Large-scale WSM interventions may not always guarantee equitable community benefits, e.g., enhancing embankment reliability is very important but will have limited impact if O&M is limited and sustainable in-polder water-sediment management is not ensured. Interventions should align with local community resilience needs to ensure local stakeholders’ commitment, effective implementation and sustainable functioning. The current siloed sectoral focus has often led to maladaptation trajectories as local contexts and vulnerabilities of diverse livelihoods within a shared SES were not carefully assessed. It is important to beter understand how different water resources system components interact, and how sustainable delta management can be harmonized with local water-sediment management strategies, for equitable benefits across different communities. This necessitates an integrated systems framework with the ability to analyze impacts of different (sets of) WSM interventions and their synergies and trade-offs across multiple scales and sectors. As physical and socioeconomic risks evolve and environmental degradation intensifies due to climate change and human activities, integrated approaches to examining these processes and their interactions are becoming increasingly essential. Through the proposed research project, we aim to address this gap and contribute to a systems approach for creating sustainable landscapes and resilient communities in riverine and coastal socio-ecological systems.
Our specific research questions are:
• What robust adaptive management (ADM) strategies for WSM can, over different timescales, sustain delta landscapes, reduce risks, and enhance ecosystem services and resilience, while providing synergistic multi-sectoral benefits across different time scales?
• How can we ensure reliable, climate resilient and well-maintained water infrastructure, with the desired river-floodplain hydro-morphology, supported by consistent financing and effective asset management?
• How can larger-scale strategies be harmonized with locally adapted, nature-based where possible, measures, to effectively support community resilience?
• How can an integrated framework help to analyze impacts of WSM measures across different scales (from community to regional) and sectors?
Our research will involve: i) a systems approach with an SES lens; ii) co-creation of research needs and questions; iii) co-produced solutions with emphasis on multiple synergistic benefits; iv) solutions corroborated by qualitative and quantitative field research, hydrodynamic and systems simulation of coastal systems, and integrated model simulation of interventions; and v) implementation (to the extent possible) of the solutions via engaging with national and/or local implementation agencies and communities.
