Enhancing the sustainability of the food-energy-water nexus (FEW Nexus) is essential for achieving sustainable development in drylands. Matching the supply and demand of related ecosystem services can be an effective way to realize long-term sustainable management of the FEW Nexus. However, few studies have simultaneously incorporated both the supply and demand of ecosystem services into the analysis of the relationship between them and FEW Nexus sustainability. Therefore, this research takes the West Liaohe River Basin in the arid region of China as a case study. Based on a localized FEW Nexus sustainability evaluation index system, the FEW Nexus sustainability and the supply-demand matching characteristics of the corresponding ecosystem services in the West Liaohe River Basin from 2005 to 2015 were assessed. The relationship between them was analyzed quantitatively through the methods of coupling coordination degree and geographical detector. The results showed a synergistic improvement in both FEW Nexus sustainability and the supply-demand situation of combined ecosystem services. The supply of food production and water yield were able to meet their demands adequately from 2005 to 2015, with a strengthening surplus, leading to an overall surplus and gradual improvement in the integrated ecosystem services. This surplus synergistically promoted the process of FEW Nexus sustainability. The results of the geographical detector indicate that the supply-demand ratio of carbon sequestration was the main factor influencing FEW Nexus sustainability. Areas with higher FEW Nexus sustainability tended to have larger deficits in carbon sequestration, which was more evident in areas with high levels of urbanization. Therefore, the key to enhancing FEW Nexus sustainability in the basin is to balance the supply of and demand for carbon sequestration services. Overall, the present study not only provides a basis for strengthening the management of the supply-demand of ecosystem services associated with FEW to achieve regional sustainable development, but also offers insights into how the growing demand for the FEW Nexus is exerting pressure on the balance between supply and demand of related ecosystem services.
How to cite: Wang, K.: Unraveling the complex interconnections between food-energy-water nexus sustainability and the supply-demand of related ecosystem services, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-2107, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-2107, 2025.
As Northern Norway navigates the interdependencies between sustainable food production and environmental stewardship, including protecting biodiversity, future trajectories for its blue food systems offer critical insights into addressing food security challenges. This study explores four distinct scenarios for the North Norway region's blue food systems by 2040, highlighting how governance, technology, and community-driven initiatives can shape sustainable pathways under the influence of the EU Taxonomy.
The scenarios include: (1) Regenerative, Locally Focused Systems, prioritizing biodiversity restoration, circular economies, and decentralized governance; (2) Centralized High-Tech Industrial Production, emphasizing innovation, large-scale aquaculture, and global food trade; (3) Economic Growth Without Transition, focusing on market-driven strategies with limited environmental considerations; and (4) Conservation-Driven Approaches, centered on ecosystem restoration and environmental protection driven by environmental government.
The study utilizes participatory scenario planning, stakeholder engagement through Three Horizons and World Café workshops, and PESTLE analysis to critically evaluate these scenarios. It explores the impacts of climate change, resource governance, legal frameworks, and various drivers, barriers, and enablers, as well as the role of sustainable energy transitions.
This presentation aims to explore and discuss the different scenarios to identify which scenarios are most desirable and which are most likely to occur.
This work contributes to the session by providing a regional perspective on the future blue food security nexus, highlighting how interdisciplinary collaboration, governance reforms, and innovative solutions can strengthen resilience.
How to cite: Abu-Alam, T., Hausner, V. H., Engen, S., Weber, C. T., Schøning, L., Abrahams, A. K., and Iordan, C.-M.: Scenarios for a Sustainable Blue Food System in North Norway 2040: Insights from the CoastShift Project, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-16792, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-16792, 2025.
Water-related risks are increasing for resource-based livelihoods in the Southern Hemisphere and tropical regions. Water security as a concept has not been extensively reviewed and assessed for rural and urban livelihoods in this context. Although there are studies related to water security, the evidence and approaches to assess water security in transboundary basins are scarce, and several of these focus on defining levels of water security in terms of water scarcity, but does water availability alone guarantee water security? Historically, transboundary water resources management has been based on discourses of water security as a national security issue rather than a collaborative approach. This nationalistic use of water as a threat or power strategy weakens relations between nations and hinders cooperation. To meet these challenges, studies suggest the consolidation of transboundary institutions responsible for monitoring water conditions and serving as conflict mediators between riparian countries.
