1. World Water Day: Water Cooperation
Multidisciplinary Research Week 2013
‘Assessing Health, Livelihoods, Ecosystem Services
And Poverty Alleviation In Populous Deltas (ESPA
Deltas project)’,
by Dr. Craig Hutton, ESPA Deltas Research Coordinator, GeoData
Institute, Geography & Environment, University of Southampton

2. Presented by:
Dr. Craig Hutton
ESPA Deltas Research Coordinator,
GeoData Institute,
Geography & Environment AU
University of Southampton
United Kingdom

3. ESPA DELTA:
Assessing Health, Livelihoods, Ecosystem Services And
Poverty Alleviation In Populous Deltas
EPSA Consortium Grant
University of Southampton (Nicholls PI)
University of Oxford
Exeter University
Dundee University
Hadley Centre
Plymouth Marine Laboratories
National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool)
Plus 10 Bangladeshi partners (BUET lead)
2 Indian partners (JU, ITTK)
1 Chinese partner (ECNU)
Lecture 4. Climate change and the
integrated coastal system. Wednesday
25 July 2007

4. Delta Population & Poverty

5. Threatened Deltas
Population potentially displaced by current sea-level trends to 2050
1 million
million to 50,000
50,000 to 5,000
Source: IPCC AR4 using data in Ericson et al. (2006)

6. Nile
Deltas are sinking:
Pink areas are below sea level
Mahakam
Mississippi
Ganges Indus
Vistula
Mekong Yellow
Euphrates
CSDMS

7. Height above sea level
dark green <5m
light green <3m
pale green < 1m
100 km

8. The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBN) Delta
Population: 150 million
World Cities: Kolkata and Dhaka
The Sunderbans
Water –from the Himalayas through India and
China

9. Global-Mean Sea Level
IPCC Fourth Assessment (AR4) (2007)

10. Study Area

11. Key Ecosystems
Marine
Riverine
Floodplain
Supporting
Provisioning
Maintaining
Cultural
Source: BRAC (2007)

12. Socio-Economic Trends
in the delta plain
• Growing populations;
• Rising wealth and improving health, but questions
of inequality;
• Changing livelihoods and migration;
• Urbanisation and infrastructure expansion;
• Intensification of agriculture;
• Increasing demand for flood management;
• Increased water demand.

13. Research Questions
• To understand the present relationship between ecosystem
services and human well-being and health in the
Bangladeshi portion of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta.
• To develop participatory methods to predict how these
ecosystem services might evolve over the coming years and
decades (up to 50 years) and their influence on human well-
being and health under the multiple drivers of change in
operation.
• To analyse how policy can influence these outcomes and
promote ecosystem services and human well-being and
health.
• To develop participatory methods to select robust policies
that are effective across the range of uncertainty, including
adaptive management approaches.
• To test the transferability of these methods to other
populated deltas.

14. Scales in Bio-physical & socio-economic models
100 yr
Temporal scale
HadCM3
climate
catchment
1yr
Mangrove PRECIS
delta
MAXTENT other
1mo
Social-
Fishery Economic
CropWat
ModFlow POLCOMs-ERSEM
CAESAR GWAVA
1hr 1d
HydroTrend
AquaCrop INCA
FVCOM FVCOM FVCOM
(river) (coast) (marine)
1m 10m 1km 10km 100 km
Spatial scale
14
point local catchment regional global

15. Systems Dynamics: Integration of Socio-Environmental Models
in such a way as to consider the systems impacts of
interventions and policies on socio-economic
as well as biophysical outcomes
e.g Prelim.
conceptualisation Systems are combined
for ESPA Deltas to produce an integrated
Socio-environmental approach
with feedback and thresholds
15
UNSW, Canberra

16. Socio- No of
Sunderban economic migrating +
model people
outsiders
Wealth
Nutrition + Market price of
+ Goods (Collector) ?
- - +
Coastal + + - +
fishery Firewood collection Honey, Commercial Market price of
for personal use wax, fruits exploitation of trees tourist attractions
Fish
- meat +
Nursery -
collection
Nutrient + - Size of
load - protected area
Water
+ +
Quality +
+ +
+
Mangrove + +
X X
Biomass area Decay + No of
CO2 + Production + +
rate Tourists
- +
fertilisation rate
+ -
Temperature
+
+ Species No of
density/diversity +
Alluvial Land erosion tigers -
deposition + -
+ No of
Sediment deer
load + + + Tree ha-1
- Magnitude/frequency Sea Level Rise 16
River flow of cyclones

17. Agriculture
Socio-
economic
model Population
Number
+
Nutrition Employment
opportunities
Agriculture
Mangrove
+ Area
Pollination ++
+
Crop
X X
Growth Production Decay
+
- rate + rate
Salinity
+
Nutrients - Crop
+
CO2 damage +
fertilisation + + River flooding
Temperature Precipitation +
High intensity
storm
17

18. Settlement
River High intensity Coastal
flooding storm/cyclone flooding
+ + +
Building
+ +
Wealth damage Settlement
size Arsenic ?
+ + + +
Young Working Elderly
X X X X
Births Population Maturation Population Aging Population Deaths
+ + + +
+ -
Birth rate
- Death rate
Education Migration
Socio-
economic
model
Employment
opportunities
Agriculture Shrimp Sunderban
farm Fishery 18

19. Fishery
Magnitude/frequency Sea Level
of cyclones Rise
+ +
Socio-
economic
Land erosion
model
Market price + Employment Market price
opportunities +
of fish (Collector) of tourist attractions
(Collector)
+ +
Nutrition + Fish No of
Population + +
capture Tourists
number
Nursery + ++
Biomass of
Sunderban X X
Biomass Fish stock Mortality
+
Production + rate
rate +
+
Primary Arsenic
+ production
Nutrients
19

20. Shrimp farm
Settlement
Market price of
Shrimp (Collector)
Socio- + Building Damage
economic
model Population +
Number + Increased likelihood
of coastal flood defence
failure
Nutrition Employment
opportunities +
Shrimp farm
+ area
+
++
Shrimp
X X Saline pollution
Growth Biomass Mortality
+ of freshwater
rate + rate
+
Nutrients
+
Temperature 20

21. Thank you
http://espadeltas.geodata.soton.ac.uk
/

22. World Water Day: Water Cooperation
Multidisciplinary Research Week 2013
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