| 1. |
- Gleeson, Tom, et al.
(författare)
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Illuminating water cycle modifications and Earth system resilience in the Anthropocene
- 2020
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Ingår i: Water resources research. - 0043-1397 .- 1944-7973. ; 56:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fresh water—the bloodstream of the biosphere—is at the center of the planetary drama of the Anthropocene. Water fluxes and stores regulate the Earth's climate and are essential for thriving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as water, food, and energy security. But the water cycle is also being modified by humans at an unprecedented scale and rate. A holistic understanding of freshwater's role for Earth system resilience and the detection and monitoring of anthropogenic water cycle modifications across scales is urgent, yet existing methods and frameworks are not well suited for this. In this paper we highlight four core Earth system functions of water (hydroclimatic regulation, hydroecological regulation, storage, and transport) and key related processes. Building on systems and resilience theory, we review the evidence of regional‐scale regime shifts and disruptions of the Earth system functions of water. We then propose a framework for detecting, monitoring, and establishing safe limits to water cycle modifications and identify four possible spatially explicit methods for their quantification. In sum, this paper presents an ambitious scientific and policy grand challenge that could substantially improve our understanding of the role of water in the Earth system and cross‐scale management of water cycle modifications that would be a complementary approach to existing water management tools.
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| 2. |
- Jaramillo, Fernando, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Fewer Basins Will Follow Their Budyko Curves Under Global Warming and Fossil-Fueled Development
- 2022
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Ingår i: Water resources research. - 0043-1397 .- 1944-7973. ; 58:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Budyko framework consists of a curvilinear relationship between the evaporative ratio (i.e., actual evaporation over precipitation) and the aridity index (i.e., potential evaporation over precipitation) and defines evaporation's water and energy limits. A basin's movement within the Budyko space illustrates its hydroclimatic change and helps identify the main drivers of change. On the one hand, long-term aridity changes drive evaporative ratio changes, moving basins along their Budyko curves. On the other hand, historical human development can cause river basins to deviate from their curves. The question is if basins will deviate or follow their Budyko curves under the future effects of global warming and related human developments. To answer this, we quantify the movement in the Budyko space of 405 river basins from 1901-1950 to 2051-2100 based on the outputs of seven models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 6 (CMIP6). We account for the implications of using different potential evaporation models and study low- and high-emissions scenarios. We find considerable differences of movement in Budyko space regarding direction and intensity when using the two estimates of potential evaporation. However, regardless of the potential evaporation estimate and the scenario used, most river basins will not follow their reference Budyko curves (>72%). Furthermore, the number of basins not following their curves increases under high greenhouse gas emissions and fossil-fueled development SP585 and across dry and wet basin groups. We elaborate on the possible explanations for a large number of basins not following their Budyko curves.
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| 3. |
- Jaramillo, Fernando, et al.
(författare)
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Priorities and Interactions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with Focus on Wetlands
- 2019
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Ingår i: Water. - : MDPI. - 2073-4441. ; 11:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country’s natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis was based on the information and perceptions on 45 wetlandscapes worldwide by 49 wetland researchers of the Global Wetland Ecohydrological Network (GWEN). We identified three 2030 Agenda targets of high priority across the wetlandscapes needed to achieve sustainable development: Target 6.3—“Improve water quality”; 2.4—“Sustainable food production”; and 12.2—“Sustainable management of resources”. Moreover, we found specific feedback mechanisms and synergies between SDG targets in the context of wetlands. The most consistent reinforcing interactions were the influence of Target 12.2 on 8.4—“Efficient resource consumption”; and that of Target 6.3 on 12.2. The wetlandscapes could be differentiated in four bundles of distinctive priority SDG-targets: “Basic human needs”, “Sustainable tourism”, “Environmental impact in urban wetlands”, and “Improving and conserving environment”. In general, we find that the SDG groups, targets, and interactions stress that maintaining good water quality and a “wise use” of wetlandscapes are vital to attaining sustainable development within these sensitive ecosystems.
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| 4. |
- Kehoe, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Make EU trade with Brazil sustainable
- 2019
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 364:6438, s. 341-
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 5. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, et al.
