Sustainable Societal Well‑Being & Decoupling in the Water-Energy Nexus

Supervisors: Daniel Esty and Etienne Berthet

Purpose
YCELP via the GCSI has developed a formal, axiomatic framework that development economists and policymakers can use to compare countries and design interventions beyond GDP while remaining grounded in tractable measurement. The goal of those RA positions is to contribute to tailoring already‑computed results into two submission‑ready manuscripts by (i) completing a targeted literature synthesis and theoretical framing, and (ii) editing, figure polishing, formatting, and light, derived decoupling analysis from the existing dataset.

Core Idea
YCELP has formalized and applied a Sustainable Societal Well‑being Index (SSWI) that integrates primarily hedonic (and partly eudaimonic) well‑being, intergenerational emphasis, and a sustainability adjustment. We have paired the SSWI with Subsistence (SUB) and Fair‑Use (FUB) resource benchmarks to judge whether countries achieve well‑being within fair ecological bounds.

Work Package A — Theory, Framing & Journal Positioning (Target: World Development)

• Literature review (concise, policy‑relevant): HDI/IHDI/GII critiques; eudaimonia/capabilities; intergenerational welfare; fairness in resource allocation; consumption‑based spillovers.
• Concept consolidation: Clean definitions of SSWI, SUB/FUB, and axioms/properties; tight comparison to existing indices; measurement blueprint mapping indicators to constructs (no new data).
• Manuscript editing & formatting: Streamline argument; align terminology; finalize references; prepare figures/tables and cover letter to World Development specs.

Work Package B — Environmental Results with Decoupling Focus (Target: Nature Sustainability)

• Literature review (targeted): Absolute vs. relative decoupling; territorial vs. consumption‑based accounting; water–energy nexus; justice/equity.
• Light, derived analytics (from existing results only):
  • Resource–Well‑being Elasticity (RWE): how resource use changes relative to SSWI changes.
  • Consumption‑based Decoupling Wedge (CDW): gap between consumption‑ vs. territorial‑based RWE (offshoring check).
  • Distance to Fair‑Use Frontier (DFF): overshoot/under‑consumption relative to FUB/SUB, paired with SSWI gains.
  • (Optional, low‑lift) Best‑practice frontier gap using simple conditional quantiles to show distance to top decouplers within income groups.
• Manuscript editing & formatting: Decoupling‑centric Results & Discussion; map, rank, and frontier plots; Extended Data bundle; and reporting checklist per Nature Sustainability.

Shared Deliverables

1. Annotated bibliographies (each workstream) + 1‑page literature maps.
2. Claims‑evidence matrix linking every manuscript claim to either your computed results or a citation.
3. Figures/tables (vector + 300 dpi), accessible labels, self‑contained captions.
4. Cleaning and review of manuscripts, supplements/appendices, journal checklists, and data/code availability notes.

Authorship

• Authorship possible with substantial text integration, synthesis, and figure stewardship; otherwise, Acknowledgments.