Can the blue economy help alleviate poverty and rural exodus in East Africa?
The University of Montpellier continues to shine on the international stage. David Mouillot, a professor at UM and researcher at the MARBEC (Marine Biodiversity, Exploitation, and Conservation) laboratory, has just been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant. This €2.5 million grant over five years will enable him to conduct original, transdisciplinary research to assess the potential of coastal marine resources in rural regions of East Africa that have been affected by land desertification for the past thirty years.
Reducing Poverty and Rural-Urban Migration in East Africa Through the Blue Economy
The project is based on an observation: over the past three decades—a period marked in East Africa by land desertification and natural disasters—coastal and rural villages have been more successful in mitigating poverty and emigration by developing a sustainable blue economy capable of providing alternative resources and livelihoods.
The blue economy refers to economic activities related to the oceans and their coastlines. David Mouillot’s study will combine satellite imagery, artificial intelligence algorithms, and statistical spatial matching methods with multidisciplinary field surveys. The project will focus on three types of blue economy (artisanal fishing, ecotourism, and aquaculture) and three countries (Madagascar, Tanzania, and Mozambique) where agricultural resources are threatened by climate change and where sustainable development challenges are among the most critical globally.
The causal link between the development of a blue economy and the long-term dynamics of poverty and rural exodus remains an unexplored area in international research. The objective is to better understand the extent to which coastal communities in East Africa have been able to adapt to the impacts of climate change on their land by diversifying their activities toward the sea. The findings could generate new knowledge and local solutions to guide policy and investment in Africa (EU interventions, United Nations organizations, donors, and non-governmental organizations).
A first year that has already proven decisive
David Mouillot will be hiring a research engineer specializing in artificial intelligence techniques applied to satellite imagery, a design engineer in geographic information systems, an engineer in remote sensing and field surveys, and an intern from the Master’s program in Environmental and Biodiversity Management (Aquadura track). His team will soon be joined by a postdoctoral researcher in quantitative socioeconomics and a systems computer scientist. The team will tackle two main tasks simultaneously: accurately modeling poverty levels and population density in rural Africa from the 1990s to the present, and mapping blue economy activities along the coasts of Madagascar, Tanzania, and Mozambique. These tasks will be carried out primarily using satellite imagery, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence in collaboration with several partners from Montpellier-based laboratories (MARBEC, LIRMM, ESPACE-DEV) as well as international partners. This first year will also be dedicated to organizing seminars on the project’s themes with specialists in the field.
ERC Funding
The European Research Council (ERC) funds exploratory research projects at the frontiers of knowledge across all fields of science and technology. This is an extremely competitive call for proposals, with scientific excellence as its sole criterion.
David Mouillot’s application was primarily motivated—despite the very low success rate—by the prospect of conducting long-term research (5 years) with substantial and flexible funding. Indeed, the €2.5 million budget makes it possible to acquire the necessary equipment—in this case, state-of-the-art computer hardware—to build a team of 6–7 complementary members dedicated to the project, and to conduct both socioeconomic surveys and ecological field surveys.
A Profile of David Mouillot
With a dual background in ecology and modeling, David Mouillot joined the University of Montpellier in 2001 to study the dynamics of marine systems in the context of global change using a multidisciplinary approach. He was a junior member of the Institut universitaire de France (IUF) from 2009 to 2014, then a senior member from 2019 to 2024. He also received a European Marie Curie Fellowship to spend two years in Australia at James Cook University (2010–2011) to better quantify socio-ecological changes in coral reef systems. Since then, David Mouillot has been working on global coastal ecosystems to better understand the combined effects of climate change and socioeconomic factors—including marine protected areas—on biodiversity and its contributions to human populations. His research was recognized with a CNRS bronze medal (2011). More recently, David Mouillot has developed new environmental DNA tools to better study coastal biodiversity through the creation of a joint laboratory (ANR LabCom 2021–2025) between MARBEC and the company SpyGen. His new ERC Advanced grant focuses on the human-nature interface (2025–2029) to better predict the link between ecosystem health and poverty in rural coastal communities.