825 explicitly integrate social and environmental dimensions, promote transparency, and foster collaborative decision‑making among stakeholders as a means to reduce conflict and improve long‑term sustainability (IFC and ICMM, 2017; Pagliero et al., 2024). In response to the limitations of conventional, project‑based approaches, shared water infrastructure has emerged as a promising structural strategy to address water scarcity in arid regions with high mining intensity. Shared infrastructure refers to the planning, financing, and operation of water supply systems, such as desalination plants, conveyance pipelines, storage facilities, and distribution networks, designed from a regional, multi‑user perspective rather than as isolated assets serving individual projects (Admiraal et al., 2017). The literature suggests that shared water infrastructure can deliver substantial economic, environmental, and social benefits. Economically, it enables economies of scale, reduces duplication of investments, and improves the utilisation of long‑lived infrastructure assets (Valero et al., 2025). Environmentally, integrated infrastructure planning can minimise territorial footprint, reduce cumulative impacts, and facilitate the protection of continental water sources by coordinating the use of alternative supplies such as desalinated seawater (Moreno-Silva et al., 2025; Pagliero et al., 2024). From a governance and social perspective, shared infrastructure creates opportunities to redistribute the benefits of mining‑driven water investments across multiple users, including communities, agriculture, and urban systems. Evidence indicates that when such systems are developed through participatory and transparent processes, they can improve equity in water access, reduce conflict, and enhance the legitimacy of water‑related investment decisions (IFC and ICMM, 2017; Ulloa et al., 2022). Despite its potential, the implementation of shared water infrastructure faces significant challenges, including regulatory frameworks ill‑suited to multi‑user systems, complex financing arrangements, and the need for sustained coordination among public and private actors. Addressing these barriers requires collaborative planning approaches, integrated modelling tools, and a long‑term vision that recognises the often under‑valued strategic role of water infrastructure in enabling sustainable development in arid mining regions (Valero et al., 2025; Pagliero et al., 2024). This work aims to demonstrate the benefits of implementing shared water infrastructure through the application of a methodological framework developed by Pagliero et al., (2024). The proposed framework is specifically designed to support integrated, participatory, and spatially explicit decision-making in waterscarce regions characterised by competing demands and high levels of uncertainty. It combines hydrological, technical, economic, environmental, and social dimensions within a unified analytical structure, enabling the systematic evaluation of alternative water supply and infrastructure configurations at a regional scale. In this paper, the key components of the framework are presented, including its conceptual foundations, the criteria used to represent sustainability trade-offs, and its implementation through a computational decision-support tool. The tool enables the comparison of shared and project-based infrastructure options under multiple development and climate scenarios, explicitly accounting for cumulative impacts, infrastructure interdependencies, and stakeholder priorities. An illustrative application example is provided for a mining-intensive arid context, demonstrating how the framework can inform strategic water planning, enhance transparency in infrastructure investment decisions, and support the transition towards more coordinated and sustainable water governance models. 2. METHODOLOGY The methodological approach adopted in this study follows the framework developed by Pagliero et al. 2024, designed to support the sustainable integration of desalinated seawater into regional water supply systems under conditions of water scarcity and competing demands (Figure 1). The framework is implemented as an iterative, stepwise process that links regional system characterisation, scenario analysis, spatial infrastructure planning, network optimisation, and stakeholder interpretation of results. Step 1 consists of defining the system boundaries and compiling a spatially explicit regional database that integrates water sources, demands, and existing or potential infrastructure assets, together with geographic layers describing topography and socio-environmental constraints relevant to infrastructure deployment. Stakeholder engagement is embedded at this stage to validate system representation and ensure that locally
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