An example of this transboundary framework is the tri-national cooperation process that has been developed for environmental management and sustainable development in the Upper Lempa River basin (ULRB), located in a key part of the Trifinio Region is made up of the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The legal framework of the Treaty between these three countries, called “Agua Sin Fronteras – 2006-2024”, recognized the relevance of community participation in landscape management. However, the characterization of the biophysical variables and processes in each country in the ULRB is different in terms of data availability (i.e., space and time) and its homogeneity (i.e., kind of variable), which difficult to assess water security as a transboundary tool. To solve these weaknesses and gaps, we proposed a Water Security Index (WSI) with an approach to measure multiple indicators of hydrological risk relative to context specific water needs, including water availability, quality and sustainability. We followed the logic of the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model to select indices that can be spatialized in different time steps. The WSI estimates the level of water security on a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 corresponds to the least favorable condition in terms of adequate quantities of water of acceptable quality for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and development socioeconomic; and 1 is the most favorable condition. The WSI was evaluated based on the results of a hydrological model (WEAP) under different climatic conditions (i.e., wet, dry, and normal). This evaluation allowed us to identify critical sub-basins (i.e., hot spots) for each condition and prioritized sub-basins with a high degree of vulnerability in all three conditions combined to support ecosystem services and human well-being. Through the analysis of the WSI index, 25 priority hot spots were identified as priority for intervention considering the resulting WSI in the combined conditions of which 11 are recurrent in the three conditions.
How to cite: Zamora, D., Ayala, G., Aedo, S., Rodríguez, Y., and Santos, T.: Assessing Water Security in Central American Transboundary Basins: A Watershed Prioritization Framework, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-19869, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-19869, 2025.
Previous research on the water scarcity across the world has either ignored or undervalued the contributions that non-traditional and virtual water resources make to the subject of water security. On the other hand, the impacts of society, institutions, the economy, and technology are only taken into consideration by a small number of the water stress indices that are currently published. The terms "availability," "accessibility to services," "safety and quality," and "water management" were used to characterize the new water security framework that was developed and implemented in this work. In this context, and for the purpose of managing water demand in arid regions, a recently constructed framework that makes use of metric concepts has been developed. The paradigm that had been developed was applied to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as examples of dry states that had sound economies, advanced human development, and extensive virtual trade. It has been discovered that a high level of societal resilience to food security makes it possible to make use of virtual water commerce in order to attain water security. To determine the degree to which conventional water supplies are being depleted, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) uses the ratio of freshwater extraction to freshwater availability. The data that were obtained illustrated the severity of the effect that water depletion has on the availability of water in various nations, with the values ranging from 2% (in Oman) to 56% (in Kuwait). The degree of water stress in each country was determined by computing the ratio of the quantity of water that was extracted from freshwater resources to the amount of water that could be renewed from traditional water sources. In Bahrain, the reported values were about 0.4, whereas in Kuwait, they were over 22. The assessed water stress values indicated a minimum of 0.13 in Kuwait, which implies a significant dependence on non-conventional water resources coupled with minimal domestic food production in order to achieve water security. This is because the unconventional and abstracted nonrenewable groundwater volumes from the overall water demand in the GCC were taken into consideration.
