Although Colombia, Cuba and Mexico report nearly 100% access to electricity, not all households are necessarily provided with good quality energy services, such as heating, cooling and use of appliances. In fact, around a third of Mexican households are unable to access an adequate level of energy services. Similarly, annual energy supply interruptions in Colombia add up to 38 hours per year. However, energy services are essential to wellbeing. Indeed, access to adequate, reliable, affordable and clean energy services underpins a range of human capabilities and when unmet, results in a situation of energy vulnerability (EV). A shortfall in realised energy services can be caused by various socio-technical, institutional and environmental factors, including: unreliable or poor quality infrastructure; gendered differences in energy access and use; high energy prices; social isolation; and stressors caused by intensifying climatic changes. The impacts of this are wide ranging, from adverse health, wellbeing, and social participation outcomes, to limited economic development. There are no official EV-related strategies in the three countries, and each one is at a different stage in addressing the issue. In Cuba there has been no research or policy attention to EV; in Mexico, energy poverty is gaining increasing policy attention and a pilot monitoring observatory was launched last year; and Colombia has recognised energy poverty as a policy priority within the National Energy Plan, but has not yet instituted mechanisms for measurement or alleviation. Following collaborative workshops and in-person meetings with stakeholders during Spring 2019, this co-designed project (ESLatinA) responds to the urgent need for comprehensive understanding, evidence and governance capacity on EV in Colombia, Cuba and Mexico, in ways that are inclusive and recognise the diverse and dynamic nature of societies. Furthermore, ESLatinA explicitly acknowledges the link between EV and energy systems resilience, and the transformative potential of fostering energy solidarity, a concept that implies a paradigm shift in energy discourse that demands commitment, shared understanding, and people-focused frameworks. In recognition of the social and technical underpinnings of EV, ESLatinA has brought together a multi-disciplinary team of academics, policymakers and civil society representatives to develop socio-technical solutions via a comprehensive programme of multidisciplinary research and action. Our aim is to bring about systemic change for EV alleviation, whilst simultaneously enhancing energy system resilience, and fostering energy solidarity, as to maximise social welfare and equitable development. This will be achieved through wide ranging research and outputs, including bespoke local and national-level household surveys, generating in-depth qualitative data from participatory workshops, and producing innovative proposals for governance and legal frameworks. We will also establish national monitoring Observatories and a pan-Latin American network, and undertake national-scale energy systems vulnerability mapping and local-level assessment modelling. In culmination, we will produce cross-cutting knowledge based capacity-building and socio-technical solutions, including a diagnosis toolkit, energy literacy workshops, community exhibits, and bespoke National and Local Action Plans; all this from the inclusive perspective of energy solidarity, which is anchored on energy justice.

Tropical forests are biodiversity hotspots and important biological conservation regions. They deliver key ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and storage, and water for electricity generation via hydropower (a large source of electricity in many tropical countries) and freshwater provision, serving the needs of millions of people and fast-growing populations in these regions. However, tropical regions have experienced the largest recent increases in heat extremes over the globe, with ongoing warming predicted to exceed the bounds of historic climate variability in the next two decades. This climate change has potentially large but poorly understood consequences for tropical forests. Recent findings suggest that these critical forests appear at substantial risk, in terms of their vulnerability and exposure to warming and its extremes. For example, extreme temperatures in lowland forest reduces tree growth and carbon storage. Furthermore, in the tropical Andes, recent warming has been associated with increased mortality of species in the warm extreme of their thermal ranges, triggering a compositional change towards warm-adapted species across all elevations. The mechanisms underpinning reduced tree growth and species compositional changes remain largely unknown. To predict species composition changes and their implications for forest function and ecosystem services, a mechanistically-informed understanding of the physiological strategies employed by thermally resilient and susceptible species is needed. At our unique warming experiments along elevation gradients in the tropics in the Colombian Andes and in Rwanda in the Albertine Ridge we obtain a range of responses to the warming treatment: some species have died, some have shown reduced growth, while others have increased their growth. Importantly, and contrary to some expectations, plant physiological responses to average site temperatures cannot predict growth patterns. Rather, preliminary evidence suggests that tree growth and survival in the North Andean region and in our experiments in Colombia and Rwanda, is related to species abilities to deal with heat stress. Multiple mechanisms may be involved in determining the ability of species to cope with heat stress, but their relative roles in different settings is unknown. In Rwanda, preliminary data suggest that the most successful species thermoregulate, cooling their leaves via high rates of evapotranspiration to cope with extreme temperature, while species that have shown reduced growth with warming reach very high leaf temperatures (ie they cannot thermoregulate). In contrast, in Colombia, the most successful species are those that emit isoprene to ameliorate heat stress suggesting enhanced thermotolerance may be a key mechanism. Overall, our results demonstrate an urgent need to understand how different tropical tree species cope with extreme rather than average temperatures. Using our experiments in Colombia and Rwanda, this project will deliver new mechanistic understanding of heat stress physiology for tropical forests and possible links to plant growth responses to warming which will inform how we understand and predict composition changes along elevation and climate gradients. We will use a holistic combination of measurements not done before in any ecosystem- thermoregulation, thermal tolerance thresholds, in situ isoprene emissions, and their thermal plasticity- to evaluate tree heat stress strategies. We will combine our experimental data with mechanistic modelling to generalise our results to other ecosystems and with data from Andean trees to determine the extent to which the new understanding of species-level heat stress strategies can explain compositional changes in Andean forest tree species. Our project will support better prediction of future biodiversity shifts and forest function, tropical forest restoration and conservation.

