Water security is vital for sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction, and hence water infrastructure is one cornerstone of development. Built water infrastructure safeguards water supplies and water quality and helps to reduce and avoid water-related disaster. Combined with hydropower and irrigation development, benefits include water, food and energy security, industrial development and wealth generation. Climate change is increasing demand for water infrastructure, especially in developing countries with high vulnerability. Ecosystem services are integral to outcomes from water infrastructure development, including climate resilience, but are often overlooked in investment decisions. The functioning of built water infrastructure itself and the livelihoods of poor people and key industry sectors rely on ecosystem services. However, services are lost when ecosystems are destroyed or damaged by the construction of dams, reservoirs, irrigation systems and canals, because for example wetlands may be drained or seasonal patterns of river flow and groundwater disrupted. Water infrastructure development for poverty alleviation is thus not a simple question of expanding the endowment of built water infrastructure, but involves trade-offs and synergies with ecosystems. These affect poor people and the success of poverty reduction. A critical challenge in developing water security for poverty reduction is to provide needed built water infrastructure while finding ways of sustaining ecosystem services. One approach is to recognise river basins themselves as infrastructure: they are 'natural infrastructure', providing provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services, such as water storage, conveyance, flood regulation, safe water supply and water for food. Infrastructure planning and investment can then consider portfolios of infrastructure, based on the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of alternate mixes of natural and built infrastructure. The proposed project will develop a case for support and design a research programme to provide knowledge and tools needed to enable a portfolio approach to water infrastructure development combining built and natural infrastructure. This will be based on: - accounting of ecosystem services and their values; - use of mathematical optimisation techniques to identify mixes of natural and built infrastructure that prioritise the objectives of poor people and pro-poor growth. However, optimisation tools are not sufficient by themselves, as reality is complicated by unknowns, uncertainties, contested facts and complex systems. Decisions are shaped as much or more by politics and institutional constraints as scientific knowledge. Therefore research on ecosystem services, economic valuation and optimisation will be complemented by: - analysis of water governance, institutional arrangements and policies that enable unknowns and uncertainties to be managed effectively; - action research with policy makers and multi-stakeholder dialogues to test whether optimisation knowledge and tools can support consensus building and negotiation of infrastructure choices. The research programme will be implemented using a case study approach in river basins that will be selected in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and, potentially, Amazonia. Research activities will be complemented by capacity building with researchers and key stakeholders. The Partnerships and Project Development phase proposed here will follow a three stage process. Stage 1 will focus on case study identification and consortium mapping for the full proposal, Stage 2 on inter-disciplinary learning and research design, and Stage 3 on preparation of final outputs. In addition to the ESPA Consortium Grant proposal, output from this phase will include an impact pathways analysis for research on built and natural infrastructure to support capacity building.

Permanent oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) that extend to over 10 million km3 of ocean (ca. 8% of ocean volume) are expanding geographically and vertically due to climate-driven reductions in dissolved oxygen (DO). Potential impacts on marine animal distributions and abundance may be particularly significant for high-oxygen-demand apex predators, such as oceanic pelagic sharks, by reducing habitat volumes through OMZ shoaling and concentrating them further in surface waters where they become more vulnerable to fisheries. But predictions of how exploited oceanic fish actually respond to OMZ expansions are not based on mechanistic understandings, principally because direct measurements of oxygen tolerances during normal behaviour have not been determined for large predatory fish in the open ocean. The proposed research will bring about a step change in our understanding of OMZ impacts on oceanic ecology by applying our existing expertise in animal movement studies and by deploying new telemetry technologies for measuring oxygen environments actually encountered by free-living oceanic sharks moving above/within OMZs. This will enable major unknowns to be addressed concerning how oceanic sharks respond physiologically and behaviourally to OMZs, how oceanic shark habitats change with predicted OMZ expansion, and whether this will increase shark vulnerability to fishing gear. The project will achieve its objectives through linked field and modelling studies on two Red-Listed species, the warm-bodied (endothermic) shortfin mako, Isurus oxyrinchus, and the ectothermic blue shark, Prionace glauca, that are the two pelagic shark species most frequently caught in high seas fisheries. By focusing in depth on key processes underlying shark responses to DO in situ, our new modelling approaches will establish effects of future warming and OMZ shoaling on fish niches and determine how these shift distributions and alter capture risk by fisheries. The project represents a discipline-spanning approach linking physiology to ecology and oceanography, with wide-ranging outcomes for understanding global biotic responses to warming and ocean deoxygenation with direct relevance to sustainable fisheries and species conservation.

