Rural people across the global south are caught between competing land demands for large-scale cultivation, global conservation, and local needs. These can in theory be integrated locally through community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and payments for ecosystem services (PES): where communities can decide on and benefit directly from natural resources, they may invest in and manage those resources in ways that are more socially and environmentally sustainable. CBNRM/PES initiatives are being rolled out across the global south, but there are conflicting views as to how well they work, for whom and under what circumstances. This is partly due to the complexity and multidimensionality of the ecosystem services (ES) and poverty alleviation (PA) outcomes involved, and the inevitable tradeoffs, but also to the hitherto limited use of either qualitatively or quantitatively rigorous impact evaluation approaches that are independent, control for confounding factors and ensure the voices of the most marginalized are heard. As well as being limited by generally weak research design, studies to date have often failed to account for the ways political sensitivities around changing access to and use of ecosystem services may compromise data quality and mask differentiated impacts. PIMA seizes a unique policy moment, with Tanzania's poverty reduction strategy Mkukuta driving nationwide implementation of CBNRM/PES-based Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), and other countries in the region considering comparable initiatives. The WMAs comprise different ecosystems (rangeland, miombo), socio-political structures (long-established/ethnically uniform vs recent, heterogeneous constituent villages), and a broad range of ecosystem services (water-regulating and -supplying, provision of forest products, grazing, livestock, crop and wildlife production, cultural services both local and global (from locally significant social and ritual spaces, to heritage and tourism). Before/after, inside/outside comparison of social and ecological outcomes for established WMAs with matched non-WMA areas (within the same ecosystems) offers an ideal opportunity for rigorous impact evaluation. PIMA combines analysis of remotely-sensed, public-domain MODIS and NDVI data, with cutting edge study of governance, and new data from qualitatively and quantitatively rigorous, differentiated survey of livelihoods and resource use histories, structured within a before/after, control/impact (BACI) research design. PIMA brings together a powerful international research team to work with strongly-rooted civil society organizations to ensure research excellence and development impact. Building on ongoing stakeholder engagement, with input sought from users, practitioners and policymakers at all stages pre- to post-project, PIMA ensures findings will be of direct use locally, nationally and internationally. PIMA 's framework and approach create channels for grassroots users to make experienced change in ecosystem services quality and quantity, and in poverty and wellbeing, more clearly heard by policymakers and practitioners, as well as highlighting tradeoffs and best practice lessons. Establishing what works, why and for whom will be of use not only to the one million rural people directly affected by WMAs, but will deliver insights and best practice lessons generalizable to the many millions more whose livelihoods and wellbeing are to be shaped by comparable CBNRM/PES initiatives. The findings delivered, and the mechanisms piloted, will give local users and national and international policymakers and practitioners the insights and tools to improve interventions through creating better upward and downward accountability. PIMA findings will be of use locally to rural people making collective and individual resource use decisions, through national levels, to international donors deciding how to invest scarce resources for ecosystem services and poverty alleviation.

We are proposing an innovative solution to current problems with rapidly identifying and responding to deteriorating public health and environmental conditions in fast developing urban environments in LMIC countries, aiming to manage risks to public and environmental health relating to urbanisation, population growth, lack of infrastructure and the overarching challenge of climate change. We will establish a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research capability, based on engineering and digital technology approaches, for real-time community-wide diagnostics and tuneable multi-hazard public health early warning system (EWS) with the ultimate goal of strengthening communities' resilience. We will do this through a focus on water from urban dwellings, which reflects the health status of a population and surrounding environment as it pools the endo- & exogenous products of that population. Real-time measurement of these specific hazard biomarkers in urban water from different communities allows for rapid evaluation of public health status, prediction of future crises, and thus enables mitigation strategies to be developed for either rapid or slow onset hazards, even before they manifest themselves with characteristic endpoints (e.g. mortality in the event of pandemics). Thus morbidity and mortality can be reduced and resilience and sustainability within the surveyed urban system significantly increased. In this cutting-edge project we will develop innovative tools for public health diagnostics and undertake a scoping study in the city of Stellenbosch to understand the requirements for the development and implementation of a multi-hazard EWS in South Africa and beyond. ReNEW tackles all four strategic objectives set by the Department for International Development (UK Aid, 2015) and it focuses on "strengthening resilience and response to crises: (...) science and technology spend on global public health risks such as antimicrobial resistance, and support for efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change". The UK is committed to "tackling the great global challenges - from the root causes of mass migration and disease, to the threat of terrorism and global climate change - all of which also directly threaten British interests". ReNEW will address this through engineering novel integrated sensors for on-site monitoring and use of big data for modelling markers within the urban water system as part of an EWS. We will focus on infectious disease. 21st century has already seen the epidemic of SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009), Ebola (2014) and recently Zika virus (2015). The recent O'Neill report (2016) commissioned by the UK government urges that "by 2050, 10 million lives a year and a cumulative 100 trillion USD of economic output are at risk due to the rise of drug resistant infections. Most of the direct impact will fall on LMIC countries". This highlights global vulnerability to infectious diseases and shared global responsibility for surveillance and disease control. Easy to operate and cost effective EWSs are urgently needed to provide timely response and to tackle key public health issues in communities that need it most, and to reduce disease spread globally. Urban water profiling can provide such a response in real-time and, if linked with a timely response system, it could reduce burden on public health in LMIC and ultimately worldwide.