Project description
Tapping into smarter water management
Climate change is water change. Extreme climate events like heavy rainfall and droughts are more frequent and severe. Whether it’s too much or too little water, planning and water resource management is necessary. The EU-funded TRANSCEND project will identify and catalyse the adoption of transformational adaptation policies (TAPs) addressing water scarcity, including innovative and robust allocation systems and economic instruments. These need to be adaptable to uncertainty and change, as well as equitable and sustainable. The project will develop an ecosystem of innovation comprising a knowledge network for stakeholder engagement and knowledge sharing, an actionable modelling suite to integrate interdisciplinary socio-ecological science and ensemble forecasting to guide TAP design, and an accounting and monitoring toolbox supporting TAP implementation and enforcement.
Objective
Worldwide, water resources management is increasingly challenged by water scarcity and climate change, which can trigger and aggravate other ecological (e.g. pests) and socioeconomic threats (e.g. commodity price fluctuations) via feedback loops and cascading impacts across systems. In this context, planning for the future is rife with uncertainties for which conventional decision-making methods and policies are inadequate. The objective of TRANSCEND is to identify and catalyze the adoption of Transformational Adaptation Policies (TAP) to water scarcity, including innovative allocation systems and economic instruments, that are robust and adaptable to uncertainty and change, while simultaneously achieving equitable and sustainable economic growth and welfare. To this end, TRANSCEND will develop a groundbreaking ecosystem of innovation that combines three key pillars: (i) a knowledge network for stakeholder engagement and knowledge sharing, (ii) an actionable modeling suite that integrates interdisciplinary socio-ecological science and ensemble forecasting to guide TAP design, and (iii) an accounting and monitoring toolbox that supports implementation and enforcement of TAP in practice. TRANSCEND will apply the ecosystem of innovation to design and implement TAP in 7 labs: Júcar River Basin (RB) (Spain); Reno RB (Italy); Tympaki RB (Greece); Nitra RB (Slovakia); Caplina-Mauri-Desaguadero RB (Peru, Chile & Bolivia); Orontes RB (Lebanon, Syria & Turkey); and Mahanadi RB (Indian states of Chhattisgarh & Odisha). TRANSCEND will leverage this diverse set of demonstrators to initiate adoption of the ecosystem of innovation in 8+ inspiration labs, train 160+ transformation agents, and mainstream uncertainty analysis in key national and European Green Deal strategies. This will provide the knowledge and tools to catalyze robust and systemic transformations to water scarcity and climate change globally, with a clear impact pathway towards TAP adoption in 100+ basins by 2030.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental scienceshydrologydrainage basins
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringnatural resources managementwater management
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
37008 Salamanca
Spain