Operationalizing equity for integrated water resources management

Seigerman, Cydney K.; McKay, S. Kyle; Basilio, Raul; Biesel, Shelly; Hallemeier, Jon; Mansur, Andressa V.; Piercy, Candice D.; Rowan, Sebastian; Ubiali, Bruno; Yeates, Elissa; Nelson, Donald R.

doi:10.1111/1752-1688.13086

Cited by 14 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…Lacking policy guidance for defining objectives for equity across households, we note that the Justice40 Initiative borrows concepts from theories in environmental justice (7). As such, we draw from theories in environmental justice that focus on impartiality and environmental burdens (17,(70)(71)(72)(73) and define household equity objectives based on the flood-risk burden metric defined earlier in two ways.…”

Section: The Cost Of Achieving Equity and Economic Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Funding rules that promote equity in climate adaptation outcomes

Pollack,

Santamaria-Aguilar,

Maduwantha

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Many climate policies adopt improving equity as a key objective. Achieving this broad goal is non-trivial. A key challenge is that policies often conceive of equity in terms of individuals but introduce strategies that focus on spatially coarse administrative areas like census tracts. For example, the Justice40 Initiative in the United States requires 515 diverse federal programs to prioritize funds for “disadvantaged” census tracts. This strategy is largely untested and contrasts with the federal government’s definition of equity as the “consistent and systematic fair, just and impartial treatment of all individuals.” How well does the Justice40 approach improve equity in climate adaptation outcomes across individuals? We analyze this question using a case study of a municipality that faces repetitive flooding and struggles to effectively manage these risks due to limited resources and public investment. We find that Justice40 is an obstacle to equity. In contrast, we design simple funding based on household risk burden that cost-effectively perform well on a wide range of equity and economic objectives. “Disadvantaged community” indicators defined at coarse spatial scales face the risk of poorly capturing many natural hazards and can be ineffective for meeting equity promises about climate-related investments.

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Section: The Cost Of Achieving Equity and Economic Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Funding rules that promote equity in climate adaptation outcomes

Pollack,

Santamaria-Aguilar,

Maduwantha

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…Where freshwater protected areas are managed both for biodiversity and for provisioning ecosystem services like food supply, they can be viewed as natural assets; that is, natural capital investments to be managed and protected analogously to conventional infrastructure [100][101][102]. In other words, minimally altered rivers are themselves a form of NBS.…”

Section: Plos Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, minimally altered rivers are themselves a form of NBS. Such framings could encourage investment and management of such shared resources in ways that better ensure the long-term prospects of local ecological communities, so long as societal benefits were protected and distributed equitably [1,102]. Strategic NBS investments in the form of restored, created, or protected habitats could be monitored and managed using the population trends and demography of exploited species as an indicator [18].…”

Section: Plos Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conservation goals pursued to the exclusion of equity and social justice will ultimately be ineffective [110], and these factors must be considered as NBS applications enter the mainstream for water resources management applications [102]. Social impacts like environmental gentrification [70,111] and conservation imperialism [112] have nontrivial implications for the success, performance, and sustainability of NBS, that bear equal consideration to their potential for protecting nature.…”

Section: Knowledge Gaps and Research Prioritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The potential for nature-based solutions to combat the freshwater biodiversity crisis

et al. 2023

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Enthusiasm for and investments in nature-based solutions (NBS) as sustainable strategies for climate adaptation and infrastructure development is building among governments, the scientific community, and engineering practitioners. This is particularly true for water security and water-related risks. In a freshwater context, NBS may provide much-needed “win-wins” for society and the environment that could benefit imperiled freshwater biodiversity. Such conservation benefits are urgently needed given the ongoing freshwater biodiversity crisis, with declines in freshwater species and their habitats occurring at more than twice the rate of marine or terrestrial systems. However, for NBS to make meaningful contributions to safeguarding freshwater biodiversity, clear links must be established between NBS applications and priorities for conservation. In this paper, we link common water-related NBS to six priority actions for freshwater life established by the conservation science n community, and highlight priority research and knowledge that will be necessary to bring NBS to bear on the freshwater biodiversity crisis. In particular, we illustrate how NBS can play a direct role in restoring degraded aquatic and floodplain ecosystems, enhancing in-stream water quality, and improving hydrological connectivity among freshwater ecosystems. System-level monitoring is needed to ensure that freshwater NBS deliver on their promised benefits for ecosystems and species.

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“…Thus, it is critical that a justice and equity lens accounts not just for distribution of risks and benefits but also focuses on the representational and procedural aspects of equity. There are many ways that an individual project may cultivate equity in all aspects of planning, design, execution, and monitoring ( 115 ). However, unless there are high-level changes in policy and guidance that provide budget space, allow additional time, and define an increased scope to project planners, efforts are likely to be partial or detrimental to an equitable process.…”

Section: Pathways and Strategies To Achieve The Visionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagining infrastructure for a biodiverse future

van Rees,

Hernández-Abrams,

Shudtz

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Civil infrastructure will be essential to face the interlinked existential threats of climate change and rising resource demands while ensuring a livable Anthropocene for all. However, conventional infrastructure planning largely neglects the contributions and maintenance of Earth’s ecological life support systems, which provide irreplaceable services supporting human well-being. The stability and performance of these services depend on biodiversity, but conventional infrastructure practices, narrowly focused on controlling natural capital, have inadvertently degraded biodiversity while perpetuating social inequities. Here, we envision a new infrastructure paradigm wherein biodiversity and ecosystem services are a central objective of civil engineering. In particular, we reimagine infrastructure practice such that 1) ecosystem integrity and species conservation are explicit objectives from the outset of project planning; 2) infrastructure practices integrate biodiversity into diverse project portfolios along a spectrum from conventional to nature-based solutions and natural habitats; 3) ecosystem functions reinforce and enhance the performance and lifespan of infrastructure assets; and 4) civil engineering promotes environmental justice by counteracting legacies of social inequity in infrastructure development and nature conservation. This vision calls for a fundamental rethinking of the standards, practices, and mission of infrastructure development agencies and a broadening of scope for conservation science. We critically examine the legal and professional precedents for this paradigm shift, as well as the moral and economic imperatives for manifesting equitable infrastructure planning that mainstreams biodiversity and nature’s benefits to people. Finally, we set an applied research agenda for supporting this vision and highlight financial, professional, and policy pathways for achieving it.

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Operationalizing equity for integrated water resources management

Cited by 14 publications

References 110 publications

Funding rules that promote equity in climate adaptation outcomes

Funding rules that promote equity in climate adaptation outcomes

The potential for nature-based solutions to combat the freshwater biodiversity crisis

Reimagining infrastructure for a biodiverse future

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