The Beacon Project: Using Biodiversity and Energy justice to resolve Conflicts between Sustainable Development Goals

联合国可持续发展目标（SDG）旨在促进全球经济和社会繁荣，同时寻求保护环境。所有联合国成员国都是实现2030年可持续发展议程下可持续发展目标的签署国。然而，可持续发展目标的相互竞争要求决策者权衡可持续发展目标，导致对人和环境的成本和利益的破坏性和不平等分配，最终阻碍可持续发展。为了解决这一全球性问题，我将采用一种新的方法，将水电作为一个模型系统，在跨学科研究中实现关键的步骤变化，以量化可持续发展目标之间和利益相关者之间的权衡、冲突和协同作用。该项目将识别、预测、预防和缓解与发展进程相关的冲突，以实现现在和2030年可持续发展目标之后的公平可持续发展。我们的全球能源困境凸显并证实了可持续发展目标之间的权衡。人口不断增加，能源需求不断增长，这对我们能否在不对人类和环境产生不利影响的情况下获得安全、负担得起和公平的能源提出了挑战。解决全球能源困境所带来的多方面挑战一直受到环境和社会科学与人文科学历史性分离的阻碍。该项目结合了这些学科，以解决能源开发，利益相关者正义和环境可持续性的复杂性。该项目的总体目标是通过为决策者设计一个明确考虑发展的复杂社会环境层面的创新框架，提供公平决策所需的工具。大型水电计划（坝高>15 m）使可持续发展目标和利益相关者之间的冲突成为焦点。全世界已经建造了9700多座大型水电站，提供能源，促进工业基础设施的发展。然而，这些水坝使大约4 000万至8 000万人流离失所，而且由于修建水库和河流断流，我们失去了对生物多样性和减缓气候变化至关重要的环境。因此，水电开发给可持续发展目标带来了巨大压力，这些目标侧重于当地生计和粮食安全、正义和问责制、水、生态系统和全球生物多样性。尽管在不断变化的气候和降雨模式下，未来的能源收益存在不确定性，但国家和国际对新水坝的投资正在增加。为了提供确保发展进程公平和负责任所需的工具，该项目将吸引多个利益相关者，包括那些传统上在决策过程中被边缘化的人，以及巴西不同社会政治和环境背景的高层决策者，哈萨克斯坦，印度和苏格兰。来自社会环境调查、地球观测和能源公正框架的数据和方法将被纳入整个项目，为当地人民、非政府组织、民间社会和高层决策者开发一个工具包，以提高发展进程的公平性和透明度。包括非政府组织、国际机构、专家顾问和学术机构在内的超过15个世界领先的项目合作伙伴网络积极支持这项研究。为了实现国际可持续发展，必须防止和解决可持续发展目标与利益相关者之间的冲突。该项目提供了改变当前发展决策做法所需的创新性跨学科工具，以明确纳入发展的复杂社会环境层面。因此，该项目将确保全球发展在现在和2030年目标之后都是公平和可持续的。

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promote global economic and social prosperity while simultaneously seeking to protect the environment. All UN member states are signatories to achieving SDGs under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, competing objectives of SDGs require decision-makers to trade-off SDGs, leading to damaging and unequal distribution of costs and benefits for people and the environment, which ultimately prevents sustainable development. To address this global problem I will apply a novel approach using hydropower as a model system, to deliver the critical step change in interdisciplinary research needed to quantify the trade-offs, conflicts and synergies between SDGs and between stakeholders. This project will identify, forecast, prevent and mitigate conflicts associated with development processes, to achieve equitable sustainable development now and beyond the 2030 sustainable development targets. Our global energy dilemma highlights and exemplifies trade-offs between SDGs. The increasing human population and growing energy demand challenges whether we can have secure, affordable and equitable energy without adversely affecting people and the environment. Solving the multifaceted challenges presented by the global energy dilemma has been hindered by the historic separation of environmental and social sciences and the humanities. This project combines these disciplines to address the complexity of energy development, stakeholder justice, and environmental sustainability. The overall aim of the project is to deliver the tools needed for equitable decision-making, by designing an innovative framework for decision-makers that explicitly considers the complex social-environmental dimensions of development.Large hydropower schemes (dam height >15 m) bring conflicts between SDGs and stakeholders into sharp focus. More than 9700 large hydropower dams have been constructed worldwide providing energy and boosting industrial infrastructure development. However, such dams have displaced an estimated 40-80 million people, and, through reservoir creation and river flow disruption, we have lost environments that are important for biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Thus, hydropower development puts significant pressure on SDGs that focus on local livelihoods and food security, justice and accountability, water, ecosystems and global biodiversity. Despite uncertainty over future energy gains under changing climatic and rainfall patterns, national and international investment for new dams is rising.To deliver the tools needed to ensure development processes are equitable and accountable, this project will engage multiple stakeholders, including those traditionally marginalised in the decision-making process, alongside high-level decision-makers across different socio-political and environmental contexts in Brazil, Kazakhstan, India and Scotland. Data and methods from social-environmental surveys, Earth observation, and the energy justice framework will be integrated throughout this project to develop a toolkit for local people, NGOs, civil society, and high-level decision-makers to increase equity and transparency of development processes. A network of more than 15 world-leading project partners including NGOs, international institutions, expert advisors and academic institutions actively support this research.To achieve international sustainable development, conflicts between SDGs and stakeholders must be prevented and resolved. This project delivers the innovative interdisciplinary tools needed to change current development decision-making practice to explicitly incorporate the complex social-environmental dimensions of development. Thus, this project will ensure that global development is equitable and sustainable now and beyond the 2030 targets.