Synergies and trade-offs for the SDGs in a deltaic socio-ecological system: Development of an Integrated Assessment Model

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Marcinko ◽  
Andrew Harfoot ◽  
Tim Daw ◽  
Derek Clarke ◽  
Sugata Hazra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Integrated Assessment ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Ecological System ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Trade Offs

<p>The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promote sustainable development and aim to address multiple challenges including those related to poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation. Interlinkages between SDGS means there is potential for interactions, synergies and trade-offs between individual goals across multiple temporal and spatial scales. We aim to develop an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) of a complex deltaic socio-ecological system where opportunities and trade-offs between the SDGs can be analysed. This is designed to inform local/regional policy. We focus on the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) within the Indian Ganga Delta. This is home to 5.6 million often poor people with a strong dependence on rural livelihoods and also includes the Indian portion of the world’s largest mangrove forest – the Sundarbans. The area is subject to multiple drivers of environmental change operating at multiple scales (e.g. global climate change and sea-level rise, deltaic subsidence, extensive land use conversion and widespread migration). Here we discuss the challenges of linking models of human and natural systems to each other in the context of local policy decisions and SDG indicators. Challenges include linking processes derived at multiple spatial and temporal scales and data limitations. We present a framework for an IAM, based on the Delta Dynamic Emulator Model (ΔDIEM), to investigate the affects of current and future trends in environmental change and policy decisions within the SBR across a broad range of sub-thematic SDG indicators. This work brings together a wealth of experience in understanding and modelling changes in complex human and natural systems within deltas from previous projects (ESPA Deltas and DECCMA), along with local government and stakeholder expert knowledge within the Indian Ganga Delta.</p>

scholarly journals Quantifying synergies and trade-offs in the water-land-energy-food-climate nexus using a multi-model scenario approach

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Doelman ◽  
Tom Kram ◽  
Benjamin Bodirsky ◽  
Isabelle Weindle ◽  
Elke Stehfest
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Development Goals

<p>The human population has substantially grown and become wealthier over the last decades. These developments have led to major increases in the use of key natural resources such as food, energy and water causing increased pressure on the environment throughout the world. As these trends are projected to continue into the foreseeable future, a crucial question is how the provision of resources as well as the quality of the environment can be managed sustainably.</p><p>Environmental quality and resource provision are intricately linked. For example, food production depends on availability of water, land suitable for agriculture, and favourable climatic circumstances. In turn, food production causes climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions, and affects biodiversity through conversion of natural vegetation to agriculture and through the effects of excessive fertilizer and use of pesticides. There are many examples of the complex interlinkages between different production systems and environmental issues. To handle this complexity the nexus concept has been introduced which recognizes that different sectors are inherently interconnected and must be investigated in an integrated, holistic manner.</p><p>Until now, the nexus literature predominantly exists of local studies or qualitative descriptions. This study present the first qualitative, multi-model nexus study at the global scale, based on scenarios simultaneously developed with the MAgPIE land use model and the IMAGE integrated assessment model. The goal is to quantify synergies and trade-offs between different sectors of the water-land-energy-food-climate nexus in the context of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Each scenario is designed to substantially improve one of the nexus sectors water, land, energy, food or climate. A number of indicators that capture important aspects of both the nexus sectors and related SDGs is selected to assess whether these scenarios provide synergies or trade-offs with other nexus sectors, and to quantify the effects. Additionally a scenario is developed that aims to optimize policy action across nexus sectors providing an example of a holistic approach that achieves multiple sustainable development goals.</p><p>The results of this study highlight many synergies and trade-offs. For example, an important trade-off exists between climate change policy and food security targets: large-scale implementation of bio-energy and afforestation to achieve stringent climate targets negatively impacts food security. An interesting synergy exists between the food, water and climate sectors: promoting healthy diets reduces water use, improves water quality and increases the uptake of carbon by forests.</p>

scholarly journals ANEMI_Yangtze v1.0: An Integrated Assessment Model of the Yangtze Economic Belt - Model Description

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyan Jiang ◽  
Slobodan P. Simonovic ◽  
Zhongbo Yu
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Integrated Assessment ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Dynamics Simulation ◽  
Model Description ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Food Energy ◽  
Natural Systems

