Waterproofing Data: Engaging stakeholders in sustainable flood risk governance for urban resilience

Waterproofing Data tackles the challenge of improving the resilience of communities and cities to floods. This is accomplished by investigating the governance of water-related risks, with a focus on social and cultural aspects of data practices. By rethinking how flood-related data is produced and how it flows, Waterproofing Data will enable transformations to build sustainable, resilient communities. To this end, Waterproofing Data develops three innovative methods around data practices, across different sites and scales: 1) we will make visible existing flows of flood-related data through tracing data; 2) generate new types of data at the local level by engaging citizens through the creation of multi-modal interfaces, which sense, collect and communicate flood data, and; 3) integrate citizen-generated data with other data using geo-computational techniques. The project will be conducted by a highly skilled international team of researchers with multiple disciplinary backgrounds from Brazil, Germany and the UK, in close partnership with researchers, stakeholders and publics of a multi-site case study on flood risk management in Sao Paulo and Acre, Brazil.

These methodological interventions will transform how flood-related data is produced and flows, creating new governance arrangements between citizens, governments and flood experts and, ultimately, increased community resilience related to floods in vulnerable communities of Brazil. Furthermore, the methods and results of this case study will be the basis for a transcultural dialogue with government organisations and local administration involved in flood risk management in Germany and the United Kingdom.

An introduction to the project is available here.

Project leader: Dr. J. Porto de Albuquerque, University of Warwick (United Kingdom)

Principal Investigators: Prof. M.A. Viegas Cortez da Cunha, Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), Prof. A. Zipf, Heidelberg University (Germany)

TRUEPATH: TRansforming UnsustainablE PATHways in agricultural frontiers: articulating microfinance plus with local institutional change for sustainability in Nicaragua

The project addresses the global-local institutional dynamics that generates the socially and environmentally unsustainable cattle development pathway. In Latin America, this pathway is a main driver of deforestation, contributing to climate change, the destruction of critical biodiversity stocks and the dispossession of indigenous people. The research specifically focusses on the agricultural frontier around the Bosawas Nature Reserve in Northern Nicaragua and consists of an action-research process in cooperation with the microfinance organization Fondo de Desarrollo Local and the environmental NGO Centro Humboldt.

The project analyzes the potential of a ‘Green Microfinance Plus’ program (loans + technical assistance + Payments for Ecosystem Services), and connects to broader reflections in local deliberative fora promoted by the project and a citizen science approach to local climate data generation and use. In terms of research methodology, a multidisciplinary mixed methods set-up combines inputs from development sociology and economics with the Agrarian Systems approach, and makes use of an original simulation game informed by local data. The research aims to co-identify in-roads for policies of ‘institutional entrepreneurship’, offering opportunities to affect relevant institutional processes to transform today’s detrimental pathway in the direction of more sustainable, equitable and climate-sensible agriculture, less dependent on deforestation and cheap land. The objective is to develop scientific outputs and policy proposals (in particular also for environmentally responsible rural finance) that contribute to change towards sustainability in the Nicaraguan agricultural frontier and beyond.

Find out more on the TRUEPATH website and on the project’s ResearchGate page.

 Project leader: Prof. J. Bastiaensen, University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Principal investigators: Dr. S. Flores, Universidad Centroamericana (Nicaragua), Dr. N. Garambois, Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences (France)

TAPESTRY: Transformation as Praxis: Exploring Socially Just and Transdisciplinary Pathways to Sustainability in Marginal Environments

The objective of TAPESTRY is to examine how transformation may arise from below in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty. Climate change uncertainties, especially at the local level, constitute one of the main challenges to the sustainability of societies and ecosystems, calling for systemic transformative changes. While these uncertainties can exacerbate anxieties about the future, they can also provide an opportunity to create transformation and deep structural change. TAPESTRY focuses on three patches of transformation in India and Bangladesh – vulnerable coastal areas of Mumbai, the Sundarbans and Kutch – where hybrid alliances and innovative practices are reimagining sustainable development and inspiring societal transformation.

