Drivers of Change and Sustainability in Linked Social–Ecological Systems: An Analysis in the Volta River Basin of Ghana, West Africa

Managing and Sustaining the Coupled Water-Land-Food Systems in the Context of Global Change: How Qualitative System Dynamic Modelling Can Assist in Understanding and Designing High-Leverage Interventions

“…The second next stage of the analysis involved exploring and identifying the environmental and socio-economic drivers of change and processes, with a focus on understanding how such changes influence sustainable agriculture development within the Volta River Basin (VRB) [80]. To do this, a combination of comprehensive review of existing studies, semi-structured interviews and structured expert judgements technique (see [81][82][83]) was used to identify and characterise the key biophysical and socio-economic drivers and processes of change within the Volta River Basin, West Africa.…”

“…VS denotes "slow changing variables", while VF denotes "fast changing variables". ↑ indicates increasing trend in the driver, while ↓ indicates decreasing trend [80]. Third, and finally, a conceptual system model in the form of a causal loop diagram (CLD), was constructed through participatory modelling exercise to capture the structure and function of the VRB, indicating the cause-effect relationships and feedback loops between the important drivers of change and key variables based on the information from the driver identification (see Figure 4).…”

“…In this chapter, CLD is referred to as the generic model. The description of the main drivers giving rise to problem symptoms and issues identification process is detailed in [80], while the methods underpinning the construction of the generic model is provided in [84]. Here, the main interest is to present five main system archetypes, which can be identified from the generic CLD to assist in sustainable natural resources and agricultural development.…”

Assessing hydropower flexibility for integrating solar and wind energy in West Africa using dynamic programming and sensitivity analysis. Illustration with the Akosombo reservoir, Ghana

“…Fed by water inflows from three main upstream sub-basins: Oti, Black Volta, and White Volta and other minor secondary tributaries (Amisigo et al, 2018). The HP plant located right downstream of the Akosombo reservoir is the largest of three HP stations in Ghana with an installed capacity of 1,020 MW (Kotir et al, 2017). Six Francis turbines with a unit output of 173 MW are used to convert falling water from the reservoir into electricity with an annual net generation of around 6,500 GWh.…”

Water security and environmental security in a national and regional context: envisioning environmental diplomacy for cooperation

“…Besides political will, Reyers et al (2017) refer to the use of imperative directions of SDGs to conceptualize sustainable development in policies and decision-making. Woodhouse & Muller (2017) and Kotir et al (2017) emphasized considering water availability, allocation, navigation, monitoring, storage, and hydropower development for biodiversity conservation, energy security, trophic interaction of the terrestrial food web, hydropower development, water use, supply, distribution, allocation access, economic growth, and ecosystem sustainability. De Stefano et al (2017) and Ruhl (2017) argued that apportionment must be equitable based on flow variability in order to avoid conflicts.…”