Strategic Investments in Mitigation, Adaptation and Resource Recovery Innovations at Basin Scale - SIMARIS

Project Information

SIMARIS

Grant agreement ID: 101064680

DOI

10.3030/101064680

Project closed

EC signature date 6 July 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 October 2024

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 172 750,08

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SIMARIS (Strategic Investments in Mitigation, Adaptation and Resource Recovery Innovations at Basin Scale - SIMARIS)

Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2024-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Water and energy scarcity and land degradation are major threats to the sustainability of livelihoods across arid and semi-arid regions of the world, including Uzbekistan in Central Asia.
The SIMARIS project aims to analyze the impacts of climate change on resource availability and the technological advancements to enhance sustainable transition in crop production and irrigation systems. Specific objectives are:
-Implementing an intertemporal investment and endogenous technological change modeling framework to improve water-economic modeling capacity to analyze long-term strategies.
-Assessing the optimal investment requirements, economic and environmental impacts of water technology adoptions.
-Examining the impact of environmental changes (climate or water supply) and economic instruments (markets, taxes, subsidies, etc.) on technology adoption and economic welfare.
The project considers the development and implementation of climate impact, economy-wide impact, and integrated economic growth and investment models to address the research objectives.
In particular, the integrated economic growth and investment model allows for the analysis of strategic investments to improve water, land and energy productivity and strengthen the resilience of infrastructural systems to deal with resource scarcity and natural catastrophes. Moreover, an economy-wide impact model is developed and used to analyze the dependence of water productivity improvement technology and virtual water trading policy. In addition to numerous contributions to the water-economic modeling field, this project effectively contributes to improving environmental protection and investment policy making in the study area and in regions facing increasing water scarcity. This project contributes to training the Marie-Curie Fellow to senior researcher positions related to integrated water-land-energy-climate-economic assessment modeling.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The SIMARIS project aims to contribute to improved water-economic modelling (WEM) and show the relevance of WEM in addressing the important challenges of climate, water, energy, and food security. This research was conducted following a two-step approach:
1) In the first step, SIMARIS considered a diagnosis of the current situation of water, food, and energy use systems in the study area (in Uzbekistan) and their vulnerability to climate change. The maximum entropy approach was applied to assess regional water balance and water-production relationships. The impact of climate change on food security was assessed using the popular RCP-SSP climate scenario framework.
2) In the second step, SIMARIS assessed the impact of technological (adaptation) changes on water, energy, land use, and economic welfare using dynamic growth and CGE models. A dynamic Growth model was used to estimate the impact of environmental change (water availability reduction) and policy instruments (subsidization) on economic welfare, energy use, and GHG emissions. Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with extended water accounts was applied to analyze economy-wide and trade impacts of water productivity improvements.
The outcomes of the research are published in peer-reviewed journals and presented in various academic conferences. The Marie-Curie Fellow participated in several workshops on climate-energy-economic, agro-economic, MPSGE, and system modeling organized by PIK, CMCC, University of Essen, and IIASA consequently improving his modeling and research skills on integrated assessment.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In the diagnosis phase, modeling tools were developed to rapidly assess regional water balance and water-production relationships (a maximum entropy approach), and analyze regional climate impacts on resource availability. Based on the modeling assessments in the diagnosis phase, it was revealed that water productivity was quite low in Uzbekistan. Water conservation potential is high when improving conveyance efficiency or increasing water productivity in rice production systems. Global climate change is expected to increase regional temperatures and cause reduced rainfall, resulting in a warmer and drier climate in Central Asia. This may negatively impact labor supply and economic output in the southern regions of Central Asia. Food security in Uzbekistan is expected to face serious threats by the end of the 21st century under SSP3. A rapid assessment of regional water balance and water-production relationships is essential to understand water conservation potentials in the study area. This tool can be useful for policy consultants to derive recommendations on effective use of scarce water resources in arid regions.
In the technology change impact assessment phase, universal tools based on integrated CGE-IOT and dynamic optimization modeling frameworks were elaborated to analyze economic and environmental impacts of implementing or expanding sector-specific technologies. According to the CGE-IOT model based analysis, water productivity improvements (adaptation) in fruits and vegetable production are advisable to enhance economic income while reducing net virtual water exports. This study developed a novel method of assessing virtual water flow was invented by addressing previous criticisms of virtual water evaluation and integrating CGE and Input Output models. This approach is expected to have a strong impact on research domains related to virtual water assessments and industrial ecology.
Dynamic optimization models showed that the expansion of drip irrigation technology can lead to the majority of croplands being equipped with advanced irrigation technology in 2060 and greatly increase economic outcomes when optimal pathway of irrigation system transition is followed. Integrated growth and investment (dynamic optimization) model is implementable to assess the economic, resource use and environmental effects of upscaling any agricultural technology. Therefore, the model can be used as a tool to generate policy recommendations for technology adoption and system transitions.

Advanced irrigation system as adaptation measure