TAPESTRY is organised in a transnational and transdisciplinary consortium across the UK, India, Bangladesh, Norway and Japan. We aim to study transformation as praxis, by putting bottom-up change and the agency of marginalised people at the centre. We examine how sustainability transformations emerge and are co-produced amongst a wide range of actors in particular places, and the processes through which they are scaled up and out. The project’s outcomes and impact will inform processes to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of marginalised people affected by climate change related uncertainties, whilst generating evidence of how bottom-up transformation can take place in marginal environments.

Project leader: Prof. L. Mehta, Institute of Development Studies (United Kingdom)

Principal investigators: Dr. S. Movik, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway), Prof. D. Parthasarathy, Indian Institute of Technology (India), Prof. N. Ohte, Kyoto University (Japan)

T2SGS: Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability

Billions of people around the world rely for their everyday existence on groundwater. Efforts to intensify agriculture to meet growing food needs or improve productivity and profits also increasingly rely on groundwater for their success. The invisibility of groundwater, however, makes it notoriously difficult to know and account for and thus manage. This difficulty is compounded by two intrinsic tensions that characterize groundwater governance: between individual and collective interests and between short-term gains and longer-term sustainability.

This project comparatively studies promising grass-roots initiatives of people organizing around groundwater in places where pressures on the resource are particularly acute (India, Algeria, Morocco, USA, Chile, Peru, and Tanzania). Chosen because they defy or challenge conventional groundwater governance wisdom, the project’s hypothesis is that these initiatives contain new creative insights about grounded ways of dealing with groundwater governance dilemmas.

Focusing on practices – of knowing, accessing and sharing – the project combines qualitative ethnographic methods with hydrogeological and engineering insights to explore the knowledges, technologies and institutions that characterize these local initiatives. The project aspires to enunciate and normatively assess their logic and functioning in view of tracing overlaps or patterns that allow them to serve as more generic models for transformations to groundwater sustainability.

The overall aim is to create global action-research-capacity building collaborations to generate new inspirations for thinking about and dealing with the interconnections and interdependencies between humans and groundwater.

Project leader: Prof. M. Zwarteveen, University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands)

Principal investigators: Prof. F. Cleaver, University of Sheffield (United Kingdom), Prof. Flora Lu, University of California, Santa Cruz (United States), Dr. M. Kuper, French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (France), Dr. L. Börjeson, Stockholm University (Sweden), MA. S. Kulkarni, Society for Promoting Participative Eco-system management (India)

Gold Matters: Sustainability Transformations in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining

The project explores whether a transformative approach towards sustainability can arise in Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM). An estimated 16 million people in low and lower-middle income countries are dependent on ASGM as a livelihood. Despite its economic significance, however, ASGM is associated with negative environmental, social, labour and health impacts. These problems generate critical barriers to sustainability. To address sustainability-linked transformation, there is an urgent need for evidence regarding how gold mining actors engage with, understand, and transform their relationships to the natural, social, political, and economic worlds.

The research will consider whether and how societal transformation towards sustainable mining futures is possible in ASGM. It will critically reflect on the character of sustainability, for whom, where, and how. The concept of gold lifeways focuses attention on sustainability dynamics in ways that bring to the fore sociality, materiality, and technological formations. A multi-actor and trans-regional approach is deployed, with comparative analysis across sites in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Impact is through: generation of social scientific evidence on sustainability, policy influence, and public debate. Public communication, referred to under the rubric of Sustainability Conversations, involves co-production of knowledge with mining actors, incorporating voices all-too-often excluded from debates on ASGM. Multimodal visual representations form the basis of a pop-up exhibition, which will travel across Africa, Europe and Brazil.