How to cite: Sefelnasr, A., Al Rashed, M., Sherif, M., Alshamsi, D., Aliewi, A., and Ebraheem, A. A.: Water scarcity approach in arid regions: A quantification approach incorporating non-conventional and virtual water resources, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-349, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-349, 2025.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) take the global challenges into a new phase, calling for reasonable resources management from holistic perspectives. This study develops a novel integrated modelling framework for sustainable agricultural energy-water-food nexus (EWFN) management, with the objectives of maximum social welfare of water resources allocation, maximum hydroelectric generation, maximum grain crop production, maximum positive farmland ecosystem service value, and minimum negative farmland ecosystem service value. The proposed framework is capable of: (1) balancing benefit efficiency and allocation equity using social welfare function; (2) reconciling conflicting targets among socio-economic, resource, and eco-environmental spheres; (3) generating sustainable water and land resources allocation strategies considering complex and uncertain environment. The optimization model directly contributed to achievement of SDG 2 (food security), SDG 6 (water security), SDG 7 (energy security), SDG 8 (economic growth), and SDG 13 (climate change mitigation), whilst indirectly supported other SDGs by providing safe energy, clear water, and nutritious food, and sustainable management. The proposed model was applied to the Zhanghe Reservoir irrigation area, located in the Yangtze River Basin, central China. Flexible water and land resources allocation schemes among different sectors, crops, and periods were generated, as well as managerial insights into what efforts should be done were provided for decision-makers. After optimization, efficiency-equity tradeoff was balanced with social welfare index reaching [0.94, 0.99]. Optima results show that GHGs emission contributed majority of the total loss, which cannot be totally neutralized by carbon sequestration, causing negative eco-environmental impacts of [2.3, 3.4] ×108 CNY. The proposed model performs well on generating robust and coordinated solutions according to scenarios analysis and models comparison. The proposed approach has potential on achieving SDGs in agricultural EWFN system, and is portable to other agriculture-centered areas suffering from similar resources crisis.
How to cite: Yue, Q.: Optimization approach for achieving sustainable development goals in agricultural energy-water-food nexus system, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-11334, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11334, 2025.
While there is growing interest in and appreciation of the importance of incorporating representation of distributional impacts in integrated assessment models, the computational burden of incorporating dynamic representations at appropriate scale has historically limited the incorporation of multiple endpoints relevant to equity in model analyses. We introduce new methodological directions to illustrate potential for future modeling of equity and related aspects, drawn from the work of MIT’s Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy (CS3). Through an example of air quality, we show how a fast emulator that can provide spatially-resolved fields from a complex atmospheric chemistry model can be integrated with projections from the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to quantify the human health impacts of climate and air quality policies together. We then show how visualizations can incorporate analysis of other dimensions of equity, including socio-economic and demographic considerations, through the System for the Triage of Risks from Environmental and Socio-economic Stressors (STRESS Platform). We conclude by illustrating how these approaches can be extended to other sustainability related domains, enabling integrated analysis of multiple aspects of human well-being simultaneously.
How to cite: Selin, N., Schlosser, C. A., and Wong, A.: Integrating Equity into Integrated Model Simulations with Emulators and Visualizations, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-7391, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-7391, 2025.
Global mitigation scenarios allocate resources in ways that align with specific climate targets under varying assumptions. These allocations inevitably raise questions of distributional justice. With scenarios becoming a major tool for global climate policy, the distributional implications of global mitigation scenarios are increasingly central to international political debates and negotiations. However, the scenario community lacks tools to systematically and transparently incorporate considerations of distributional justice in scenario development. This research addresses this gap by operationalizing philosophical concepts of distributional justice, referred to as justice patterns.
The justice patterns examined in this study include Aggregate Utilitarian (core idea: everyone benefits), Egalitarian (equal outcomes for all), Prioritarian (priority to those worst-off), Sufficientarian (ensuring everyone reaches a minimum threshold), and Limitarian (ensuring no one exceeds a maximum threshold). With two concrete applications we demonstrate that these justice patterns provide a useful framework for integrating distributional justice considerations in scenario development.
First, we quantify justice patterns to analyse the distributional logic of energy service access in scenarios from the AR6 database. Our findings reveal that Prioritatrian and Egalitarian patterns are the most prominent in AR6 scenarios, while Sufficientarian and Limitarian patterns remain underexplored, leaving a gap in the scenario space.
Second, we introduce an open-source web application that visualizes justice patterns as idealized trajectories, allowing stakeholders to explore and express their preferences for justice patterns in varying contexts. We demonstrate the tool’s potential to guide scenario development in a small pilot study.
We conclude by advocating for future scenario studies to systematically incorporate diverse justice patterns to examine potential conflicts between mitigation strategies and justice considerations. Furthermore, we recommend extending assessments beyond energy services to encompass non-material dimensions critical to socially acceptable futures, such as freedom and power. By operationalizing justice patterns, this research establishes a foundation for comprehensive scenario assessments on distributional justice and systematic stakeholder engagement.
How to cite: Scheifinger, K., Brutschin, E., Zimm, C., Mintz-Woo, K., Kikstra, J., Pachauri, S., Rogelj, J., Riahi, K., Żebrowski, P., Sovacool, B., Schinko, T., Low, S., and Fritz, L.: Breaking Barriers with Patterns: New Tools for Integrating Distributional Justice into Global Mitigation Scenarios, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-12797, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12797, 2025.
INTRODUCTION
Air pollution remains a critical challenge in urban environments, as it exacerbates health inequities and disproportionately affects marginalized communities. Although Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have advanced in recent years, they still struggle to capture the urban and social dimensions of air quality. This research addresses that gap by integrating detailed spatiotemporal and socio-economic data into an urban-scale modeling platform. The aim is to highlight pollution-driven disparities and guide policies that foster environmental justice.
METHODS
This work relies on an integrated modeling approach centered on the OLYMPUS model (Elessa Etuman et al., 2018, 2023), designed to simulate urban air pollution exposure at high resolution and evaluate associated socio-environmental impacts.
First, demographic data from large-scale surveys are used to build a synthetic population, reflecting socio-economic and spatial heterogeneities. Next, transportation patterns—including both passenger and freight—are derived through mobility matrices that combine national surveys with FRETURB-SIMTURB modeling. These results inform the energy demand assessment, which accounts for building use and daily schedules to estimate sector-specific energy consumption.
Using these outputs, an emissions inventory is established following European Environment Agency standards, with refined spatial and temporal allocation achieved through advanced statistical scaling techniques. The CHIMERE model (Menut et al., 2013) then simulates air quality at neighborhood scale. Finally, a detailed exposure assessment links emissions data to individuals by merging high-resolution pollution maps with daily mobility patterns and demographic profiles. This step identifies vulnerable subpopulations based on socio-economic status, residential location, and travel habits.
RESULTS
By pinpointing the underlying drivers of air pollution inequalities, this study underscores the need for urban policies that explicitly consider social diversity and personal habits. Drawing on integrated modeling results, we see that targeted interventions—such as improving access to clean public transport, restructuring mobility habits —can lower exposure risks. These strategies become most powerful when they address the specific needs of vulnerable populations, thereby reducing environmental health disparities.
CONCLUSIONS
Addressing air pollution inequalities is vital for achieving environmental justice and sustainable urban development. By incorporating socio-economic and spatial heterogeneities into a comprehensive modeling framework, this research demonstrates that policies shaped around individuals’ real-world practices offer the most promising path to fairer and more effective outcomes. Ensuring that each policy is designed to both reduce overall pollution and narrow social gaps will help advance healthier, more equitable urban environments.
REFERENCES
Benoussaïd, T., 2023. Analyse socio-spatiale de l’exposition des populations à la pollution atmosphérique en zone urbaine, par une approche de modélisation dynamique basée sur l’individu et intégrant les pratiques de mobilité.
Elessa Etuman, A., Coll, I., 2018. OLYMPUS v1.0: Development of an integrated air pollutant and GHG urban emissions model - Methodology and calibration over the greater Paris. Geoscientific Model Development Discussions, 1‑29.
Elessa Etuman, A., Coll, I. 2023. Integrated air quality modeling for urban policy: A novel approach with OLYMPUS-CHIMERE. Atmospheric Environment, 315: 120134.
Menut, L., et al. 2013. CHIMERE 2013: a model for regional atmospheric composition modelling. Geosci. Model Dev., 6(4): 981‑1028.
How to cite: Elessa Etuman, A., Benoussaid, T., and Coll, I.: Tackling air pollution inequalities through integrated assessment models: a pathway to environmental justice, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-6637, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-6637, 2025.
Energy justice is a top priority for government under decarbonization, which can mitigate the potential negative impacts of decarbonization on marginalized groups. The sheer scale and diversity of China’s economic and social development across provinces necessitate a nuanced examination of energy justice. In particular, disparities in both energy accessibility and affordability are pronounced within the residential sector. Under decarbonization, the inequitable distribution is likely to be exacerbated by the potentially increased costs of energy. Such inequity in income groups in low-carbon transition suggests a strong need for a better understanding of the implications of decarbonization for energy justice. While some studies have considered income inequality at national or sub-national level, the group disparities in income call for a granular exploration to understand the intricacies of energy justice at the residential-level.
