BRIDGE - Building Resilience In a Dynamic Global Economy: Complexity across scales in the Food-Water-Energy Nexus

该提案旨在制定一个分析和政策参与框架，以提高巴西粮食-水-能源关系对全球环境和经济变化的适应能力。它将结合英国现有的专业知识和在社会经济和环境建模方面专门开发的最先进的分析能力，为巴西在全球变化背景下的关系建立强有力的环境政策评估方法。建模能力、技能和知识将被转移到巴西的相关行为者，使当地学者能够在该项目结束期间和之后通过持续的可持续性过渡继续向政策制定者提供信息并使其参与进来。一方面，由于全球不可持续的资源利用和温室气体排放，全球环境变化极有可能改变天气模式，这将对巴西的土地覆盖和生物多样性造成不利影响，对农业造成严重影响。另一方面，如果没有适当的政策，严重依赖自然资源出口实现繁荣的巴西经济和环境很容易受到全球经济变化的影响，在全球经济变化中，对商品的需求变化可能导致环境退化和大规模的土地利用变化，或导致财富和就业减少。这两种类型的变化都可能影响并在巴西经济关系中制造错综复杂的局面。必须了解这些转变和力量，以便最大限度地减少对巴西福利和环境的不利影响。该项目以过去的经验为基础，并通过我们目前的EPSRC-CONFAP研究小组网络赠款(EP/N002504/1)与巴西学者建立了伙伴关系，该项目将为实现这些目标做出独特的贡献，方法是结合最先进的能源-经济-土地-使用-气候耦合系统的详细多尺度建模，与尖端的环境政策和法律专业知识相联系，有效地为可行的政策框架的建模活动提供信息。最终目标是将这两种类型的知识和能力转移给巴西相关的学术和非学术行为者。可持续发展实践可能会受到政策的影响，但政策可能会产生意想不到的影响。为了有效地促进可持续过渡，政策进程和周期必须与消息灵通的行为者积极接触。该项目将结合英国和巴西在环境政策和法律方面的尖端专业知识，与我们最先进、详细的环境政策建模能力相结合，参与巴西的政策进程，以显著提高政策制定者的远见，并最终提高巴西社会对未来可能发生的全球环境和经济变化的适应能力，通过可持续发展过渡。最后，民间社会和社区可以通过可持续发展项目来指导，这些项目展示了最佳实践，实践可以扩大和复制。在我们巴西团队(REGSA和JELARE项目)以往成功经验的基础上，该项目还将包括建立小规模可持续性示范和提高认识项目，以便在每种情况下展示最佳做法并与公众接触。这将包括一个与UNISUL大学实验农场耕作实践有关的“可持续森林”项目，一个与生产可持续林业相关能源产品有关的“能源森林”项目，以及一个让公众了解如何提高能源系统对缺水的复原力的“少水”模拟活动。

This proposal aims to develop a framework of analysis and policy engagement to improve the resilience of the Brazilian Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus to global environmental and economic change. It will combine established UK expertise and specifically developed, state-of-the-art analytical capacity in socio-economic and environmental modelling to build a robust environmental policy assessment methodology for the Brazilian FWE nexus in the context of global change. The modelling capacity, skills and knowledge will be transferred to relevant actors in Brazil to enable local academics to continue informing and engaging policymakers through a continued sustainability transition during and beyond the end of this project.Brazilian society faces significant uncertainty due to two significant global contextual factors. On one hand, global environmental change, due to global unsustainable resource use and greenhouse gas emissions, is highly likely to change weather patterns, which will affect detrimentally the land cover and biodiversity in Brazil, with severe impacts on agriculture. On the other hand, without appropriate policies in place, the Brazilian economy and environment, relying heavily on exports of natural resources for prosperity, can be vulnerable to global economic change, where changes in demand for commodities could lead to either environmental degradation and large scale land-use change, or decreased wealth and employment. Both types of changes are likely to impact and create intricate complexities in the Brazilian FWE nexus. These transformations and forces must be understood in order to minimise detrimental impacts to welfare and the environment in Brazil. Building on past experience and on a partnership with Brazilian academics established through our current EPSRC-CONFAP networking grant for research team building on the FWE nexus (EP/N002504/1), this project will produce a unique contribution to achieve these objectives by using a combination of state-of-the-art detailed multi-scale modelling of the coupled energy-economy-land-use-climate global system, linked to cutting-edge environmental policy and law expertise to effectively inform modelling activities of workable policy frameworks. The ultimate goal is to transfer both types of knowledge and capacity to relevant academic and non-academic actors in Brazil.Sustainability practices can be influenced by policy; however policy can have unexpected and unintended impacts. In order to effectively promote a sustainability transition, the policy process and cycle must be actively engaged with well-informed actors. This project will combine cutting-edge UK and Brazilian expertise in environmental policy and law with our state-of-the-art, detailed environmental policy modelling capacity to engage the Brazilian policy process in order to significantly improve policy-maker foresight and ultimately the resilience of Brazilian society to possible future global environmental and economic change through a sustainability transition.Finally, civil society and communities can be guided by sustainability projects that demonstrate best practice, exercises that can be scaled up and replicated. Building on previous successful experience of our Brazil-based team (the REGSA and JELARE projects), this project will also involve setting up small-scale sustainability demonstration and awareness-raising projects in order to show best-practice in each case and engage with the public. This will include a 'sustainable forest' project related to farming practices at the UNISUL university experimental farm, an 'energy forest' project related to the generation of sustainable forestry-related energy products, and a 'less hydro' simulation exercise to engage the public in understanding how to increase the resilience of the energy system to water scarcity.