Social-economic-environmental trade-offs in managing the Land-River-Interface

在大多数国家，河流及其周围的土地是经济活动和发展的焦点。它们对人类的供水、农业、运输和能源至关重要；在社会和文化上具有重要意义的；并拥有维持高度生物多样性的重要生态栖息地。然而，它们很少得到全面的管理。制度边界、社会经济驱动因素和障碍以及环境过程中复杂的相互作用严重限制了我们在陆地-河流界面（LRI）整合政策的能力。因此，管理决策往往会在当地以及汇水上游/下游产生意想不到的社会、经济、文化和环境后果。综合管理的LRI提供的生态系统服务将有助于实现多个相互依存的可持续发展目标（sdg）： 1)消除贫困——通过减轻水土流失和洪水来支持农村生计；2)零饥饿——可持续粮食生产、农林业、土壤侵蚀；6)清洁水和卫生——污染物捕获和生物修复；7)负担得起的清洁能源——现代生物质能和水力发电；11)可持续城市和社区——降低风险；保护文化遗产；13)气候行动——陆地减缓气候变化、植树造林；15)陆地上的生命——维持栖息地和生物多样性。该项目旨在通过对不同社会经济路径和气候情景下LRI管理的空间明确的社会、经济和环境权衡进行调查和建模，支持为LRI设计综合和可持续的政策和实践解决方案，以增强多个可持续发展目标。该研究是与案例研究集水区的所有关键利益相关者（当地农民、水管理委员会、地区和国家政府）共同设计的。Beas-Sutlej是喜马拉雅地区的一条跨国河流，它的土地、河流和水推动了该地区的经济（水电、灌溉农业）。首先，将进行一系列研究活动，以描述案例研究集水区LRI中运行的社会、经济和环境相互作用的特征。制度分析将调查自上而下的障碍和综合LRI管理的推动因素（Azhoni & Peng），社会研究（访谈和调查）将探索自下而上的控制（Bala & Shankar）。然后，通过合并陆地生态系统服务（Peng & Meersmans）、流域水文和水资源建模（Holman & Shankar），将这种改进的理解用于开发LRI的整个系统表示。该模型将对支持实现可持续发展目标的陆地和河流生态系统服务提供改进的、空间明确的估计，并将在最后一组活动中使用，以在不同的未来社会经济和气候情景（Holman、Peng和Grabowski）下测试政策和实践解决方案（Grabowski、Bala和Azhoni）。今后，土地利用研究所将继续是经济发展和强化的一个关键领域。通过了解和预测社会-经济-环境权衡管理的性质和位置，可以与土地、水和河流资源的利益相关者共同设计综合解决方案，以确保未来的复原力，并最大限度地减少人类环境系统中的意外后果。

Rivers and the land that surrounds them are focal points of economic activity and development in most countries. They are essential to humans for water supply, agriculture, transport and energy; hold significant importance socially and culturally; and have critically important ecological habitats that sustain high biodiversity. However, they are rarely managed in a holistic manner. Institutional boundaries, socio-economic drivers and barriers, and complex interactions in environmental processes limit severely our ability to integrate policies across the Land-River-Interface (LRI). As a result, management decisions often have unintended social, economic, cultural and environmental consequences locally and further upstream/downstream in the catchment. The ecosystem services delivered by a holistically-managed LRI would support the attainment of multiple, interdependent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 1) No poverty - supporting rural livelihoods by mitigating soil erosion and flooding; 2) Zero hunger - sustainable food production, agroforestry, soil erosion; 6) Clean water and sanitation - pollutant trapping and bioremediation; 7) Affordable and clean energy - modern biomass and hydropower energy generation; 11) Sustainable cities and communities -risk reduction; safeguarding cultural heritage; 13) Climate Action - land-based climate mitigation, afforestation; 15) Life on Land - maintaining habitats and biodiversity.The aim of the proposed project is to support the design of integrated and sustainable policy and practice solutions for the LRI that enhance multiple SDGs through investigation and modelling of the spatially-explicit social, economic and environmental trade-offs to LRI management under different socio-economic pathways and climate scenarios. The research is co-designed with the full range of key stakeholders (local farmers, water management boards, regional and national government) within the case study catchment, the Beas-Sutlej, a transnational river in the Himalayan region whose land, river and water drive the economy of the region (hydropower, irrigated agriculture). First, a set of research activities will be undertaken to characterise the social, economic, and environmental interactions operating in the LRI of the case study catchment. An institutional analysis will investigate the top-down barriers and enablers on integrated LRI management (Azhoni & Peng), and social research (interviews and surveys) will explore the bottom-up controls (Bala & Shankar). Then, this improved understanding will be employed to develop a whole systems representation of the LRI by merging terrestrial ecosystem service (Peng & Meersmans), catchment hydrological and water resource modelling (Holman & Shankar). The modelling will provide improved, spatially-explicit estimates of the land- and river-based ecosystem services that support attainment of the target SDGs, which will be used in the final set of activities to test policy and practice solutions (Grabowski, Bala, & Azhoni) under different future socio-economic and climate scenarios (Holman, Peng & Grabowski). The LRI will continue to be a key area for economic development and intensification in the future. By understanding and predicting the nature and location of social-economic-environmental trade-offs to management, integrated solutions can be co-designed with stakeholders for its land, water and river resources to ensure future resilience and minimise unintended consequences in the human-environment system.