diversity in delivering such outcomes.

February 2014 - October 2018
  • REDD+
  • Conflict
  • Cooperation
  • Livelihoods
  • Mexico
  • Nepal
  • Vietnam

Investigating the effects of REDD+ policies and pilot projects on forest governance, livelihoods and conflict

October 2013 - June 2018
  • Ecosystem services mapping
  • Green infrastructure
  • Landscape and urban planning
  • Barcelona

The main goal of this project was to map and assess ecosystem services in the Province of Barcelona and integrate them in the existing decision-support tool SITxell (Territorial Information System for the Open Spaces Network of the Barcelona Province)

February 2012-May 2015
  • Biodiversity conservation
  • Ecosystem services
  • Values
  • Trade-offs
  • Effective policies

Advancing insights in tradeoffs and synergies between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem service values for improved integrated biodiversity policy

  • Baka
  • Ethnoecology
  • Indigenous and Local Knowledge
  • Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities
  • Punan
  • Tsimane’

A cross-cultural analysis of the returns of Local Environmental Knowledge in three indigenous societies

December 2011 - November 2014
  • Biodiversity Conservation
  • Community-Based Conservation
  • Protected Areas
  • Biosphere Reserves
  • Adaptation
  • Resilience

Investigating the effectiveness of community-based conservation through a co-enquiry approach

November 2011 - December 2014
  • Economic Valuation
  • Market-based Instruments
  • Payments for Ecosystem Services
  • Biodiversity Conservation
  • Science-policy Interface

Market-based conservation and ecosystem services, from concepts to implementation.

2011-2017
  • Archeology
  • India
  • Indigenous and Local Knowledge

Simulating the past to understand human behaviour

January 2010 - December 2014

Developing and analysing the implementation of a REDD+ pilot project in Tanzania

January 2010 - December 2015
  • Bolivia
  • Infraestructure Development
  • Indigenous Peoples

The effects of roads on indigenous people’s well-being and use of natural resources. A natural experiment in lowland Bolivia

2002-2019
  • Hunter-Gatherers
  • Indigenous and Local Knowledge
  • Integration to market economy
  • wellbeing

A longitudinal study to examine how market exposure and modernization affect the well-being of a highly autarkic population, the Tsimane' in the Bolivian Amazon

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