The proposal targets the country of Colombia, at a very important time in history following the peace agreement between the government and the FARC. Colombia is one of the 17 countries considered as "megadiverse" by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Colombia's biodiversity is not only important for the country's natural heritage and the preservation of unique species in the world, it is also essential for the improvement of human welfare, social equality and economic development. The proposal has been built on a foundation of existing research activities, with the involvement of additional stakeholders, business, government, and third sector organisations, promoting cross-disciplinary expertise to tackle three developmental challenges, and ensuring that impact extents beyond the length of the project. Our short-term goals are to build research capacity, partnerships and knowledge, with the longer-term goals of stimulating economic and social growth around biodiversity. We have established an alliance of institutions in the UK and Colombia in order to (1) gather information on changes in distribution, diversity, and conservation status of the natural diversity of Colombia, (2) characterise and manage agricultural genetic biodiversity to make breeding and farming more efficient, and (3) assess the challenges and impacts associated with the biodiversity challenges outlined in the other two work programmes to develop key relevant policies and programmes. In addition we will build research capability by developing researchers' skills, as well their access to research information and resources through group meetings, workshops, networking events and training courses, that will be delivered in collaboration with Colombian partners and in alignment with the activities of the proposal. We will also improve the technological self-sufficiency of the Colombian research community by facilitating the adoption of innovative technologies. Furthermore, we will ensure we raise awareness of the challenges among the public and inform them of how our outcomes are likely to benefit them. Our proposal on Colombian Biodiversity is timely and will allow the targeted country to reach higher scientific level in the proposed activities as well as applying science to inform decision-making and business investments in sustainable agriculture. Ultimately its outcomes will contribute to a long lasting impact by promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels (UN SDG 16).

This project will examine the long-term resilience of Colombian forest ecosystems to environmental and climatic changes and improve understanding of the future implications of forest degradation for Colombian society. We focus on forests that are not pristine in that they are used by local communities and are affected by logging and fire. This fills a research gap in understanding how forests, which may be regarded as biologically 'degraded', have undergone changes in biodiversity, in ecosystem services, and in how they participate in local and global cycles of carbon and energy. The project will achieve this by building a network of permanent ecological monitoring plots across gradients of forest environment and degradation to allow evaluation of biodiversity and measurement of processes such as current and historical effects of fire, and carbon storage and changing climate.This data will be integrated with socio-cultural research, focusing on existing cultures of biodiversity conservation. This understanding is essential if the scientific evidence is to be integrated into long-term management plans and policy, as forest degradation in Colombia is strongly associated with changes to the fabric of social life, including the effects of sustained conflict. Participatory research and interviews will also allow the views and perceptions of key stakeholders, especially local communities, to influence our research priorities and outputs from the beginning. This transdisciplinary work is critical to the implementation of international frameworks for biodiversity conservation aimed at reversing the effects of forest degradation. As Colombia emerges from decades of conflict, substantial changes are already occurring in land use, for example in the cultivation of areas that were previously inaccessible due to security issues. Our results will be scalable beyond the focus of Boyaca and Cundinamarca to the Colombian national scale and across the tropics. Tropical forest degradation affects an estimated 500 million ha globally and is an increasingly important driver in the global carbon cycle. However, in Colombia there is little information about change and recovery from degradation; over what time-scales changes occur; what are the major socio-environmental drivers of change; and to which baseline should forests be restored. Due to this high uncertainty, degradation is poorly quantified by climate policy such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) with the result that global CO2 emissions-cuts scenarios may not be sufficiently ambitious and local projects may not benefit from carbon payment schemes. We propose an innovative