Managing and Sustaining the Coupled Water-Land-Food Systems in the Context of Global Change: How Qualitative System Dynamic Modelling Can Assist in Understanding and Designing High-Leverage Interventions

The water-land-food system is essential for sustaining the basic human needs. While the demand for these resources is increasing rapidly, their sustainability has been hampered by a plethora of challenges, including rapid population growth, climate change, land-use change, and land degradation. To attain a sustainable supply and efficiently manage these resources, interactions between all resources and the factors constraining/sustaining them need to be understood. In this chapter, four systems archetypes based or grounded in the systems thinking framework and system dynamics approach were employed to explore and identify the key system drivers, factors, and processes that influence the behaviour and sustainability of water-land-food resources nexus in the Volta River Basin, West Africa. Development of the archetypes centered on a generic causal loop diagram constructed with stakeholders in previous studies capturing the linkages between the population, water system, environmental and socioeconomics. These system archetypes illustrate that the past and the current paradigm of water and land and agricultural production management is unsustainable. The results highlight key areas, which could be useful for the current and future sustainable management, even under uncertain system understanding or deficiencies in quantitative data

Systemic feedback modelling for sustainable water resources management and agricultural development: an application of participatory modelling approach in the Volta River Basin

Although our understanding of water resource problems has grown in recent years, our ability to improve decision-making is still limited. Participatory modelling and stakeholder engagement is seen as an important tool that can facilitate strategic decision-making in environmental/natural resource management systems. This paper presents the participatory and methodological processes involved in the development of an integrated qualitative, conceptual model using causal loops diagrams to assist integrated water resources management and sustainable agricultural development in the Volta River Basin, West Africa. The developed integrated conceptual model provides a holistic understanding of the key biophysical and socio-economic factors and processes, and the role the systemic feedbacks play in determining the basin's behaviour. An ex-post analysis of the process with stakeholders showed that the process contributed to the shared understanding of the basin's problems. Based on our experience we present some lessons for the design and application of a participatory modelling process

A system dynamics simulation model for sustainable water resources management and agricultural development in the Volta River Basin, Ghana

In a rapidly changing water resources system, dynamic models based on the notion of systems thinking can serve as useful analytical tools for scientists and policy-makers to study changes in key system variables over time. In this paper, an integrated system dynamics simulation model was developed using a system dynamics modelling approach to examine the feedback processes and interaction between the population, the water resource, and the agricultural production sub-sectors of the Volta River Basin in West Africa. The objective of the model is to provide a learning tool for policy-makers to improve their understanding of the long-term dynamic behaviour of the basin, and as a decision support tool for exploring plausible policy scenarios necessary for sustainable water resource management and agricultural development. Structural and behavioural pattern tests, and statistical test were used to evaluate and validate the performance of the model. The results showed that the simulated outputs agreed well with the observed reality of the system. A sensitivity analysis also indicated that the model is reliable and robust to uncertainties in the major parameters. Results of the business as usual scenario showed that total population, agricultural, domestic, and industrial water demands will continue to increase over the simulated period. Besides business as usual, three additional policy scenarios were simulated to assess their impact on water demands, crop yield, and net-farm income. These were the development of the water infrastructure (scenario 1), cropland expansion (scenario 2) and dry conditions (scenario 3). The results showed that scenario 1 would provide the maximum benefit to people living in the basin. Overall, the model results could help inform planning and investment decisions within the basin to enhance food security, livelihoods development, socio-economic growth, and sustainable management of natural resources

Drivers of Change and Sustainability in Linked Social–Ecological Systems: An Analysis in the Volta River Basin of Ghana, West Africa

<p>Understanding the nature and relative importance of various drivers of change is crucial for sustainable management of natural resources and in prioritizing management efforts, allocating limited resources, and understanding cumulative effects. For this article, we employed structured an expert judgments approach to identify, characterize, and assess the relative importance of the key biophysical and socioeconomic drivers of change within the Volta River Basin, West Africa. Precipitation variability, water availability, land use change, drought events, and population growth were perceived as most important, while biodiversity loss, social conflicts, pest and disease occurrence, urbanization, and pollution were viewed as less critical. A majority of these drivers were characterized as “slow” acting processes as compared to rapidly changing drivers. Intra- and interexpert groups agreement were found to be significant and convergent, indicating the reliability of the results. The implications of these results for sustainable water resources management and agricultural production are discussed.</p

Towards Understanding and Sustaining Natural Resource Systems through the Systems Perspective: A Systematic Evaluation

A bibliometric and network analysis was performed to explore global research publication trends and to investigate relevant policy recommendations in the field of sustainability of natural resources, system dynamics, and systems thinking, to solve water resources issues and enhance water resource management. Overall, 1674 academic research articles data were generated from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, from 1981 to 2019. The findings of this study revealed that system dynamics and systems thinking research has significantly increased over the last decade (from 40 to 250 articles). Countries such as the USA (20%), China (18%), the United Kingdom (5%), Canada, Iran, Australia, and India (4% each) have the most publications and strongest collaborative networks. Sterman (2000) and Forrester (1961) had the most co-cited research while Zhang X had the highest citations, respectively. Results also showed that system theory which includes systems thinking and system dynamics were the most used keywords. The Journal of Cleaner Production was found to have published the highest number of systems thinking and system dynamics related studies, perhaps due to scope relevance. Despite the exponential rise in natural resource sustainability research globally, the result of this study shows that developing countries especially in Africa have low numbers of research publications in the field. Thus, the result of this study serves as a signal for policymakers to increase attention on research publications that could enhance natural resource sustainability, particularly in less developed countries in Africa where the application of systems thinking to natural resource management is limited

Field experiences and lessons learned from applying participatory system dynamics modelling to sustainable water and agri-food systems

Achieving the objectives of sustainable development in water and agri-food systems requires the utilisation of decision-support tools in stakeholder-driven processes to construct and simulate various scenarios and evaluate the outcomes of associated policy interventions. While it is common practice to involve stakeholders in participatory modelling processes, their comprehensive documentation and the lessons learned remain scarce. In this paper, we share our experience of engaging stakeholders throughout the entire system dynamics modelling process. We draw on two projects implemented in the Volta River Basin, West Africa, to understand the dynamics of water and agri-food systems under changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions. We outline eight key insights and lessons as practical guides derived from each stage of the participatory modelling process, including the pre-workshop stage, problem definition, model conceptualization, simulation model formulation, model testing and verification, and policy design and evaluation. Our findings demonstrate that stakeholders can actively contribute to all phases of the system dynamics modelling process, including parameter estimation, sensitivity analysis, and numerical simulation experiments. However, we encountered notable challenges, including the time-intensive nature of the process, the struggle to reach a consensus on the modelled problem, and the difficulty of translating the conceptual model into a simulation model using stock and flow diagrams – all of which were addressed through a structured facilitation process. While the projects were anchored in the specific context of West Africa, the key lessons and insights highlighted have broader significance, particularly for researchers employing PSDM in regions characterised by multifaceted human-environmental systems and where stakeholder involvement is crucial for holistic understanding and effective policy interventions. This paper contributes practical guidance for future efforts with participatory modelling, particularly in regions worldwide grappling with sustainable development challenges in water and agri-food systems, and where stakeholder involvement is crucial for holistic understanding of the multiple challenges and for designing effective policy interventions