Project leader: Dr. E. Fisher, Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden)

Principal investigators: Dr. S. Luning, Leiden University (the Netherlands), Dr. M. de Theije, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Prof. M. Schnegg, University of Hamburg (Germany), Dr. C. Lanzano, Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden), Dr. P. Hochet, Insuco Foundation for Social Science Research (Burkina Faso), Dr. L. da Costa Ferreira, Campinas State University (Brazil)

SecTenSusPeace: SECURING TENURE, SUSTAINABLE PEACE? The challenges of localizing land-registration in conflict-affected Burundi and eastern DR Congo

In conflict-affected settings, land tenure security of smallholders is seen as essential to prevent local land disputes and sustain peace, enable recovery of rural livelihoods, and advance ecologically and socially sustainable agricultural production. To enhance tenure security –which is often severely compromised during conflict– interveners tend to turn to land registration and other forms of formally acknowledging claims to land. However, conventional state-led approaches relying on centrally-organised, individual titling often fail to deal with very complex local land struggles. Yet, the alternative of recognizing customary land governance is also problematic. Contrary to expectations, customary arrangements may also fail to find locally embedded, acceptable solutions.

Hoping to overcome the shortcomings of both approaches, policy makers and development practitioners are currently experimenting with ‘third way’ approaches that combine statutory and local arrangements. But while land registration faces important challenges in stable settings, these become even more critical in conflict-affected settings. Not only is there less agreement on what norms prevail; approaches also tend to feed into local institutional competition, result in new exclusions, and impinge on struggles around identity and belonging. Through local fieldwork in pilots on new approaches to registration in Burundi and eastern DR Congo, the project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges of local land registration and the recognition of claims in conflict-affected settings. Through knowledge-sharing with practitioners, it generates instruments that help interveners better map potential outcomes.

Project leader: Dr. M. van Leeuwen, Radboud University (the Netherlands)

Principal investigators: Dr. G. van der Haar, Wageningen University and Research (the Netherlands), Dr. A. Ansoms, Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), Prof. S. Mugangu, Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural de Bukavu (Democratic Republic of Congo)

MISTY: Migration, Transformation and Sustainability

Societies can shift away from current trajectories of unsustainability but current explanations fail to systematically account for demographic shifts, notably migration and mobility. This project incorporates the contemporary dynamics and challenges of migration as parameters affecting the pathways to sustainability. The research develops a model of the specific relationships between migration and sustainability such as consumption patterns and resource intensity. The project investigates how the identity and place attachment of migrant populations affect sustainability and how they are engaged in planning for sustainability. This knowledge is used to investigate how migration policies work to support or hinder the transformation towards sustainability.

The research uses key informant interviews and participatory action research in localities that span the range and diversity of migration types and dimensions. The research incorporates the diversity of experiences of integration and segregation of both domestic and international migrant communities. The research focuses on common issues in localities including Ghana, Netherlands, Belgium, Bangladesh, Mozambique and the United States.

The project generates new knowledge on the sustainability potential of the key demographic issue of contemporary society, that of the movement of populations across space. The findings are directly relevant for global dialogues on migration and development and for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. The principal beneficiaries are new and established populations who experience recurrent adversity in the process of integration into host societies, and policy makers grappling with sustainability transitions.

Project leader: Prof. N. Adger, University of Exeter (United Kingdom)

Principal investigators: Prof. F. Gemenne, University of Liege (Belgium), Prof. E. Carr, Clark University (United States), Prof. E. Boyd, Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (Sweden), Prof. S. Codjoe, Regional Institute for Population Studies (Ghana), Dr. S. Fransen, University of Maastricht (the Netherlands).

AGENTS: Amazonian Governance to Enable Transformations to Sustainability

The Amazon basin hosts locally and globally important environmental services, social-cultural diversity, and economic activities. Governing this region amid accelerated changes is a pressing challenge for Amazonian countries. While government programs are often more visible and certainly important, most sustainable forest management is locally initiated. Building upon long-term research of team members, the project integrates geospatial analyses and participatory methodologies to assess non-state conservation efforts and challenges via stakeholder engagement, in-depth field research, modeling of land change and conservation, and participatory scenarios.

