FUSE (Food-Water-Energy for Urban Sustainable Environments) is a transdisciplinary research project (2018-2022) involving the Food-Water-Energy resources nexus in the Bhima basin, India, with a focus on the greater Pune metropolitan region. The project developed a long-term systems model that was used to identify viable paths to resource sustainability. It brings together scientists, engineers, economists, urban sociologists and stakeholder engagement experts from Stanford University in California, USA, IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) in Laxenburg, Austria, UFZ (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research) in Leipzig, Germany, and ÖFSE (Austrian Foundation for Development Research) in Vienna, Austria. The project is a not-for-profit research effort and is part of the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative of JPI Urban Europe and the Belmont Forum. Each of the national teams is supported individually by its own national science-funding agency.

To incorporate the knowledge, expertise and views across Pune’s society, FUSE adopted a Sustainability Living Lab (SLL) approach. The SLL approach includes a stakeholder analysis and two series of workshops, at the beginning and the end of the project period, respectively. In the first set of workshops (held in February 2019), stakeholders that are affected by FWE challenges and policy experts shared visions, challenges, coping strategies, and potential infrastructural and policy solutions under present and future conditions. Additionally, regional modelling experts contributed insights on nexus interlinkages of food, water, and energy. The information gathered in the initial workshops and further local research activities was integrated into different parts of the research project. This information was used in part to formulate potential solutions, each requiring policy and infrastructural interventions. These interventions were evaluated under a range of future climate and population change scenarios. The likely benefits of these interventions were explored using a novel coupled human-natural systems model. In the second set of workshops (held in July 2022), these system model results were presented to representatives from NGOs, public authorities, and academia. Potential policy interventions were discussed, and feedback was elicited on the feasibility of, or barriers to, implementing interventions selected and modelled by the FUSE team.

This report presents the outcomes of the second set of workshops in Pune (India) and summarizes the SLL approach by looking back at the initial workshop results and subsequent development of the policy-evaluation model.