Water and Climate: Charting the Path to a Sustainable Future
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 143, Issue 10
Although some disagree about the extent to which human activity affects the climate, there is broad agreement among professional communities that observed changes such as extreme hydrologic events and sea level rise must be considered in the planning and management of water infrastructure systems. These systems face tremendous pressure from population and climate changes around the world and will require imaginative solutions from leaders in water resource management. The next generation of leaders must step up to develop sustainable solutions to these emerging problems, and they will need research and education to equip them.
To chart a path forward in this important area, Colorado State University and Riverside Technology, Inc. organized a Water-Climate Initiative in 2016 to probe a set of core questions:
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What is the current state of global and regional climate predictability of hydrologic parameters, and are there approaches and tools on the horizon that are likely to change the predictability in a substantial way?
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Should the focus of prediction remain on improving global products, or is there value in isolating regions, given that regions face distinct problems with respect to water availability yet are connected to each other through the global circulation?
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How can technologies to predict climate and water supplies be used to bolster water resources management with attention to supply and risk management?
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What are the observational tools that could improve water management in a cost-effective manner? Are these universally applicable, or do they depend on the context of the management area?
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Water management involves water availability and use of water infrastructure, both of which are subject to regulatory or political considerations. Are there potentially new research avenues that couple the physical and regulatory considerations to better serve water managers in the future?
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Is the existing water workforce adequately prepared to face emerging challenges of population pressure and climate change? If not, what are the gaps?
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Are there specific emerging water management areas that current degree programs tend to ignore?
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Is there a need for new interdisciplinary degrees that view water management not as a single discipline but a combination of the traditional university departments? If so, how should these be organized, and what should they do?
The Water-Climate Initiative was held on June 13–14, 2016, and concluded with a declaration drafted and endorsed by 37 participating experts from the water management and climate communities. The declaration suggested education outcomes for the next generation of water engineers and managers and thoughtful approaches to inform funding agencies and partners interested in improving access to water around the globe. The declaration speaks for itself and is appended to this editorial.
Some 37 participants in the workshop reviewed this declaration and endorsed it. In addition to the authors, they are: Khaled AbuZeid, Sameh Afifi, Mike Applegate, Mazdak Arabi, Armando Balloffet, V. Chandrasekar, Gyewoon Choi, Scott Denning, Vinio Floris, Luis Garcia, Nagaraja Rao Harshadeep, Tissa Illangasekare, Jerson Kelman, John Labadie, Mohamed Rami Mahmoud, Tim Martin, Ryan Morrison, Victor Miguel Ponce, John Qu, Jorge A. Ramirez, David Randall, Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, Jose D. Salas, Tim Schneider, Verne Schneider, Vijay Singh, Stephen Smith, David Stewart, Óli Grétar Blöndal Sveinsson, Carlos Tucci, Brad Udall, Stephen Volz, and Eric Wilkinson.
Declaration from 2016 Global Water and Climate Initiative
On June 13–14, 2016, a group of 37 experts met at Colorado State University to analyze stresses on global water resources and identify challenges, solutions, actions, and responsibilities for leading institutions involved in water research, education, and management. Participants included distinguished CSU alumni and faculty with expertise in water and climate and other experts with broad experience representing governments, intergovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and the private sector.
The meeting’s focus was on water uses and issues that are affected by global changes at the intersection of water and climate systems. The serious nature of the issues is evident in recent disastrous flooding and severe drought, which have caused enormous hardships globally. Without appropriate water-management strategies to respond to population pressures, the global community will feel the effects of increasing water scarcity from changes in the distribution of precipitation, extreme weather events, and groundwater depletion. These hardships will intensify and be manifest in failed water supplies, famine, energy shortages, and water quality deterioration.
This postmeeting declaration serves as a statement of challenges and a catalyst to create a roadmap for Colorado State University and the research and education community, as well as implementation agencies, governance authorities, and funding organizations.
Five key action areas were identified for focused attention from the academic, governmental, and private sectors to strengthen the sustainability and resiliency of natural and engineered water systems:
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Reduce uncertainty and risk through greater understanding of climate, the environment, and institutional responses;
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Galvanize the power of multidisciplinary approaches using atmospheric sciences, hydrology, ecology, management, and public policy;
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Improve professional knowledge networks with multidisciplinary knowledge applied toward water-related and climate-related challenges;
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Improve water governance with objective science and implementable policies; and
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Create robust open-access data resources to support informed decision making.
The participants identified top-priority challenges, solutions, and needs to address these key action areas with actionable items at the intersection of water and climate.
Critical Challenges
1.
Climate model outputs do not link effectively with current hydrologic models used for operational planning and management of water infrastructure systems or to analyze ecosystem responses that depend on surface and groundwater, which is critical to proper stewardship practices. We need to better understand, validate, and move these model outputs from research to trusted operational tools;
2.