The project will map where and how non-state actors sustainably use and conserve forests and ecosystems in social-ecologically diverse areas within the Xingu basin and Brazil-Peru-Bolivia tri-frontier. The project will analyze 25 years of land use change in watersheds shared by communal, state, private and protected lands to identify interactions and conservation patterns. The team will define governance problems, research questions, analyze initial results, and draft scenarios in collaboration with diverse land users sharing common watersheds.

The project supports initiatives recognizing the role of individual/collective action to conserve forests, their contrasts and synergies, and their contributions to meet the goals of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). The project will exchange and co-produce knowledge with land users, researchers, and decision makers, sharing our findings in diverse academic forums, workshops, policy-briefs, as appropriate written in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Lessons from the Amazon may be applicable to similar conditions around the tropics.

Find out more on the AGENTS website.

Project leader: Prof. E. Brondízio, Indiana University (United States)

Principal investigators: Dr. F. De Castro, University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Prof. C.R. Futemma, State University of Campinas (Brazil), Dr. C. Salk, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), Prof. K. Andersson, University of Colorado at Boulder (United States), Dr. M. Tengö, Stockholm University (Sweden)

CON-VIVA: Towards Convivial Conservation: Governing Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Anthropocene

The project is grounded in the premise that conservation is critical to transformations to sustainability but that its practices need to change radically. Conservation can be effective in protecting biodiversity in places, but in toto has failed to halt global biodiversity loss. Continued habitat fragmentation and reduced funding during times of austerity compound this problem. Many conservationists now acknowledge this, leading to vigorous ‘Anthropocene’ discussions on how to reconfigure human-wildlife relations, protected areas and the role of economic development in conservation.

CON-VIVA’s key objective is to conceptually refine and empirically test the prospects for one proposal emerging from these debates: ‘convivial conservation’. This new model moves beyond protected areas and faith in markets to build landscape, governance and funding pathways that integrate conservation and poverty reduction, while enhancing prosperity. CON-VIVA investigates the prospects for convivial conservation by comparing cutting-edge conservation cases that address human-wildlife conflict involving apex predators in Brazil, Finland, Tanzania and USA. Our hypothesis is that if ‘living with’ apex predators can be effectively combined with new forms of economic development, a broader transition to convivial conservation can be boosted significantly.

Project leaders: Prof. B. Büscher and Dr. R. Fletcher, Wageningen University and Research (the Netherlands)

Principal investigators: Prof. D. Brockington, University of Sheffield (United Kingdom), Prof. A. Nygren, University of Helsinki (Finland), Dr. K. Ferraz, University of São Paolo (Brazil), Dr. P. Alagona, University of California, Santa Barbara (United States), MSc. M. Bukhi, University of Dodoma (Tanzania)

GoST: Governance of Sociotechnical Transformations

The GoST project focuses on transformations in three areas of crucial relevance to sustainable development, relating in particular to pressing imperatives in countries of the Global South: energy systems, agriculture, and urban digital infrastructures. Each involves intricate North-South linkages that must be better understood for global sustainability efforts. Adopting a systematic comparative approach, GoST will use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, or collectively held visions of technological futures, to make sense of how imaginations of transformation help shape societal choices. Many challenges in the three focal areas are related to the prevailing imaginary, and solutions may require imagining radically new alternatives.

Through analysis of two interlinked parameters of transformation (dimensions and timelines of imagined change) across five countries (Germany, India, Kenya, UK, US), leading research centers in each will examine, in cooperation with key stakeholders, the frictions between imagined and experienced states in each focal area of transformation in each country. Through these analytic lenses, GoST aims for a methodologically innovative, integrative, empirically grounded approach that opens up new and nonlinear pathways of transformation. Expected outcomes and impacts: GoST will demonstrate feasible choices among alternative pathways for enacting socially progressive transformations towards sustainability, producing insights of immediate practical importance for how such transformations can best be governed in each selected area: by whom, to what ends, by what means, and with what welfare consequences for affected groups.

Project leader: Dr. S. Beck, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Germany)

Principal investigators: Prof. A. Stirling, University of Sussex (United Kingdom), Prof. S. Jasanoff, Harvard University (United States)