Abstract. Yangtze Economic Belt is one of the most dynamic regions in China in terms of population growth, economic progress, industrialization, and urbanization. It faces many resource constraints (food, energy) and environmental challenges (pollution, biodiversity loss) under rapid population growth and economic development. Interactions between human and natural systems are at the heart of the challenges facing the sustainable development of the Yangtze Economic Belt. Understanding these interactions poses challenges because human and natural systems evolve in response to a wide range of influences. Accounting for these complex dynamics requires a system tool that can represent the fundamental drivers of change and responses of the individual system as well as how different systems interact and co-evolve. By adopting the system thinking and the methodology of system dynamics simulation, an integrated assessment model for the Yangtze Economic Belt, named ANEMI_Yangtze, is developed based on the third version of the global integrated assessment model, ANEMI. Nine sectors of population, economy, land, food, energy, water, carbon, nutrients, and fish are currently included in ANEMI_Yangtze. This paper identifies the opportunities and challenges facing the Yangtze Economic Belt and presents the ANEMI_Yangtze model structure. It also includes: (i) the identification of the cross-sectoral interactions and feedbacks involved in shaping Yangtze Economic Belt’s system behaviour over time; (ii) the identification of the feedbacks within each sector that drive the state variables in that sector; and (iii) the explanation of the theoretical and mathematical basis for those feedbacks. ANEMI_Yangtze was developed and calibrated sector by sector before coupling them together into complete ANEMI_Yangtze model. After the validation and robustness test, the ANEMI_Yangtze model can be used to support decision making, policy assessment, and scenario development. This study aims to improve the understanding of the complex interactions among human and natural systems in the Yangtze Economic Belt to provide foundation for science-based policies for the sustainable development of the economic belt.

INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE

2020 ◽  
pp. 2040004
Author(s):  
ROBERT MENDELSOHN
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Integrated Assessment ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Many

The crowning achievement of the many published papers and books that William Nordhaus has published on climate change is the development of a simple Integrated Assessment Model of climate change. Embedding natural science insights into an economic framework reveals one can “solve” this difficult problem “for the greatest good, for the greatest number, and for the longest time”. Making certain that all the pieces are empirically based, and fit tightly together, and are internally consistent reveals this to be a masterpiece in the fine art of Integrated Assessment.

Application of an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) to for strategic scale delta assessment of socio-ecological risk: Supporting Policy in Coastal Bangladesh

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Hutton ◽  
Robert Nicholls ◽  
Alex Chapman ◽  
Charlotte Marcinko ◽  
Munsur Rahman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Integrated Assessment ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Coastal Bangladesh ◽  
Strategic Risk ◽  
South Central ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Government

<p>There is growing recognition that new approaches, underpinned by more system-oriented decision support tools, will be required to facilitate development compatible with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to prevent the risk of dangerous socio-environmental breakdown. We demonstrate the potential of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to inform strategic policy decision making at a regional level, helping to understand key trade-offs as well as indirect or unintended impacts. The stakeholder co-produced Delta Dynamic Emulator Model (ΔDIEM) model is applied to the southwest coastal zone (pop. 14m) where high rates of extreme poverty prevail. The model integrates biophysical drivers, ecosystem services and community level household wellbeing, and in this work is applied an behalf of the Planning Commission of the Government of Bangladesh in order to assess strategic risk in coastal Bangladesh (2050) and particularly to support the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. The intervention we investigated included i) A proposed extensive polder network in the south-central region of coastal Bangladesh ii) Strategic development of a chronically waterlogged area of the delta. In both areas we highlight insights on implications of biophysical drivers on poverty, livelihoods and inequality as well as on risk transfer between regions and populations associated with implementation. In doing so we critically assess IAMs’ growing potential to ask and explore key questions and scenarios about the functioning of integrated biophysical and socioeconomic systems. Finally, we point to ongoing applications of the model in West Bengal</p>

scholarly journals Addressing climate change adaptation with a stochastic integrated assessment model: Analysis of common agricultural policy measures

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Ermolieva ◽  
Esther Boere ◽  
Anne Biewald ◽  
Petr Havlík ◽  
Aline Mosnier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agricultural Policy ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Integrated Assessment ◽  
Sunk Costs ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
The Face ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Irrigation Technologies

Stochastic agro-economic model GLOBIOM is used to demonstrate how best to design and evaluate the CAP’s financial and structural measures, both individually and jointly, in the face of inherent uncertainty and risk. The model accounts for plausible shocks simultaneously and derives measures that are robust against all shock scenarios; it can thus help avoid the irreversibility and sunk costs that occur in unexpected scenarios.To allow adequate agricultural production, we show that the distribution of CAP funds needs to account for exposure to risks, security targets, and the synergies between policy measures, including production, trade, storage, and irrigation technologies. 

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