(författare)
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Barriers to scaling sustainable land and water management in Uganda : a cross-scale archetype approach
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 26:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In African small-scale agriculture, sustainable land and water management (SLWM) is key to improving food production while coping with climate change. However, the rate of SLWM adoption remains low, suggesting a gap between generalized SLWM advantages for rural development across the literature, and the existence of context-dependent barriers to its effective implementation. Uganda is an example of this paradox: the SLWM adoption rate is low despite favorable ecological conditions for agriculture development and a large rural population. A systemic understanding of the barriers hindering the adoption of SLWM is therefore crucial to developing coherent policy interventions and enabling effective funding strategies. Here, we propose a cross-scale archetype approach to identify and link barriers to SLWM adoption in Uganda. We performed 80 interviews across the country to build cognitive archetypes, harvesting stakeholders’ perceptions of different types of barriers. We complemented this bottom-up perspective with a spatial archetype analysis to contextualize these results across different social-ecological regions. We found poverty trap, overpopulation, risk aversion, remoteness, and post-conflict patriarchal systems as cognitive archetypes that synthesize the different dynamics of barriers to SLWM adoption in Uganda. Our results reveal both specific and cross-cutting barriers. Ineffective extension services emerges as a ubiquitous barrier, whereas gender inequality is a priority barrier for large supported farms and farms in drier lowlands in northern Uganda. The combination of cognitive and spatial archetypes proposed here can help to overcome ineffective “one-size-fits-all” solutions and support context-specific policy plans to scale up SLWM, rationing resources to support sustainable intensification of agriculture.
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| 6. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Estimating the global potential of water harvesting from successful case studies
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 63
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Water harvesting has been widely applied in different social-ecological contexts, proving to be a valuable approach to sustainable intensification of agriculture. Global estimates of the potential of water harvesting are generally based on purely biophysical assessments and mostly neglect the socioeconomic dimension of agriculture. This neglect becomes a critical factor for the feasibility and effectiveness of policy and funding efforts to mainstream this practice. This study uses archetype analysis to systematically identify social-ecological regions worldwide based on >160 successful cases of local water harvesting implementation. We delineate six archetypal regions which capture the specific social-ecological conditions of the case studies. The archetypes cover 19% of current global croplands with hotspots in large portions of East Africa and Southeast Asia. We estimate that the adoption of water harvesting in these cropland areas can increase crop production up to 60–100% in Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and India. The results of this study can complement conventional biophysical analysis on the potential of these practices and guide policy development at global and regional scales. The methodological approach can be also replicated at finer scales to guide the improvement of rainfed agricultural.
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| 7. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, et al.
(författare)
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Future Hydroclimatic Impacts on Africa : Beyond the Paris Agreement
- 2019
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Ingår i: Earth's Future. - 2328-4277. ; 7:7, s. 748-761
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Projections of global warming in Africa are generally associated with increasing aridity and decreasing water availability. However, most freshwater assessments focus on single hydroclimatic indicators (e.g., runoff, precipitation, or aridity), lacking analysis on combined changes in evaporative demand, and water availability on land. There remains a high degree of uncertainty over water implications at the basin scale, in particular for the most water-consuming sector-food production. Using the Budyko framework, we perform an assessment of future hydroclimatic change for the 50 largest African basins, finding a consistent pattern of change in four distinct regions across the two main emission scenarios corresponding to the Paris Agreement, and the business as usual. Although the Paris Agreement is likely to lead to less intense changes when compared to the business as usual, both scenarios show the same pattern of hydroclimatic shifts, suggesting a potential roadmap for hydroclimatic adaptation. We discuss the social-ecological implications of the projected hydroclimatic shifts in the four regions and argue that climate policies need to be complemented by soil and water conservation practices to make the best use of future water resources.
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| 8. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, 1988-
(författare)
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Global and continental perspectives on the sustainability of future agricultural water management
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ensuring water and food security in the Anthropocene requires an understanding of combined climate change patterns and land and water management options from local to global scale. In many regions, irrigation from river and groundwater sources is being used at unsustainable rates and climate change will further threaten those water sources. Optimizing the use of precipitation in agricultural water management becomes a necessary improvement to adopt at larger scales, especially in vast rainfed arid and semi-arid regions where it represents the only source of water. This thesis explores the patterns of change in hydroclimate and the land and water management options to provide guidance to scale-out sustainable agricultural practices. In particular, this thesis focuses on where and to what extent practices related to water harvesting can represent a sustainable agricultural innovation to cope with climate change with a social-ecological lens. It also provides a simple data-driven methodological approach that can be replicated and adapted at different spatial scales to be used as a policy-guiding tool to spread water harvesting implementations.In the first manuscript focused on Africa (Africa manuscript), I investigate the projected impact of climate change on the water cycle based on the main hydroclimatic parameters of precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff and soil moisture and two hydroclimatic indices; the aridity index and the evaporative ratio. The manuscript identifies continent-wide patterns in hydroclimatic change that are found to be consistent between the two representative climate change scenario corresponding to the Paris agreement and the business as usual, respectively. The manuscript not only highlights the importance of pursuing the climate policies to increase adaptation to future hydroclimatic change, but also suggests the urgency to implement sustainable land and water management practices (e.g. water harvesting) to make the best use of water resources in the different hydroclimatic-change regions identified in the manuscript.In the second manuscript (Water harvesting manuscript), I analyse the potential of water harvesting to be successfully implemented in the current global agricultural area, drawing from a large dataset of successful case studies. This manuscript provides methodological insights on geographical out-scaling of local case studies using similarity in social-ecological characteristics as a condition to replicability. The results identify two main successful hotspot regions in Wester Africa and South-Easter Asia where the social-ecological conditions make WH suitable for increasing crop production in large portions of the current agricultural land.The outcomes of both manuscripts can be used by local, regional and international stakeholders to develop policies of sustainable agricultural in the face of climate change.