Here we develop a new version of GCAM-China (GCAM-China-Mul, Fig.1), featuring an expanded set of 21 income groups in the building sector, to explore energy burden and fairness for different income groups. This multiple-consumer feature is important because the demand and elasticity for residential energy are non-linear in response to income, which in turn, drives different future demand and responses under decarbonization. This analysis aims to address the following questions: what the distributional effects of decarbonization policies on these different income groups and the resulting residential energy justice disparity across the groups.
Fig.1 Research framework. The colored boxes represent the modeling capabilities developed for this study. There are 21 heterogeneous income groups (resid_urban_d1-d10, resid_rural_d1-d10 and a commercial consumer group) on the demand side and the energy consumption by fuel is further disaggregated to 57 representative typical and high-efficiency technologies.
This multiple consumer feature is conceptually built upon similar structures in GCAM and GCAM-USA, with two additional contributions: First, significant urban-rural income gap based on China’s condition is considered. Second, we employ high-resolution residential-level data from China Family Panel Studies to calibrate the model. About decarbonization scenarios, we set net-zero or close to net-zero at the national level and building sector level, and cross-cutting each other to form four scenarios. In combined scenarios, we can achieve national-level decarbonization as well as building sector deep decarbonization.
We found that national-level constraints primarily reduce indirect emissions, but achieving deep mitigation in the building sector requires combining these with sector-level constraints. The socioeconomic impacts of decarbonization highlight significant disparities: low-income groups face more pronounced negative effects, while high-income groups benefit more from positive outcomes. Additionally, urban and rural areas exhibit distinct energy transition pathways. These findings highlight the necessity of targeted interventions to achieve a just energy transition.
How to cite: Zhu, R., Zhang, Y., Sampedro, J., Dai, H., and Ou, Y.: Energy justice across income groups in China residential sector under decarbonization, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-137, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-137, 2025.
The transition to a low-carbon economy in the EU requires a balance between collective ambition and national priorities. Comparing bottom-up trajectories of National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) with top-down EU-wide targets offers valuable insights into the “cost of non-coordination” and its implications for equitable effort-sharing among Member States. In this study, we derive the energy system transformations required at the EU Member State level to achieve the EU’s net-zero target and examine how these transitions differ between EU-level and state-level policies in the short term. Our scenarios are based on (a) the emissions reduction policies, including those outlined in the ‘Fit for 55’ package as well as the NECPs, following which emissions constraints are set at both the EU and Member State levels (policy-driven), and (b) cost-optimal model pathways achieving equivalent GHG emission mitigation as (a) at both levels but without any explicit policies modelled (target-driven). We use two well-established integrated assessment models, GCAM-Europe and TIAM-EU, and soft-link them with a detailed electricity system model (EXPANSE) to additionally derive future trajectories of electricity demand, final energy mix, electricity and storage capacities, investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure, and electricity prices. Finally, we assess how the European (and national) energy systems differ between the two scenarios as well as how effort-sharing varies among Member States when comparing the optimal pathways derived at the EU level to those developed for individual Member States.
How to cite: Frilingou, N., Van de Ven, D.-J., Horowitz, R., Rodés Bachs, C., Mittal, S., Torne, A., Trutnevyte, E., Koasidis, K., and Nikas, A.: Comparing cost-optimal to policy-driven scenarios for a decarbonised European energy system, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-19690, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-19690, 2025.
