CCI Conservation Seminar - Dr Eric Mensah Kumeh

CCI Conservation Seminar - Dr Eric Mensah Kumeh, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Beyond the Sensor: Participatory Socio-Ecological Mapping Reveals New for Equitable Restoration in Mosaic Landscapes of Ghana

Digital technologies are gaining considerable attention in the design, implementation, and monitoring of scalable restoration initiatives. Notwithstanding, there are questions about the capabilities and effectiveness of these evolving tools, particularly regarding what they highlight or obscure and who benefits or is excluded. This talk draws on participatory socio-ecological mapping, integrating high-resolution, multi-spectral imagery (dronescapes) with gendered workshops to go beyond the sensor. It illuminates the rich stories, traditions, and practices that are overlooked but are essential if restoration efforts are to be equitable and effective in ways that serve the needs of those who matter the most but remain largely marginalised in discussions about scalable restoration.

Eric is a postdoctoral researcher interested in power and equity at intersection of natural resource governance and policy ecology. Eric uses predominantly qualitative approaches, including in-depth ethnographic fieldwork to understand power dynamics in socio-ecological systems, including how socio-environment policies and related investments affect diverse stakeholders, and best-bet, best-fit institutional arrangements that produce equitable outcomes. He is passionate about land access as a source of, and a basis for tackling inequality in rural Africa. Before joining the School of Geography and the Environment, Eric worked in Finland as a research scientist with the Natural Resources Institute Finland, focusing on how the European Union's policy and investments in bioeconomy projects affect land accumulation and community rights in fragile landscapes of Ghana. He also used to work as a development practitioner on forest landscape restoration, agricultural, mining land use conflicts, with Tropenbos International Ghana. Eric holds a doctorate from the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, which examined agriculture and forest conservation conflicts in Ghana.

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Photo by Evans Amoah on Unsplash, of a landscape in Sekondi Takoradi, Ghana.