transdisciplinary methodology that will bring local knowledge, livelihood strategies and priorities into dialogue with multiple biophysical data sources, in order to evaluate change. We will supplement our existing plot data with new field, socio-environmental, and long-term ecological data to create a unique long-term network of degraded forest plots across Boyaca and Cundinamarca, covering variation in types and degrees of degradation (e.g. logged, logged+burned). We will, further, use these data with remote sensing approaches to evaluate the spatiotemporal variation in forests and assess drivers of change across the region to inform policy, conservation, and management. The project will provide critical information to improve climate and vegetation models that can help to assess whether forests and forest associated agriculture (e.g., coffee, cacao) will be resilient in the face of future climatic changes. This information will be used to inform policy recommendations and transformation pathways co-designed with a suite of stakeholders. In summary, this project can transform understanding of the controls on forest biodiversity and ecosystem service, determine ecosystem resilience to climate and disturbance, and support socio-environmental planning for sustainable resource use.

[Proposal EE112/ K1396905] Predicting the impacts of global change on rural communities is increasingly challenging due to the accelerating pace of climate change and social and economic development. The combined demands of ensuring food, energy and water security have been described as a "Perfect Storm" by Prof Sir John Beddington, HM Government's Chief Scientific adviser. It is clear that food security will continue to remain a critical issue in developing countries due to the unpredictable nature of food chains and the effects of climate change. Food security in poor rural communities often relies significantly on flows of ecosystem services from 'natural' environments. For millennia mankind has engaged in thinking and learning experiences which have shaped the processes underpinning the production of food and the management of land, addressing multiple factors and tradeoffs. However, many food production systems require intensive management and are prone to failure outside of the range of their optimal environmental conditions. Concerns are growing about the ability of current agricultural systems to support rising human populations without further degrading critical ecosystem services (such as water provisioning, pollination). During extreme events, such as drought, or other shocks or crises (environmental, social or economic), the dependence of rural communities on ecosystem services to meet their nutritional and livelihood needs often increases. This highlights the importance of minimising the impacts of agricultural systems on ecosystems and the services they provide. Strategies for coping with food insecurity may, in turn, have an impact on the capacity of ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services as the spatial and temporal nature of feedbacks between socio-economic and ecological systems can be complex. Addressing the sustainability of natural resource management and rural livelihoods requires integrated thinking across disciplines. The complex transformations which can, or have already occurred from natural forest to managed landscapes must be fully understood so that systems can be adopted which promote sustainable transformations and/or can mitigate any negative impacts. This proposal therefore brings together expertise in social sciences, economics, ecology, risk management, spatial planning, climate change and complexity sciences to design and integrate a suite of models and methods to analyse how dynamic stocks and flows of ecosystem services translate to local-level food security and nutritional health. The study will examine the multiple (and multi-directional) links between ecosystem services, food security and maternal and child health outcomes in poor rural communities, addressing three main themes: 1. Drivers, pressures and linkages between food security, nutritional health and ecosystem services; 2. Crises and tipping points: Past, present and future interactions between food insecurity and ecosystem services at the forest-agricultural interface; 3. The science-policy interface: How can we manage ecosystem services to reduce food insecurity and increase nutritional health? Analysis of household and intra-household nutritional status and assessment and mapping of ecosystem services at the relevant spatial scales will be conducted in sites in Colombia and Malawi, which are characterised by mosaics of forests and agricultural lands, to explore the trade-offs and tipping points associated with managing these dynamic landscapes under climate and socio-economic change. Powerful new models will predict how ecosystem services will be changed by drivers and pressures for human wellbeing and food security. This will allow risk management/mitigation models and strategies to be developed which can inform national and regional policy in order to maintain ecosystems and support human wellbeing.