'We value our heritage most when it seems at risk; threats of loss spur owners to stewardship.' (David Lowenthal, 1996) Climate change is the greatest challenge of our times, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and combating its impacts is one of the key UN Sustainable Development Goals. One symptom of our rapidly warming world is accelerated sea level rise. With 150 million people across the world living within 3 feet of today's water levels, the consequences will affect each of us directly or indirectly. Former president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, describes the relationship between sustainable development and climate change as 'inseparable'. For Small Island Developing States, addressing development challenges while planning for climate change is a constant struggle. Kiribati is a low-lying island nation in the Pacific Ocean, and is often defined by the grim prognosis for its future. Yet there are pressing development challenges which affect people's lives in Kiribati today, such as access to clean water, and dealing with increasing amounts of waste. As Claire Anterea from the environmental organisation Kirican has said 'we will drown in rubbish before we drown in water'. This project team will work with Kirican, in Kiribati, to co-design a community-level programme towards sustainable development. This grassroots approach will inform the broader development field about the specific challenges facing Kiribati, and Small Islands Developing States more generally. If heritage in its most fundamental sense is about what we value collectively, and want to preserve for the future, then it is entirely logical that academics and practitioners in the heritage field should care about the environment and sustainable development. According to a recent UNESCO report, climate change poses the greatest risk to world heritage, yet heritage concerns are not as prominent as they should be in this field. One of Kiribati's adaptation strategies is to plan for 'migration with dignity' for its population of over 110,000. We will consult with heritage organisations in Kiribati to find out how and whether they are planning for climate change and even potential displacement. This responds to more general concerns amongst global preservation professionals, such as archivists, about their own role within climate adaptation. Should the relocation of cultural resources and archives of climate-vulnerable nations be planned? How could such an enterprise could be managed practically and ethically, and by whom? The research team will also collaborate with the artist and cultural expert Natan Itonga to make a film evoking the rich cultures of Kiribati. This is part of a creative process that aims to understand the local meaning of heritage in Kiribati, and promote awareness of what is at stake. Overall, this project explores both the scope and limitations of attempts to 'preserve' heritage in face of rapid environmental change or when the natural environment itself is heritage at risk. What can be 'saved' at all when the impacts of climate change are so catastrophic for nations like Kiribati, and is it still meaningful to talk about sustainable development? This project works through ideas of loss but focuses on connections; specifically, finding enduring connections to potentially lost objects to carry us into the future, caring for our current connections to land, water and non-human life, and accepting moral connections between the most polluting- and vulnerable- countries. As Anote Tong said to participants at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit in 2013: 'Are we here to secure the future of each other's children or just our own?' Within this project, heritage is positioned as a pivotally important field of expertise for understanding that global challenges of magnitude will nonetheless be felt locally, everywhere.