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| 9. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Investing in sustainable intensification for smallholders : quantifying large-scale costs and benefits in Uganda
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 17:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Uganda, upgrading smallholder agriculture is a necessary step to achieve the interlinked sustainable development goals of hunger eradication, poverty reduction and land degradation neutrality. However, targeting the right restoration practices and estimate their cost-benefit at the national scale is difficult given the highly contextual nature of restoration practices and the diversity of small-scale interventions to be adopted. By analysing the context-specific outcomes of 82 successful case studies on different sustainable land and water management (SLWM) in Uganda, we estimated that out-scaling of existing successful practices to 75% of agricultural land would require a one-time investment of US$ 4.4 billion from smallholders. Our results show that, besides the many social and environmental benefit commonly associated to SLWM, a wide outscale of SLWM could generate US$ 4.7 billion every year, once the practices are fully operational. Our context-specific estimates highlight the profitability of investing in smallholder farming to achieve the sustainable development goals in Uganda, with geographical differences coming from specific social-ecological conditions. This study can guide sustainable intensification development by targeting the most suitable SLWM practices and plan for adequate financial support from government, investors and international development aids to smallholder farming.
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| 10. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainable intensification of agriculture in Uganda : quantifying large-scale investments for small-scale farmers
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Annan publikation (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- In Uganda, upgrading smallholder agriculture is a necessary step to achieve the interlinked sustainable development goals of hunger eradication, poverty reduction and land degradation neutrality. However, targeting the right restoration practices and estimate their cost-benefit at the national scale is difficult given the highly contextual nature of restoration practices and the diversity of small-scale interventions to be adopted. By analyzing the context-specific outcomes of 82 successful case studies on different Sustainable Land and Water Management (SLWM) in Uganda, we estimated that out-scaling of successful practices to 75% of agricultural land would require a one-time investment of US$ 4.4 billion from smallholders. The resulting crop production increase could generate US$ 4.7 billion every year, once the practices are fully operational. These results highlight the necessity, and profitability, of investing in smallholder farmers to achieve the SDGs in Uganda, as opposed to large-scale agricultural interventions that might not profit local communities. This study can guide the development of nation-wide programs to mainstream SLWM by targeting the most suitable practices and plan for adequate financial support from government, investors and international development aids to smallholder farmers.
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| 11. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, 1988-
(författare)
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Sustainable Land and Water Management for a Greener Future : Large-scale insights in support of Agroecological Intensification
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The challenge of producing more food in times of climate change, degraded land and scares water resources is calling for a radical transformation of agriculture. Sustainable agricultural intensification is the process of increasing the productivity of farms while preserving functional ecosystems. A range of sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices and approaches to sustainable intensification have been successfully implemented at the local scale during the last decades, but adoption rate remains low due to a variety of barriers and lack of effective approaches from authorities at larger scales (national to global). Despite the wealth of local successes, promoting and realizing the widespread uptake of SLWM requires large scale understanding of the potential and challenges of adoption of SLWM, which is currently lacking. This thesis bridges outcomes of successful implementation of SLWM from local cases to large scale social-ecological patterns, showing where and what is the potential of SLWM to contribute to sustainable agricultural intensification and the barriers to achieve it. The methodological approach and the results presented in this thesis aim at providing insights to improve current assessments of sustainable intensification of agriculture and practical guidance to planning, policy making and funding interventions to promote the widespread adoption of SLWM.
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| 12. |
- Piemontese, Luigi, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Validity and validation in archetype analysis : practical assessment framework and guidelines
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 17:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Archetype analysis is a promising approach in sustainability science to identify patterns and explain mechanisms shaping the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Although considerable efforts have been devoted to developing quality standards and methodological advances for archetype analysis, archetype validation remains a major challenge. Drawing on the insights from two international workshops on archetype analysis and on broader literature on validity, we propose a framework that identifies and describes six dimensions of validity: conceptual; construct; internal; external; empirical; and application validity. We first discuss the six dimensions in relation to different methodological approaches and purposes of archetype analysis. We then present an operational use of the framework for researchers to assess the validity of archetype analysis and to support sound archetype identification and policy-relevant applications. Finally, we apply our assessment to 18 published archetype analyses, which we use to describe the challenges and insights in validating the different dimensions and suggest ways to holistically improve the validity of identified archetypes. With this, we contribute to more rigorous archetype analyses, helping to develop the potential of the approach for guiding sustainability solutions.
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