Session FT 5.15

 Broadening perspectives in the face of increasing risks.

 

 

Conveners

• European Commission DG Research
• NeWater Project
• Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University
• Centre for Water and Climate, Wageningen University and Research Centre
  

Water related risks have natural and manmade causes. Causes like globalisation and climate change already have tremendous implications for water availability and will continue to change the conditions for water management. The two hosts of this session offer unique expertise in dealing with risks in water management. The Millennium Project of the United Nations University is a geographically and institutionally dispersed think tank on early warning and analysis of global long-range opportunities, strategies and challenges of the future (www.acunu.org). The EU funded NeWater Project advocates adaptive water management as a proactive approach to manage water related risks and uncertainty (www.newater.info).
Participation is a precondition to deal with changing conditions in water management. The session centred on the exchange of experience of the local actions within the framework of adaptive water management. After a plenary introduction, participants met at round tables to explore the local actions and adaptive water management in more detail. Participants choose between local actions from the Amudarya basin (Central Asia), the Guadiana basin (Southern Europe), Mendoza (Argentina), the Orange basin (Southern Africa) and Valle de Mexico (Mexico). The local actions as well as the participants evaluated the session set-up as refreshing and useful.

 

Lessons learned

Adaptive water management is a promising extension of IWRM to deal with water related risks and changing conditions. The concept and procedures should be developed further. The concepts should be illustrated by local actions. The interaction of implementation and concept development is crucial both in building scientific evidence and in the communication of the concepts. More specific lessons from the session are:

1. Institutional coordination and harmonization at national, regional and local levels is essential to facilitate change.
2. There is a need for integrated approaches that take new realities and challenges in river basin into account, considering technical as well as social aspects.
3. A thorough understanding of the current water system, including its actors, adaptive capacity, environment, cultural and socio-economic settings is crucial to identify barriers and opportunities for a transition to more adaptive water management.
4. Successful small-scale pilot studies can help overcome resistance to change and increase adoption of new approaches.
5. Development guidelines have to be location specific taking into account downstream consequences of development.
6. Stakeholder education and the creation of bottom-up user associations appear crucial steps in attaining adaptive groundwater management, since command and control approaches have generally proven unsuitable.

 

Key messages

Water management is facing increasing uncertainty and complexity due to climate change and globalisation. “Living with change” implies a different approach to deal with risk. Adaptive water management is a promising extension of IWRM to deal with water related risks and changing conditions. Key recommendations related to adaptive water management and strengthening local actions are:

1. Current water management should explicitly account for future changes. Selected management strategies should be robust and perform well under a range of possible, but initially uncertain, future developments.
2. The development of future pathways and options for change should be based on knowledge of current water management and the experience gained in past projects, taking into account the socio-economic, cultural and political realities in the river basin.
3. The chances of a community to deal with water related risks depend on site and region specific aspects: economy, social cohesion, government system, scale and magnitude of water related hazards.
4. Local actions facilitate social learning, participation and the use of local knowledge.
5. Stakeholder education and the creation of bottom-up user associations appear crucial steps in attaining adaptive water management.
6. Stakeholder participation and partnership are strengthened through (i) community organizing; (ii) sustainable livelihood approaches; (iii) relationship-building; (iv) participatory research; (v) transparency; and (vi) training and capacity building.
7. An increase in, and maintenance of, the flexibility and adaptive capacity of water management regimes should be a primary management goal.

 

Orientations for action

 

1. Intensify observation of the hydrological characteristics and the performance of economic, societal and environmental indicators and identification of decisive factor(s) guiding the future water system.
2. Establish processes of social learning fine tuned to the objectives of communities at various levels by encouraging local actions and securing policy support.
3. Improve flexibility in the system through small-scale structures at lower level supported by local society through a participatory process considering hydrological, physical and organizational changes.
4. Develop and test approaches that allow water users and managers to cope with uncertainty instead of trying to eliminate it.
5. Create space for creative and out-of-the-box thinking. Entrenched perceptions and beliefs block innovation and change.
6. Train a new generation of water management practitioners skilled in participatory system design and implementation.
   
   

Local Action presented

 

Central Asia, Amudarya basin: Adaptive Water Management under Uncertainty.

Umid Abdullaev, Design and Research Institute of the Uzbek Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, Maja Schlüter, UFZ - Centre for Environmental Research, Germany & Princeton University, US

Water resources in the Amudarya river basin sustain an intensive agricultural enterprise, human population in its oases and a variety of ecosystems that provide valuable ecosystem services. Water availability is highly variable demanding for strong adaptation of water management to droughts and floods. River basin management has been challenged by major changes in the political and socio-economic environment and increasing uncertainty in water availability. All river basin countries have engaged in reforms to adapt to the new realities. This NeWater case study aims to identify potentials and barriers to making water management more adaptive and ready to cope with current and future challenges. Activities are taking place through the year 2008 at different scales from the transboundary, to the regional and local levels.
New Activities: Bring together practitioners, stakeholders and scientists to compare debate and synthesize new development pathways for the Amudarya basin.

 

Argentina, Mendoza: Hydrologic Sustainability of Hillside Developments.

