Belmont Forum-G8 Initiative Collabrative Research: Transformation and Resilience on Urban Coasts

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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 develop and test a novel integrated framework to examine the interactions between development pathways, socio-environmental systems and policy decision-making in coping with extreme events, such as heat waves and flooding, that are associated with large scale coastal urbanization. Historical transformations have facilitated resilience through the construction of critical urban infrastructures, such as for water and sanitation and air quality. Other more limited changes, such as in social care, have also further facilitated resilience. Integrating lessons learned from the interaction of biophysical, social, and policy dynamics in past transformations and changes is critical to understanding and assessing stress points, thresholds and policies at which urban resilience can change and the implications of these changes for societies. This project will (1) conceptualize resilience, transition and transformation for urban sustainability and security; (2) develop and test an integrated approach for biophysical and social vulnerability assessment; and (3) provide a platform for stakeholders, researchers, and students to interact and contribute to a collective understanding of urban development and risk management priorities and approaches. Case studies in five coastal megacities, including Kolkata, Lagos, London, New York, and Tokyo will be used to test conceptual models and methodological development. This project will contribute toward understanding pathways and trade-offs through which interactions constrain or open opportunities for resilience or transformation of urban systems.