EURO 2024 Copenhagen
Abstract Submission

EURO-Online login

3702. Causal Loop Diagrams to address Nexus Biodiversity- Climate- Society governance challenges: insights from the gold mining in Ghana case study.

Invited abstract in session TA-13: OR Innovations in Policy Making - B, stream Soft OR and Problem Structuring Methods.

Tuesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: 15 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Raffaele Giordano
CNR-IRSA
2. Stefania Santoro
3. Alessandro Pagano
Water Research Institute, National Research Council
4. Mohammed Armani
KNUST

Abstract

Designing policies for managing the Biodiversity Climate Society (BCS) Nexus claims for a better understanding of the complex and dynamic interactions among its components and an effective engagement of the stakeholders.
To this aim, a Participatory System Dynamic Modeling (PSDM) framework was adopted in BIOTRAILS project (https://biotrailsproject.eu/). The PSDM framework is composed by several steps. This contribution focuses on the system mapping phase, whose scope is to map the interactions among the different elements of the BCS nexus, accounting for the stakeholders’ understandings and diversity of problem framings. Causal Loop Diagram was used to formalize and analyse the stakeholders’ knowledge. Methodological approaches based on Ambiguity Analysis and structural analysis were combined to identify the BCS nexus challenges and detect leverage points. Those elements will be, in a later stage of the project implementation, used to inform the stakeholders’ involvement in Nexus policy design.
The developed methodology was experimentally implemented to the gold mining in Ghana, to analyse their impacts on biodiversity losses and the dynamic evolution of the BCS nexus. A PSDM exercise was held in Kumasi to map the BCS Nexus system. The preliminary analysis of the obtained CLD show how stakeholders perceived gold mining impacts on the local environment and socio-economic context, and allowed us to start the process for the Nexus policy design.

Keywords

Status: accepted

Back to the list of papers