Sharing Futures: Sustainable urban transformations in water and energy

d3582a7a-9e8f-4c36-afbc-1e893876bead

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ESRC
ESRC
ESRC
ESRC
ESRC

£454,430

Jan. 1, 2015

Dec. 31, 2016

This proposed partnership addresses key challenges in planning for sustainable urban environments. The themes of water and energy are of strategic relevance to development goals in Brazil. The proposed partnership activities will build on an established collaborative knowledge base, bringing together social scientists and engineers with substantial track records in relation to sustainable urban development. In Brazil, the water/energy nexus is a research theme of major importance, due to water scarcity, and since >70% of Brazilian electricity comes from hydroelectricity. Evidence suggests that interventions at different spatio-temporal scales are required to reduce significant impacts-for-development resulting from mismanagement of water/energy resources. The inter-disciplinary project team and proposed activities shall afford innovative forms of dissemination and knowledge exchange between diverse academics, professionals and publics. Planned activities will include publicly-available research summaries, an online research network, the development of an existing app for the Brazilian context, a summer school and theory/practice workshops, and collaborative skills development/sharing. These activities will ensure that the project has extensive impact in Brazil, with potential to deliver long-term benefits in areas of strategic relevance to this call (water/energy), for the welfare of society in diverse developing contexts. Specifically, building upon the project team's existing links, the project will produce impacts in collaboration with NGOs focused upon sustainable development in Latin America and national/regional partners directly involved in the Brazilian water/energy nexus. Finally, the project will support the research team as it develops larger, related collaborative research projects on the crucial theme of water/energy in sustainable urban development.

Potential Impact:
1) ODA compliance

Sharing Futures directly addresses Brazilian development/welfare issues via its focus upon the water/energy nexus. In Brazil, major Governmental, NGO and private-sector initiatives have highlighted the centrality of water/energy innovation for long-term sustainable growth, economic development and population welfare.The collaborative project addresses ODA goals via: (i) skills-development and internationalisation of research within the Brazilian water/energy engineering sector; (ii) fostering innovative, interdisciplinary research and knowledge-exchange between leading engineering and social scientists; (iii) participatory, citizen/community-engagement work to enhance efficacy of large-scale water/energy management projects in contexts of urban/economic development.
Clear routes to national/regional impacts are in place via the project team's partners in the water/energy sector (e.g. Paraiba do Sul River Basin State/National Committees, Committee of Mantiqueira Range Watersheds, Committee of São Paulo State North Shore Watersheds). Outputs/benefits from the project shall be transferred to other OECD priority areas via existing links with Fundación Avina (NGO for sustainable development in Latin America).

2) Beneficiaries

Principally, these will include our project partners (listed in point 1). More broadly, these include policy-makers at local, regional and national levels in Brazil, urban & landscape planners, architects and water and energy engineers in public and private sectors. The project will have indirect and longer-term impacts upon local communities, via its development of participatory approaches (fed through academic research and informing future collaborative work by the project team).

3) How will beneficiaries benefit?

The innovative nature of the tools and analytical methods used and produced by the Sharing Futures partners and their differentiated view on Brazilian sustainability, in terms of water and domestic energy resources, will complement the approaches used in the Planning for Sustainable Cities research. Policy-makers, invited to the Impact symposium will be asked to recommend future research themes based on their professional experience in the field. Online materials (e.g. best practice guides) will provide tools for critical reflection by public- and voluntary-sector organisations wishing to access cutting-edge research evidence about water/energy for sustainable urban development, which will inform their work. They will also be able to access best-practice guides to support work with local communities, thereby encouraging greater partnership working and the appropriateness of water/energy solutions to local contexts. A database of on-going Sharing Futures impacts will be collated, documenting economic, societal and developmental impacts, tracked against ODA requirements.