Increased food production is widely considered to be a fundamental step toward the reduction of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Although the agricultural sector account for two-thirds of the labour force, SSA is the only region in the world where per capita food production declined over the latter half of the 20th century. It also remains highly vulnerable to extreme climate variability and future climate change as almost all (>95%) food production is rain-fed. Consequently, calls for increases in irrigated agriculture have intensified in an effort to improve food production, livelihoods and resilience to climate variability and change. However, the reality on the ground in most parts of Africa is complex. It is not clear if there is sufficient water available to support significant increases in irrigated agriculture especially in an era of rapid environment change. It is also vital to ensure that such developments do not have a negative impact on the ecosystem services on which poor African producers depend, especially as competition for limited water resources intensifies. Nor is it clear that investments in irrigation development alone will automatically lead to reduced poverty since the principle reason poor people do not have adequate access to water lies in entitlement failures, not water resource scarcity or inefficient service (market failures) delivery. This is fundamentally an issue of politics, local governance and distribution and, therefore, requires a more sophisticated analysis of the problem framing and policy response. Therefore, we need to ensure that policies in agricultural development and water resources take into account the many biophysical and socio-political challenges faced by small-scale farmers in diverse, risk-prone environments and the root causes of inefficiencies and low yields that characterise food production in SSA. Given this context, we seek to develop innovative ways to address the complex questions of sustainability and poverty around food and water in Africa. Specifically, we will establish a new research consortium involving leading physical and social scientists in SSA and the UK, and partners in government ministries and international organisations (e.g. IUCN) to create a truly interdisciplinary research team. The team will communicate with small-scale farmers and other key stakeholders through meetings of basin management organisations and water user associations in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania. This will allow the consortium to interact with and be informed by the expressed needs and priorities of small-scale farmers and other end-users of the ecosystems. Among other things, direct outputs of this activity will include a review paper for an internationally recognised interdisciplinary journal on the key challenges facing socio-economic and environmental science in reducing poverty through improved use of water for irrigation, a working paper, a dedicated webpage and a number of policy briefings in appropriate local languages. The most important output will be a full proposal for an ESPA consortium project which would aim to develop an integrated suite of modelling tools that incorporate both physical and socio-economic processes and are informed by a detailed understanding of local conditions and knowledge sets. Crucially, we will enhance these models with locally relevant information in order to contextualise hydro-climatic processes with socio-economic drivers within a consistent framework. Thus, they will allow interdisciplinary analysis of both climate change and development scenarios (e.g. changes in land use, crop types, water allocation, population and livelihood practices).

The world is moving into an unprecedented era of dam-building with more than 3700 large dams currently planned or under construction, much of which are in DAC list countries. These projects have the potential to contribute significantly to the economic and social changes that underpin global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, past experiences show that poorly designed and planned dam projects conversely may have large negative impacts on the poor, and exacerbate political instability and environmental degradation. This proposal seeks to create the knowledge base, capacity and capability for a 'Dams 2.0' future, in which dams built in DAC list countries are selected, designed and operated to support resilient and sustainable national, regional and global development in a 2.0 degC world. This will be achieved by understanding and assessing dams as interdependent human-nexus (water-energy-food-environment) system interventions and enabling stakeholders to negotiate economic, social, political and ecological impacts despite future uncertainty. Our proposal will address this ambitious goal through unique cross- and inter-disciplinary research and capacity development partnerships between three sets of key actors. First, our project will stimulate collaboration between several UK centres of research excellence in development, water-energy engineering, economics, food security, climate change, finance and ecology (the universities of Manchester (UM), Cambridge, University College London (UCL), Surrey, Newcastle and Southampton, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Second, we will consolidate links with a carefully selected network of researchers and policy-makers in 4 countries/regions (The Centre for Science and Industrial (CSIR) - Water in Ghana, Technological University of Yangon in Myanmar, Jordanian Institute of Science and Technology in the Middle East region, Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, India). Thirdly, we will seek to work collaboratively with some of the world's most influential development organisations such as The World Bank (WB), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the International Hydropower Association (IHA), and the Climate Bond Initiative (CBI). Dams 2.0 is led by a team with a proven track record in successfully managing large consortium grants across multiple countries and disciplines that focus on applied development and policy impact challenges. Our work will provide tailored guidance and build capacity for water-energy-food systems management in each of our case studies regions. In addition, our project will create a framework and accompanying software toolkit for dam system design and training worldwide. This online software will link several open access water, energy, food, and ecological simulation models to state-of-the-art decision-making under uncertainty approaches. This software will be made accessible via an associated suite of online training materials (games & modules we plan to develop with IWMI and the World Bank) for use by dam selection/design/operation teams globally in a range of settings.