Understanding the role of water in reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and trade-offs with energy and food production

Progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires progress to be made on many fronts in human-developed systems. Fundamental to this may be achieving the water goal (SDG6), as water is a key constraint to progress towards many other goals such as those related to food, poverty, energy and climate resilience. This is particularly the case in drought-prone and dry areas of the developing world: drought threatens and destroys economies and livelihoods, reversing development achievements, particularly for the most vulnerable; and in drylands, the availability of water is often an enabling or limiting factor of human settlement, irrigated agricultural land uses, and economic activities, but where energy and infrastructure solutions can be game-changing. Progress towards the SDGs, however, is often at the expense of effective resource management, increasing inequity and environmental degradation creating the dilemma of achieving multiple inter-related SDGs.

This PhD project will focus on understanding how to achieve the water SDG in dryland regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the synergies and trade-offs with other water-related goals. For example, development of hydropower dams may provide energy security, but potentially at the expense of downstream water users; regional food security may be achievable through large-scale irrigation schemes, but more sustainable alternatives may be possible by focusing on improving dryland farming. The work will look at such challenges, focused on case studies that will be identified through connections to ongoing large research projects at the University of Southampton, and has the following specific objectives:

• Analyse a range of dryland and drought prone environments in sub-Saharan Africa and identify key case studies
• Co-develop with relevant stakeholders scenarios of plausible futures of climate change, land use and water, energy, and food policy .
• Model the impact of these scenarios on SDG attainment and identify synergies and trade-offs
• Identify optimal trade-offs in the context of uncertainty about future change.

The PhD project brings together supervisors with expertise in water security and modelling (Sheffield) and development and adaptation to environmental/climate change (Hutton). The project will be supervised in the context of several ongoing broader research projects that are aimed at different aspects of water and food security in developing regions. These include the GCRF GROW project BRECcIA “Building research capacity for sustainable water and food security in drylands of sub-Saharan Africa” which is working with 11 institutions in the UK and Africa. The student will have opportunities to work closely with other students and researchers on these projects, including via fieldwork and stakeholder engagement.

The successful candidate will receive both Faculty training, and specific training in water-energy-food systems modelling, livelihood analysis, scenario development, and stakeholder engagement.

Candidates must have or expect to gain a first or strong upper second class degree, in an appropriate discipline, not necessarily Geography, with good computational skills and preferably an understanding of water-energy-food nexus challenges.. For the latest information on postgraduate opportunities see www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/postgraduate/research_degrees/studentships.page?

The PhD project will commence September 2019.