Sociohydrology

Scientific Challenges in Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals

Bibliographic Data

ID23366207
AuthorsGiuliano Di Baldassarre (0000-0002-8180-4996, Department of Earth Sciences Uppsala University Uppsala Sweden, corresponding author), Murugesu Sivapalan (0000-0003-3004-3530, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign Urbana IL USA), Maria Rusca (0000-0003-4513-3213, Department of Earth Sciences Uppsala University Uppsala Sweden), Christophe Cudennec (0000-0002-1707-8926, Agrocampus Ouest, INRA, UMR SAS Rennes France), Margaret Garcia (0000-0002-2864-2377, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment Arizona State University Tempe AZ USA), Heidi Kreibich (0000-0001-6274-3625, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences Potsdam Germany), Megan Konar (0000-0003-0540-8438, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign Urbana IL USA), Elena Mondino (0000-0002-4364-4119, Department of Earth Sciences Uppsala University Uppsala Sweden), Johanna Mård (0000-0002-8789-7628, Department of Earth Sciences Uppsala University Uppsala Sweden), Saket Pande (0000-0003-3061-3185, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences Delft University of Technology Delft The Netherlands), Matthew R Sanderson (0000-0002-5946-6556, Department of Water Management Delft University of Technology The Netherlands), Fuqiang Tian (0000-0001-9414-7019, Department of Hydraulic Engineering Tsinghua University Beijing China), Abel Viglione (0000-0002-7587-4832, Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management Vienna University of Technology Austria), Jing Wei (0000-0001-8167-9075, Department of Hydraulic Engineering Tsinghua University Beijing China), Yongping Wei (0000-0002-4266-4433, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Queensland Brisbane Queensland Australia), David J Yu (0000-0001-9929-1933, Lyles School of Civil Engineering Purdue University West Lafayette IN USA), Veena Srinivasan (0000-0002-5885-3116, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment Bangalore India), Günter Blöschl (0000-0003-2227-8225, Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management Vienna University of Technology Austria)
Year2019
Volume55
Issue8
Pages6327-6355
Publication date2019-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWater Resources Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-1397 • E-ISSN: 1944-7973
PublisherAmerican Geophysical Union (AGU) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1029/2018wr023901
PMID32742038
OpenAlexW2956733809
LanguageEN
Citations received63
References cited253

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is dominated by technocratic, scenario‐based approaches that may work well in the short term but can result in unintended consequences in the long term due to limited accounting of dynamic feedbacks between the natural, technical, and social dimensions of human‐water systems. The discipline of sociohydrology has an important role to play in informing policy by developing a generalizable understanding of phenomena that arise from interactions between water and human systems. To explain these phenomena, sociohydrology must address several scientific challenges to strengthen the field and broaden its scope. These include engagement with social scientists to accommodate social heterogeneity, power relations, trust, cultural beliefs, and cognitive biases, which strongly influence the way in which people alter, and adapt to, changing hydrological regimes. It also requires development of new methods to formulate and test alternative hypotheses for the explanation of emergent phenomena generated by feedbacks between water and society. Advancing sociohydrology in these ways therefore represents a major contribution toward meeting the targets set by the SDGs, the societal grand challenge of our time.

Business · Environmental planning · Environmental resource management · Political science · Sustainable development · Environmental Science · Flood Risk Assessment and Management · Water resources management and optimization · Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies