Towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy: A Scenario Analysis for the Jimma Coffee Landscape in Ethiopia

The overarching goal of this project is to identify environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of ecosystem service flows in an increasingly teleconnected bioeconomy in the Global South. The case study location, Jimma zone in southwestern Ethiopia, is a biodiversity hotspot where local people are heavily dependent on the landscape to provide essential ecosystem services. However, the landscape also provides services of global importance, and is becoming more teleconnected. Both internal and external drivers are altering the social-ecological trajectories of the region. The project – building on an ERC-funded, five-year research project in Jimma zone (“Identifying Social-Ecological System Properties Benefiting Biodiversity and Food Security – SESyP”) — works with local stakeholders to investigate the social-ecological consequences of different development trajectories. Research is centered around the exploration of four scenarios with differing social-ecological conditions in southwestern Ethiopia for 2040. Specific objectives are: (1) to map biodiversity and ecosystem services in rural southwestern Ethiopian landscapes under four future scenarios; (2) to identify the beneficiaries of value flows of ecosystem services generated under the different scenarios; (3) to understand power influences of different stakeholders on local ecosystems and value flows under the different scenarios; and (4) to make insights relevant and applicable for local landscape management through the integration of stakeholders in the scenario analysis.