Specific forcing factors causing large floods and severe droughts are not well identified for use in prediction models or assessment of extreme events. These forcing factors should be identified and quantified for use in models and assessments;
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Water governance and institutions are the key to our future resiliency, but they must be integrated and transparent. Systemic change beginning with interdisciplinary education is needed to promote nexus-based approaches across sectors, whereas transparency at all levels (local, state, national, transboundary) is critical for developing the required trust and capacity for forecasting and water management responses. The institutional aspects of applying knowledge about climate to improve water management require greater understanding through problem-centered research;
4.
A new generation of water professionals with relevant skills is needed to work in increasingly complex and stressed systems. Educators and the water-management community should cooperate to bridge the gaps in workforce capacity to promote integrated and effective water management;
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Water-management organizations must integrate state-of-the-art science and real-time data with improved information-based decision-making systems. We need to transform the culture of water-management organizations to implement more robust science-based management of water resources;
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Water infrastructure and services must be upgraded; however, to meet water supply needs, we must develop the financial capacity and affordable solutions for water provisioning in order to achieve higher levels of water security; and
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Effective triple-bottom-line planning, implementation, and support for critical water infrastructure are needed to manage the risk and uncertainty associated with climate variability and change, human intervention, and extreme events.
Recommendations
The participants in the CSU/Riverside initiative urge funders, government agencies, and academic leaders to consider the following recommendations for priority focus at the intersection of water and climate. They are organized broadly into research, education, and governance areas, as outlined subsequently.
Research
1.
Although climate research is focused on reproducing current mean and future climate expectations, less emphasis has been placed on capturing the variability of regional and watershed hydrology. More emphasis is needed to verify climate forecasts relevant to hydrologic processes, including extreme events. The academic community should examine existing forecasting model outputs critically from a hydrological perspective and enable ensemble methodologies that correlate nonstationarity of climate to nonstationarity of hydrologic responses;
2.
Additional resources and effort are needed to develop realistic and replicable methods for transferring information from ensembles of global climate models to river basin and local project levels to foster improved project and program designs, including tools for downscaling from global-level to project-level models under the condition of poor local hydrologic and meteorological data, especially in the developing world. These methods and tools should be both user friendly and open source;
3.
Coordinated efforts among government agencies, academic institutions, and the private sector are needed to take advantage of big-data solutions that can be linked to management outcomes. These sectors must cooperatively develop tools and networks that will facilitate decision-maker and manager access to shared data, information, models, and tools;
4.
Government agencies must continue to advance the understanding of seasonal and short-term forecasts of weather and hydrologic events to better prepare society for extremes while considering the associated risks and uncertainties;
5.
Increased focus is needed on the interactions between ecosystems and water availability and how ecosystems may cross thresholds because of climate change. Today, water projects in the planning stage face the climate realities of the second half of the 21st century; therefore, tools are urgently needed to help water planners predict climate-induced changes in ecosystems, their effects on water quantity and quality, and feedback between water systems and ecosystems;
Education
6.
Vigorous international scientific cooperation between water and climate specialists in academia and water-management organizations must be fostered and cannot be left to chance. Universities should energize their roles in driving this cooperation;
7.
Academic institutions must create new interdisciplinary approaches to water education by linking natural and social sciences to create comprehensive views of issues, assessments of policies to facilitate effective and just laws and regulations, and research into links between water management and social justice. These approaches should include global training platforms with professionals exposed to innovation and entrepreneurship; enhanced professional knowledge networks; comprehensive, systems thinking; and improved communication and awareness at all levels of management and society;
Governance
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When climate and hydrologic models do not present consistent solutions (in order to enable adaptation methods and responses), governments should first modify water infrastructure planning to study and integrate root causes of extreme floods and severe droughts and second extrapolate them to future conditions that may not be represented in models;
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Governments must promote confidence and trust in water-governance institutions by fostering subsidiarity and increased transparency; creating cultures of involvement, cooperation, and ethical decisions; and promoting means to reduce conflicts and injustices related to water management;
10.
Water-management organizations must be improved through benchmarking to rate system performance; information-based decision-making systems with access to data services, visualization of findings, triple-bottom-line decision support, improved water accounting, and asset management; soft-path demand management and leapfrog technologies (from centralized to distributed systems); and communication among managers and with stakeholders;
11.
Water infrastructure shortfalls require a balance between financial sustainability and social responsibility in water management. Funding agencies and nongovernmental organizations should focus on helping low-income countries develop sustainable and distributed or redundant water infrastructure and services; and
12.
Action agencies and universities should develop appropriate alternatives to traditional water and sanitation infrastructure that increase local resilience to extreme events and incorporate triple-bottom-line accounting of risk, uncertainty, and avoided costs, as well as transboundary and environmental issues.
Achieving resilient water supply for domestic, agricultural, and industrial uses and adequate systems for wastewater and flood control under climate uncertainty and increased volatility will challenge the financial and managerial capacity of water providers in the coming decades. We submit this declaration to encourage funders, government agencies, research organizations, and academic leaders to take action now on steps to enhance water sustainability across the globe.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 143 • Issue 10 • October 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 17, 2017
Accepted: May 1, 2017
Published online: Jul 24, 2017
Published in print: Oct 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Dec 24, 2017
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