Posters on site: Mon, 28 Apr, 14:00–15:45 | Hall X4
Under increasing geopolitical tensions between important breadbaskets and climate extremes, the co-existence of weather and geopolitical extreme events can lead to devastating agricultural production losses. These losses can affect the entire food supply chain and lead to food shortages and price increases in regional markets. This work models these events’ impacts taking the Russian-Ukrainian war and the extreme heat waves of Summer 2022 as a case study. Four(4) war scenarios are considered such as the invasion phase, the peak of the war, Ukraine’s resistance, sanctions against Russia, and refugee crises in Europe. Using data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Statista, WITS, and Acclimate production value losses. Results show that the agricultural sectors of southern European countries such as France, Italy, and Spain were most affected by the extreme events, although the direct impact of refugees was lower compared to their northern counterparts. Strict sanctions against Russia coupled with Ukraine’s resistance will benefit EU food markets, but at the same time the agricultural sectors of smaller nations and weaker economies, particularly those of Russia’s allies, will be highly vulnerable. We suggest that their impact on weak economies should not be overlooked when developing and adopting conflict resolution measures.
How to cite: Arreyndip, N. A.: On the coincidence of weather extremes and geopolitical conflicts: Risk analysis in regional food markets, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-36, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-36, 2025.
The global food trade system is resilient to minor disruptions but vulnerable to major ones. Major shocks can arise from global catastrophic risks, such as abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (e.g., nuclear war) or global catastrophic infrastructure loss (e.g., due to severe geomagnetic storms or a global pandemic). We use a network model to examine how these two scenarios could impact global food trade, focusing on wheat, maize, soybeans, and rice, accounting for about 60% of global calorie intake. Our findings indicate that an abrupt sunlight reduction scenario, with soot emissions equivalent to a major nuclear war between India and Pakistan (37 Tg), could severely disrupt trade, causing most countries to lose the vast majority of their food imports (50-100 % decrease), primarily due to the main exporting countries being heavily affected. Global catastrophic infrastructure loss of the same magnitude as the abrupt sunlight reduction has a more homogeneous distribution of yield declines, resulting in most countries losing up to half of their food imports (25-50 % decrease). Thus, our analysis shows that both scenarios could significantly impact the food trade. However, the abrupt sunlight reduction scenario is likely more disruptive than global catastrophic infrastructure loss regarding the effects of yield reductions on food trade. This study underscores the vulnerabilities of the global food trade network to catastrophic risks and the need for enhanced preparedness.
How to cite: Jehn, F. U., Gajewski, Ł., Hedlund, J., Arnscheidt, C., Xia, L., Wunderling, N., and Denkenberger, D.: Food trade disruption after global catastrophes, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-117, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-117, 2025.
Unveiling the Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainable Development Goals in China: Identifying the Main Causal Relationships
Accelerating the achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires understanding their main causal relationships at the national and sub-national levels, which will help to identify key impediments and opportunities to enhance policy coherence across sectors. However, current research on SDGs causal interactions at sub-national level remains limited. This study constructed causal networks of SDGs in China and its 31 provinces from 2000 to 2020 applying Multi-spatial Convergence Cross Mapping (MCCM) and network analysis methods, analyzed the main causal features of China’s SDGs in synergy/trade-off effects and their spatial differences. The results showed that, from 2000 to 2020, causality of SDGs exhibited a ratio of 5:2 in synergistic and trade-off effects, establishing a robust foundation for SDGs implementation. In 28 provinces, the main causality in synergy involved SDG4 and SDG17, the bidirectional causality between them was the key causal feature in 18 provinces. The main causal pair in trade-off across 13 provinces involved SDG12 and SDG15, indicating that trade-off causality between resource use, ecological protection and other SDGs remained a major challenge for achieving SDGs. Meanwhile, neighboring provinces exhibited similar loop characteristics, and prioritizing high-frequency indicators including SDG4.c.1, SDG17.8.1, SDG4.2.2, SDG9.c.1, SDG4.a.1, and SDG11.7.1 within synergistic loops was key for SDGs development. This study provides a comprehensive insight for future China and its administrative region priorities and is significant for promoting policy coherence and SDG system coordination.
How to cite: Zhou, T. and Huang, C.: Unveiling the Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainable Development Goals in China: Identifying the Main Causal Relationships, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-7542, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-7542, 2025.