Jorge A. Maza, Instituto Nacional del Agua-Centro Regional Andino -Mendoza, Argentina and Raquel Zabala, Millenium Project, Argentina

Over the last years, speculative hillside developments with conventional urban planning criteria have aggravated storm water runoff conditions in downstream urban areas in Mendoza (Argentina). Storm runoff is 91% higher than in the undisturbed watershed. The developments applied the same criteria used in the plains: checkerboard pattern and, unfortunately, streets laid out in the direction of the maximum slope. Construction of such conventional residential areas affected the natural drainage in the watersheds, altered the course of the runoff and created a mismatch between runoff and the existing drainage system downstream. The large land movements have also considerably altered the landscape and the wildlife habitats that residents value so much.
This study shows that non-conventional urban development can substantially improve hydrologic conditions, decreasing the excess runoff that conventional development would cause by 80%. In addition the hydrologic response is improved not to exceed the runoff from an undisturbed watershed for a 5-year recurrence interval. The methods and results of the study can be of great interest for other locations where development in hillside areas without any regulation or no land use planning is taking place. The study is available for State and Local authorities to be used as the basis for a future land use regulation in the Great Mendoza hillside area or similar areas.
New Activities: To identify non-conventional urban development solutions for Greater Mendoza that reduce storm runoff in the downstream urban areas compared to conventional hillside developments.

 

Argentina, Gran Buenos Aires: Mitigación de ascenso de napas.

Oscar Valentin Lico, Instituto Nacional del Agua

Parts of the Gran Buenos Aires area suffer from rising groundwater level. In addition its quality is decreasing. A study was made on the impact of this problem, on the characteristics of the hydrological system and on the actual causes. Governmental agencies as well as the local population participated in this research. It appeared that the causes were multiple, but mainly man-made. Also the impact is related more to the human than the natural environment. The quality of live in often poor communities is threatened. The economic value of these areas are low mainly because the uncertainty and insecurity for socio-economic activity.

 

Spain: Groundwater Resources in the Upper Guadiana Basin: an ongoing tale of adaptation to rapid change.

Pedro Martínez-Santos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Dr Araceli Olmedo, stakeholder from the “General Community of Groundwater Users of Aquifer 23"

The Semiarid Upper Guadiana basin (Central Spain) spans 16,000km2 and is home to about 500,000 people. Over the last thirty years, rapid change and adaptation have been key to water resources management in the basin. While irrigation-based social and economic welfare has traditionally acted as the main driver behind the area’s prosperity, it has also been a catalyst for unwanted environmental effects and complex legal reforms. These divergences are currently at the heart of widely voiced water conflicts, specifically on groundwater, both at the inter and intra-basin scale, and call for further adaptation in the dawn of the Water Framework Directive.
New Activities: To debate water management futures as an alternative to the present situation of relatively uncontrolled groundwater irrigation, water shortage and conflict prone water transfers.

 

Mexico, Mexico Valley: Adaptive Solutions for Drinking Water and Drainage.

Gustavo Paz Soldan, ‘Sociedad Mundial del Futuro capítulo México’ and Concepción Olavarietta, Millennium Project

Mexico City suffers from an integrated water problem: during centuries the soil settled because of the overexploitation of the groundwater, the subsidence of the soil created a lowering of the topography and problems of drainage. With the extension of the town the scale of drainage system enlarged and became more complex; the system functioned less. Funds for reconstruction of the drainage system had to compete with other priorities; so investments were delayed and maintenance neglected.
Rehabilitation and extension of the drainage system is essential; depression cannot be drained anymore; the capacity is insufficient under high rainfall conditions; temporary and local flooding cause economic loss. On top of that one has to fear high rainfall and increased floods because climatic change. The risk of inundation is increasing every decade. Technical solutions alone are not sufficient as also social, political economical and financial aspects influence the implementation.
New Activities: to test appropriate integral solutions for drinking water and drainage that avoid flooding, reduce the risks of failure of the drainage system and improve social security and human live.

 

Southern Africa, Orange Basin: Poverty Alleviation and Ecological Integrity.

Caroline Sullivan, Dermot O’Regan, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK

The Orange is the largest water shed in Africa south of the Zambezi. More than half of the catchment area is located in South Africa, with the remainder lying in Lesotho, Botswana and Namibia. The Orange basin is characterized by extremely variable rainfalls, ranging from 2000 mm per year at the source to 50 mm per year and thus extremely arid climatic conditions neat its mouth, and high evaporation of 2.000 to 2.500 mm. Irrigation dominates water use with 54 %, in contrast to 10 % that goes towards environmental demands and 2 % provided to urban and industrial use. The remaining 34 % is accounted for by evaporation and run-off to the ocean through rivers and canals.
The central aim of this case study of the NeWater project is to build preparedness for uncertainty in future water resources supply and demand. Capacity building in the use of scenarios, tools and incentives will assist in developing this preparedness. Furthermore, the generation of scenarios in association with project partners may help develop greater common skills, understanding and teamwork between the four countries in the Basin.
New Activities: To produce accessible water futures that illustrate the connectivity between water users and managers in the Orange, the potential consequences of various uncertainties, and the associated management options.