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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DAFNE (DAFNE: Use of a Decision-Analytic Framework to explore the water-energy-food NExus in complex and trans-boundary water resources systems of fast growing developing countries.)

Teaser

Summary

Global trends in population growth and rising economic prosperity will increase the demand for energy, food, and water, with more severe impact in fast-growing economies, such as in several African countries. The constraints on water, energy, and food could well hamper economic development, lead to social and geopolitical tensions, and cause lasting environmental damage. DAFNE advocates an integrated and adaptive water resources planning and management approach that explicitly addresses the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus from a novel participatory and multidisciplinary perspective. This includes social, economic, and ecologic dimensions, involves both public and private actors and is socially inclusive, enhances resource efficiency and prevents the loss of ecosystem services in regions where large infrastructures exist or are being built and intensive agriculture is expanding. A decision-analytic- framework (DAF) will be developed to quantitatively assess the social, economic, and environmental impact of expanding energy and food production in complex physical and political contexts, where natural and social processes are strongly interconnected and the institutional setting involves multiple stakeholders and decision-makers. The DAFNE approach will be demonstrated by analysing two cross-boundary case studies, the Zambezi and the Omo-Turkana basins. The WEF nexus will be quantified and analysed as the trade-off between conflicting objectives such as hydropower production vs irrigation, land exploitation vs conservation, etc. The nexus will be translated in economic values and impact on growth, ecosystems, and ecosystem services. DAFNE will allow a better understanding of the WEF nexus and generate and explore alternative planning and management solutions based on the cooperation of public and private stakeholders, which foster the profitable but equitable use of resources without transgressing environmental limits or creating societal and/or stakeholder conflicts.

Work performed

The first 18 months of the DAFNE project operation have been characterised by the preliminary work and investigation that are necessary to harmonize the ambitious agenda of the project. This required the establishment of a common language among partners with significantly different technical back-ground, and the organisation of all the infrastructure required to the correct functioning of the project. The partners worked on the acquisition of the necessary data, and, above all, the interaction with the stakeholders of the case studies that are used as a test bed for developing the methodological approach that DAFNE aims to demonstrate. The approach advocated in the project has the potential capability of introducing a paradigmatic change in resolving water management issues, which are typical of transboundary rivers for which water is an essential component for the sustainable production of energy and food.
The main successes of the project so far have been the generation of a broad interest among the stakeholders both in the Zambezi and the Omo-Turkana basins. They have demonstrated a great deal of interest and commitment in their attendance and participation in the first face-to-face Negotiation Simulation Laboratoryâ€™s, where they experienced a safe and neutral environment for expressing their view on the development pathways of the basins, thus providing an initial set of boundary conditions for the DAFNE team to formulate specific pathways. This initial set of pathways form the basis upon which the decision-analytic-framework and the integrated Water-Energy-Food model will be tested. The Geoportal, which is expected to be a data visualisation facility and a central platform for the storage and sharing of project data and results, also attracted the very positive interest when presented to the stakeholders.

Final results

DAFNE will bring together the current state-of-the-art from diverse disciplines and combine it in a multidimensional and multidisciplinary framework to address the challenges associated with the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus in complex, transboundary river basins in rapidly growing African countries. This will make possible demonstrating the power of the DAFNE decision-analytic framework to identify best nexus governance options and to efficiently inform the decision-making process to achieve a sustainable development.
To achieve this goal, DAFNE will go beyond the current state-of-the-art of integrated water resources management by (1) explicitly integrating in the decision-analytic-framework multiple models, which provide a detailed characterization of the WEF nexus, including its feedback components; (2) quantifying the impacts of future hydroclimatic, socio-economic, and institutional scenarios on the WEF components and on the interests of the local stakeholders; (3) identifying robust pathways (i.e. temporal sequence of development actions) via direct negotiation with stakeholders and decision makers in order to promote growth that is socially inclusive and environmentally and economically sustainable.
In the first reporting period, while the tools and simulations concerning (1) and (2) are being developed, the innovation focused on (3) through the implementation of the first face-to-face Negotiation Simulation Laboratoryâ€™s, in which stakeholders met and candidly discussed their views of potential development pathways and how these can influence the achievement of sustainable development, as well as being exposed to the innovative modelling tools that will enable the assessment of such pathways.