The Vanuatu Klaemet Infomesen blong Redy, Adapt mo Protekt (Van-KIRAP) project, funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), aims to enhance climate resilience in Vanuatu through sustainable climate information services. At its core is the OSCAR (tailOred System for Climate services for AgRiculture) system, which provides actionable climate data to support decision-making in agriculture. To ensure sustainable management, the project implemented a Training of Trainers (ToT) program for key Vanuatu stakeholders, including government officials and agricultural extension workers. The program included a four-week intensive training in South Korea, focusing on OSCAR’s operation, climate dynamics, agricultural impacts of climate change, and the generation of Agrometeorological Bulletins for farmers. This initiative enabled participants to independently manage OSCAR while fostering innovative ideas for its expansion and improvement. Key outcomes included enhanced capacity to integrate climate data into agricultural practices, develop tailored advisory services, and ensure the system’s long-term sustainability. Moving forward, the project emphasizes collaboration with women’s organizations and NGOs to promote gender equity and inclusion in climate adaptation efforts. Expanding OSCAR’s reach to marginalized communities and fostering broader stakeholder engagement will further amplify its impact. Van-KIRAP showcases a participatory approach to building sustainable climate services, offering a replicable model for other vulnerable regions.
How to cite: Kim, J. H., Park, S., Jung, I., Lee, S., Leo, P., Matou, M., Seuseu, S., and Chun, J. A.: Actively Implementing an Agricultural Climate Information Delivery Chain through the ToT Program in the Van-KIRAP Project, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-14963, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-14963, 2025.
Keywords: water footprint; cotton; spatial-temporal dynamics; climate change; xinjiang
Introduction: Cotton stands as a cash crop with high water consumption, yielding necessary benefits for human beings. However, more that 90% of cotton productivity in China are cultivated in Xinjiang, a water scare region, challenged the sustainability of agricultural development. Efforts on supply and demand of water resource for cotton in such region is critical for sustainable water management, but remains unresolved.
Material and Methods: Taking cotton cultivated in Xinjiang from 2001 to 2020 over counties as a case, we employed water footprint concept that based on virtual water to depict the spatial-temporal trend of water footprint, spatial clustering patterns of water footprint over county. We further identified the contributions of climate change, planting area, and inputs of fertilizer application to the changes of water footprint over regions.
Results: From 2001 to 2020, the average annual water footprint of cotton production in Xinjiang was 9.75 Gm³, with blue, green, and grey water footprints contributes 6.78 Gm³, 1.01 Gm³, and 1.96 Gm³, respectively. The overall water footprint exhibited an initial increase followed by a subsequent decrease, reaching its peak in 2014. Notably, the distribution of water footprints associated with cotton production varied across the study regions, with the average annual water footprints for cotton production in Southern Xinjiang and Northern Xinjiang recorded at 6.91 Gm³ and 2.84 Gm³, respectively. Over the study period, primary concentrations of the total water footprint of cotton were observed in the southern Tianshan Mountains, with no significant shifts in spatial aggregation at the county scale. The expansion of cotton cultivation areas and excessive fertilizer applications emerged as the main factors influencing the long-term dynamics of the cotton water footprint contributing 8.30 Gm³ and 1.26 Gm³ respectively, to the overall water footprint variation. Furthermore, climate change led to a reduction of 0.85 Gm³ in the water footprint of cotton production. The water footprint per unit yield of cotton within the study area exhibited a declining trajectory over the past two decades, with the average annual water footprint per unit yield calculated at 4845.91 m³/t.
Conclusions: the expansion of the planting area emerges as the primary driving force behind the dynamic shifts in the water footprint of cotton production in Xinjiang. Despite the overall increase in total cotton production, there is a notable downward trend in the water footprint per unit yield of cotton. This study provides a theoretical basis for balancing the sustainability of water use and the optimization of spatial patterns of cotton.
How to cite: You, X., Liu, S., Li, T., Iqbal, T., and Ma, X.: The expansion of planting area dominates the long term changes of water footprint for cotton in Xinjiang, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18754, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18754, 2025.
