Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability: joint learnings from human-groundwater interactions

全球环境变化、环境退化和资源压力为世界各地的社会创造了前所未有的局面。在应对这些挑战方面进展缓慢，导致日益强调需要超越研究和鼓励渐进式变革的需要。应对与可持续性有关的挑战的常规知识和能力建设产生的积极影响有限；因此，越来越需要更多关于社会相互作用方式以及与自然环境相互作用方式转变的基本知识。社会变革是指深刻而持久的系统性变革，通常涉及社会、文化、技术、政治、经济和环境进程。需要一项全面和协调一致的研究倡议，以促进对可持续发展转型的研究，并促进针对环境和社会挑战的新型解决方案。该奖项支持美国研究人员参与一个由19个国家通过贝尔蒙特论坛-NORFACE-ISSC竞争性选择的项目。可持续发展转型(T2S)是一个多边倡议，旨在支持有助于重建可持续发展研究的广泛领域的研究项目。共同制定知识和研究问题被认为是社会转型进程的关键，每个项目都有利益攸关方或社区合作伙伴参与。该倡议寻求发展社会所需的基本知识，以帮助发展向可持续发展的转变，这是全世界重大的社会关切，并与学术界和利益攸关方都具有重大的相关性。T2S计划旨在通过培养跨越多个国界、学科边界以及与从业者和社会合作伙伴的持久研究合作，建设能力，克服碎片化，并对社会和研究格局产生持久影响。这包括促进与世界上一些不经常参与大规模国际研究努力的地区，特别是低收入和中等收入国家开展新的研究合作。该奖项提供的资金将用于支持美国参与者在财团中开展合作，该财团由至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成，并将自然科学家、社会科学家和研究用户(如公民社会、非政府组织和工业界)聚集在一起。来自其他国家的参与者通过其国家资助组织获得资助。作为一种无形的资源，地下水需要可视化；作为地下供应，它需要开采技术；作为一种有限的商品，地下水需要共享、保护和照顾；作为一种实际的日常资源，它是维持灌溉、卫生和人类消费所必需的。该项目旨在比较研究在水资源压力特别大的地方(印度、阿尔及利亚、摩洛哥、美国、智利、秘鲁、坦桑尼亚)围绕水资源可持续性实践和治理模式的有前景的社区推动的倡议。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Global environmental change, environmental degradation and resource pressures have created unprecedented situations for societies worldwide. The slow progress on addressing these challenges has led to increasing emphasis on the need to go beyond the study and encouragement of incremental change. Conventional knowledge and capacity building to tackle the challenges associated with sustainability have had limited positive impacts; consequently, there is growing need for more fundamental knowledge on how transformations in the way societies interact both with each other and with the natural environment. Societal transformations refer to profound and enduring systemic changes that typically involve social, cultural, technological, political, economic and environmental processes. A comprehensive and concerted research initiative is needed that can boost research on transformations to sustainability and catalyze new kinds of solutions to environmental and social challenges. This award supports U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 19-country initiative through the Belmont Forum- NORFACE-ISSC. Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) is a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that will contribute to re-structuring the broad field of sustainability research. Co-production of knowledge and research problem formulation is considered to be critical to the process of societal transformation and each project engages stakeholders or community-based partners. The initiative seeks to develop the fundamental knowledge societies require to help develop transformations to sustainability which are of significant social concern throughout the world and of great relevance to both academics and stakeholders. The T2S program aims to build capacity, overcome fragmentation and have a lasting impact on both society and the research landscape by cultivating durable research collaboration across multiple borders, disciplinary boundaries, and with practitioners and societal partners. This includes facilitating the development of new research collaborations with parts of the world which are not often involved in large-scale international research efforts, notably low- and middle-income countries. The funds provided in this award will be used to support U.S. participants 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., civil society, NGOs, and industry). Participants from other countries are funded through their national funding organizations. As an invisible resource, groundwater requires visualization; as an underground supply, it calls for technologies of extraction; as a finite good, groundwater needs to be shared, protected and cared for; and as a practical everyday resource, it is needed to sustain irrigation, sanitation, and human consumption. This project seeks to comparatively study promising community driven initiatives around water resource sustainability practices and governance models in places where pressures on the resource are particularly acute (India, Algeria, Morocco, USA, Chile, Peru, Tanzania).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.