Belmont Forum-G8 Initiative Collaborative Research: Southern Africa's Hydro-Economy and Water Security: SAHEWS

该奖项支持美国研究人员参加一个项目，该项目是由13个国家通过贝尔蒙特论坛和八国集团国家研究理事会负责人竞争性选择的。贝尔蒙特论坛是一个高层次的世界集团？全球环境变化研究和国际科学理事会的主要和新兴资助者。 它的目的是通过调整和调动国际资源，加快提供最迫切需要的国际环境研究，以消除可持续性的关键障碍。八国集团研究理事会负责人制定了一个供资框架，以支持以超出国家或双边活动能力的方式应对全球挑战的多边研究项目。每个伙伴国家都在一个财团内为其研究人员提供资金，以减轻跨越国际边界的资金需求。 这一办法有助于有效利用国家资源，支持对具有全球意义的专题进行出色的研究，这些专题最好通过多国办法加以解决，同时认识到全球挑战需要全球解决办法。贝尔蒙特论坛和G8 HORC为研究项目提供了支持，这些项目旨在提供采取行动减轻和适应有害环境所需的知识，与淡水安全或沿海脆弱性有关的环境变化和极端危险事件。 该奖项为美国研究人员提供支持，使他们能够在由至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成的联盟中进行合作，并将自然科学家，社会科学家和研究用户（例如，政策制定者、监管机构、非政府组织、社区和行业）。 该奖项支持的研究活动将解决水的供应，需求和共享方面的重要知识差距，并在研究的应用，以有效管理南部非洲的淡水安全。人口增长、干旱导致的粮食短缺、能源需求增加和气候多变等诸多挑战相互作用，使南部非洲对淡水安全威胁特别敏感。除了这些挑战之外，还缺乏公平和可持续地管理更广泛的水利经济供需的体制和政策工具。该项目将综合对中短期水文气象变化及其社会经济后果的理解，以制定改进区域水资源管理的方法。研究人员将进一步了解水文气象变化和人类与环境的相互作用，以确定这种变化如何影响区域水文经济。这将通过仔细的案例研究和共同设计的研究来实现，并促进高层次的知识交流。该项目将有助于加深对全球气候-水-粮食-能源关系的理解，以支持决策以及公平和可持续的淡水管理。

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 13-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum and the G8 countries Heads of Research Councils. The Belmont Forum is a high level group of the world?s major and emerging funders of global environmental change research and international science councils. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international environmental research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. The G8 Heads of Research Councils developed a funding framework to support multilateral research projects that address global challenges in ways that are beyond the capacity of national or bilateral activities. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.Working together in an inaugural call of the International Opportunities Fund, the Belmont Forum and G8HORCs have provided support for research projects that seek to deliver knowledge needed for action to mitigate and adapt to detrimental environmental change and extreme hazardous events that relate to either Freshwater Security or Coastal Vulnerability. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries and that bring together natural scientists, social scientists and research users (e.g., policy makers, regulators, NGOs, communities and industry). This award supports research activities that will address important knowledge gaps in water supply, demand and sharing, and in the application of research to the effective management of freshwater security in Southern Africa. Numerous challenges including population growth, drought-induced food shortages, increasing energy demands and a variable climate interact to make Southern Africa especially sensitive to freshwater security threats. Adding to these challenges is a lack of institutional and policy instruments for equitable and sustainable management of supply and demand in the broader hydro-economy. This project will integrate an understanding of short to medium term hydro-meteorological variability and its socioeconomic consequences to develop approaches for improved regional water resources management. Researchers will develop an improved understanding of hydro-meteorological variability and human-environmental interactions to characterize how this variability affects the regional hydro-economy. This will be achieved through careful case study and co-designed research and facilitated high level knowledge exchange. This project will contribute an improved understanding of the global climate-water-food-energy nexus to support decision making and equitable and sustainable freshwater management.