Situational Analysis of the Upper Bhima sub-basin in the context of the Water-Food-Biodiversity Nexus

Abstract

This report was prepared as part of a research project titled “Soft systems analysis: Streamlining participatory approaches and agent-based models to explore ideas of fairness at the food-water-biodiversity (F-W-B) nexus (fairSTREAM)”. This project is funded by the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) and is implemented in collaboration with two partners from India: Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune (IISER Pune). The project started in September 2021, and it will run till December 2024. The main goal of fairSTREAM is to develop and demonstrate a co-production methodology for including equity and justice (fairness) alongside efficiency in developing sustainable policy options across the Water-Food-Biodiversity nexus (WFB nexus). The demonstration component is placed in the Upper Bhima basin, and the specific objectives here are to design and test a systems-informed stakeholder knowledge co-production process with the purpose of developing fair and sustainable policy options for WFB nexus. The co-production process involves several steps, namely: the assessment phase (including preparatory work, problem framing, and exploration of options) and the action planning phase. An evaluation process is also embedded across the different steps and phases. This report summarizes the findings of the preparatory and problem-framing phase, to contextualize the WFB nexus in the Upper Bhima, and what specific challenges it raises, both from a sustainability, equity and fairness perspective. Other than serving as a reference document for primary stakeholders - farmers, fishers and forest dependent communities to contextualize the WFB nexus in the Upper Bhima, this situational analysis is intended to inform future phases, including the development and co-production of options using a combination of modelling and soft approaches.