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

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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.