The water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus is critical for sustainable resource management, yet its application in marine and coastal environments remains underexplored, despite its increasing relevance in marine ecosystem services (MES). This study addresses this gap by presenting an in-depth analysis of the marine WEFE nexus, with a particular emphasis on the Mediterranean region. A conceptual framework is developed to integrate MES as dynamic contributors to the interconnected elements of the WEFE nexus. Using a synthesis of existing literature, key feedback mechanisms are identified, enabling the mapping of distinct interlinkages that originate from ecosystem services and extend across nexus dimensions. This mapping provides insights into the systemic dependencies of marine resources and their influence on water, energy, food, and ecosystem interdependencies. Graph theory is employed to represent these links, offering a network-based perspective that identifies critical pathways within the nexus. By highlighting pivotal dependencies, this approach deepens our understanding of the marine WEFE nexus, emphasizing its complexity and interconnectivity.
How to cite: Spyropoulou, A., El Jeitany, J., Pacetti, T., Adamos, G., Laspidou, C., and Caporali, E.: Exploring the Role of the Coastal Marine Environment within the WEFE Nexus, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-19844, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-19844, 2025.
Posters virtual: Thu, 1 May, 14:00–15:45 | vPoster spot 2
EGU25-6022 | Posters virtual | VPS29
Navigating the unexpected: The impact of disruptive events on mitigation scenariosThu, 01 May, 14:00–15:45 (CEST) | vP2.8
Climate change mitigation strategies face disruption from multiple sources: extreme climate events, socioeconomic crises, geopolitical conflicts, technological breakthroughs, as well as the abrupt transitions and disruptive actions entailed by achieving the stringent Paris Agreement goals. While these disruptive events can fundamentally alter long-term mitigation scenarios, the current literature does not sufficiently assess their implications. Existing long-term mitigation scenario narratives and modelling frameworks, using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), lack systematic approaches to analyse their impacts. To address this gap, we introduce the Disruptive Events-Resilient Pathways (DERPs) framework, which provides structured narratives to systematically explore and assess the resilience of climate actions to the impacts of external disruptions and entailed abrupt transitions. To operationalise this framework, we employ multiple IAMs to analyse case studies of distinct disruptions: intensifying heatwaves and droughts affecting energy systems, and the rapid uptake of Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) technology. Our analysis highlights the inherent limitations of IAMs in capturing the full complexity of disruptive events. We offer novel methodological approaches to overcome them. Our results provide insights into the interplay between the impacts of disruptive events and mitigation scenarios.
We introduce a conceptual framework, alongside qualitative narratives and use cases for validation, to guide the development of Disruptive Events-Resilient Pathways (DERPs). This framework systematically explores the impacts of disruptive events on mitigation and adaptation strategies, allowing to evaluate their resilience to such disruptions. Similar to the widely-adopted SSP scenario framework, which maps socioeconomic developments onto the extent of challenges to mitigation and adaptation (O’Neill et al., 2017), the DERPs framework comprises two dimensions, thereby enabling breaking the developed spectrum into four blocks of narratives, plus an intermediate narrative that reflects current trends. We further reflect on the connection between the DERP and SSP frameworks in the discussion section below.
The DERP dimensions and underlying narratives draw on concrete examples, to make the framework more comprehensive and comprehensible, but remain sufficiently generalisable to allow the framework to serve as a blueprint for conducting similar types of mitigation and adaptation analyses in the future. In determining the two dimensions of the DERP framework, we benefit from van Ginkel et al. (2020), who had proposed two dimensions for exploring how climate change tipping points can cause socioeconomic tipping points (SETPs). In the DERP framework, the focus shifts from climate change tipping points to disruptive events as the drivers of socioeconomic impacts, and on assessing societal resilience to these impacts. Accordingly, the two dimensions are defined as follows:
- climate action effectiveness: this refers to significant and deliberate change in the way societies and systems transition towards mitigating, or preparing for (i.e. adapting to), climate change
- resilience to socioeconomic impacts: this refers to the capacity to withstand unintended shifts in socioeconomic structures that may occur due to abrupt transitions or insufficient mitigation or adaptation failure, and the resulting climate change impacts.
How to cite: Al Khourdajie, A., Nikas, A., Frilingou, N., Mittal, S., van de Ven, D. J., Fragkos, P., McJeon, H., Byers, E., Keppo, I., Peters, G., McCollum, D., Zisarou, E., Hawkes, A., and Gambhir, A.: Navigating the unexpected: The impact of disruptive events on mitigation scenarios, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-6022, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-6022, 2025.
