River basins as 'living laboratories' for achieving sustainable development goals across national and sub-national scales

While countries around the world are striving to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), policies and actions put in place to achieve the 17 goals and 169 targets may lead to inequitable development at the sub-national scale. Although this possibility is recognized, it is currently under-investigated. This project addresses this gap by analysing cross-scale synergies and trade-offs between goals and targets, while also considering how national level policies related to the SDGs impact development at the sub-national scale, represented here by a large river basin. More generally, the project aims to develop an approach that is replicable in other river basins globally and to provide policy recommendations to remove or mitigate the trade-offs so helping to achieve equitable development across river basins.

The analysis will be carried out at the scale of a large river basin, which is a relevant geography to analyse human-environment interactions at the sub-national scale because it provides natural boundaries where upstream-downstream processes can be analysed precisely. Most river basins globally are highly managed to provide various services to populations both locally and further afield, including at the national level (e.g. for food, water and energy security). It is therefore possible for policies to be enacted that, for example, favour food production in a specific location of a river basin (e.g. a delta) to achieve national food security goals at the expense of the environment locally (e.g. through excessive use of agricultural inputs). Upstream development, such as dams can help deliver national-level energy security targets but can negatively impact downstream locations from environmental (e.g. reduction of sediment flows) or natural hazard perspectives (e.g. increasing risk of flooding in case of structural failure).

We will focus on the Luanhe river basin in China, a sub-basin of the Haihe, one of the seven largest basins in China. This basin is relevant because of its extent, and because of the rapid development that is taking place within its boundaries, including construction of the Panjiakou and Daheiting reservoirs on the Luanhe River which supply the mega-city of Tianjin and other cities. It suffers from a severe imbalance between water supply and demand and many initiatives are underway to address this, allowing for a detailed analysis of synergies and trade-offs generated by these activities. Rural transformation in parts of the Luanhe is applicable in other countries as is urbanisation in its lower reaches, which will allow for the research to be of relevance internationally. The trade-offs between rapid economic development, increases in people's living standards and environmental degradation/protection issues, which are characteristics of China's development in general, are also present in the basin. The basin is data rich, its development is directly linked to enforcement of national level policies, and various non-academic stakeholders, representing actors from the national to the community levels, have already agreed to co-develop the research with us.

Initially, we will investigate interlinkages between environmental hazards (relevant for various Goals), climate change (SDG13), water resources (SDG6), energy (SDG7), ecological health (with a focus on SDG15), and urbanization (SDG11). We will focus on policy incentives and interventions in terms of infrastructure development, water, disaster risk reduction, energy security and urbanization. To achieve this, we will co-develop basin development and land use change scenarios with a wide range of stakeholders. These scenarios will serve as a basis to capture changes in hydrology, sediment transport, water quality, and ecosystem services within the basin. The outputs from these assessments will subsequently be used in a modified version of the SDG Interlinkages Tool which has already been tested for China at the national scale.

The project will engage from the onset with a broad range of stakeholders and non-academic end-users of our research. A group of stakeholders has already been identified and integrated in the proposed project and will be expanded during project implementation to ensure effective co-development, dissemination and uptake of research outputs to achieve wide reaching economic and societal impact.

Different groups of stakeholders will directly benefit from the proposed research. It is generally recognised that development driven by national or high-level policies to achieve SDGs may ultimately lead to development inequalities within a country or region. The proposed research will create improved understanding of the issues and deliver tools and findings for the decision-makers to develop better informed policies to achieve cross-scale equitable development by minimizing trade-offs and maximizing synergies between SDGs, leading to substantial societal and economic benefits to the local communities in the longer run. Through the researcher-stakeholder-community partnership established and evolved during the project duration, the project team will work together to ensure the communities' voices are heard, their problems are understood and integrated into the research. The extended SDG Interlinkages Tool will be very valuable for policy and decision-makers addressing development issues at all governance scales. This tool will help integration of decision making across sectors as well as providing a rapid diagnosis as to where major trade-offs between SDGs will take place at the sub-national scale for given policies. Development alternatives that minimize these trade-offs and maximize synergies could then be sought.

A critical element of the proposed research is for the project to be relevant to river basins globally, although development and testing will use the Luanhe river basin. This transferability will be facilitated by extending the SDG Interlinkages Tool, through consultations with river basin authorities (or their equivalents) in Japan, the UK and China, as well as in the Philippines and other countries where project partners are currently active, and by the dissemination strategy of the project targeting the international scientific community as well as policy-makers at the global scale. The scientific community will be informed through participation of project members at key conferences and workshops and through a series of at least six papers planned to be published in leading scientific journals. Policy-makers at the international level will be engaged through two events: (1) ISAP-2020 which is co-organized by project partner IGES and by the United Nations University. This is a public outreach event involving participation from UN and international organisations, the business sector, the press and media; and (2) the United Nations High-level Political Forum where we plan to present our policy brief during a side event organized by IGES (July 2020).

The management plan of the proposed research emphasises the central role of a variety of stakeholders from the beginning to the end of the project, with various consultation loops being put in place, as a mechanism to ensure relevance of research outputs and therefore to increase the potential impact of project activities.

Data (as detailed in the Data Management Plan) and papers will be made readily available as soon as possible, including the series of at least six journal articles which will be published open access.