Building Resilience for Uncertain Water Futures

Patricia Gober

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319712345
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book describes the existential threats facing the global water systems from population growth and economic development, unsustainable use, environmental change, and weak and fragmented governance. It argues that 'business-as-usual' water science and management cannot solve global water problems because today's water systems are increasingly complex and face uncertain future conditions. Instead, a more holistic, strategic, agile and publically engaged process of water decision making is needed.

Building Resilience for Uncertain Water Futures emphasises the importance of adaptation through a series of case studies of cities, regions, and communities that have experimented with anticipatory policy-making, scenario development, and public engagement. By shifting perspective from an emphasis on management to one of adaptation, the book emphasizes the capacity to manage uncertainties, the need for cross-sector coordination, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholder with differing goals and conflict resolution.

This book will be a useful resource for students and academics seeking a better understanding of sustainable water use, water policy and water resources management.

© The Author(s) 2018

Patricia GoberBuilding Resilience for Uncertain Water Futureshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71234-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Case for Adaptation

Patricia Gober¹

(1)

School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

Today’s world faces existential threats to water systems in the form of intensifying floods and droughts, increasing risks to global supply chains, chronic shortages, hidden vulnerabilities in the water-energy-land-food (WELF) nexus, increasing pollution, and degrading aquatic ecosystems. These threats occur in the context of unsustainable use, environmental change, fragmented and weak governance, and a global economy that is heavily water dependent (World Water Assessment Program 2016). This book makes the case that business-as-usual water science, management, and decision-making institutions are not up to the task of solving today’s global water problems and planning for an uncertain future. A path forward using ideas from resilience theory, Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU), socio-hydrology, adaptive management, and social learning offers a new paradigm for water planning and policy.

1.2 Book Overview

Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of the human dimensions of water security. Only 2.5% of Earth’s water is freshwater. The rest is saline and found in the ocean. Most of the freshwater is in glaciers and ice caps (68.7%) and stored as groundwater (30.1% percent). Only 1.2% is surface water available to meet human needs (USGS 2017). Agriculture, industry, and communities use groundwater to supplement surface supplies, but recent evidence from NASA’s twin GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites shows that human consumption is depleting about one-third of Earth’s largest groundwater basins with little understanding of how much is left (Richey et al. 2015) (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Estimated levels of groundwater stress based on measurements from GRACE satellites. The red aquifers are the most severely stressed by human consumption. UC Irvine/NASA/JPL/Caltech

Worldwide, 884 million people lack access to a basic drinking water service (an improved drinking water source within a round trip of 30 minutes), and 159 million depend upon surface water such as rivers, lakes, ponds, springs, and canals for their main drinking water source. More than two billion people use drinking water contaminated with fecal material; 2.3 billion do not have access to toilets or latrines; and 890 million of them defecate in the open, behind bushes, in gutters, and in open water bodies (United Nations World Health Organization 2017a, b). Eighty percent of the world’s population now lives in areas with high risk of either human water insecurity or serious biodiversity loss (Vörösmarty et al. 2010). Water problems are global in scale, take a variety of forms, affect significant numbers of people, and belie easy solutions.

Chapter 2 also shows how societies react to extreme natural events, such as floods, droughts, and sea level rise. Social scientists in the natural hazards field have long warned that planning for and recovering from extreme natural events requires a refocus from the natural events themselves to the human conditions that make people vulnerable to them. Emphasis is on the root causes and dynamic pressures that explain why so many people live in unsafe places, why seemingly predictable events cause so much damage and loss of life, and how system dynamics can lead to unintended consequences and hidden vulnerabilities. After some 75 years of study, hazards research offers keen insight into planning for climate change, starting with reducing the vulnerabilities that already exist such as moving people out of floodplains, protecting water systems from contamination and salinization, observation and monitoring, building infrastructure to deal with unexpected change, conservation as precautionary action, and improving governance.

Despite large investments in engineering works for water conveyance, storage, and treatment, North America and Europe experience infrastructure failure, water quality problems, loss of ecological diversity, and sea level rise. In 2015, the State of California, one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, lost an estimated $1.84 billion and more than 10,000 jobs in the agricultural sector during recent severe drought conditions (Kerlin 2015). Also significant was the loss of fish species and habitats crucial for sustaining biodiversity as state regulators sought to sustain agricultural production in the face of severe and long-lasting drought. The western Canadian city of Calgary reported more than $6 billion (CAD) in flood damages from an event with a return period of two years per century (City of Calgary 2014). The Aral Sea has all but disappeared due to overuse in a Soviet plan to grow cotton in Central Asia in the 1960s. Case studies of the California drought, Calgary floods, and Aral Sea environmental disaster offer insight into the failure of human agency to prepare for an uncertain future.

Superimposed on this global water landscape punctuated by severe water stress and vulnerability to hazard, future climate change threatens standard methods of water management and planning. Water is the main mechanism for delivering climate change impacts to human populations (Jiménez Cisneros et al. 2014, p. 234). After some 30 years of intensive study, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists agree that: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and many observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased” (Stocker et al. 2013). Despite this unwavering, full-throated statement about the onset of global warming, scientists express profound uncertainties about the direction, severity, and geographic distribution of climate change impacts on regional and local water systems. Chapter 3 presents sources of uncertainty regarding climate change impacts and other factors that affect the water sector including demand, technology, regulation, economy, and politics. It argues that these uncertainties present daunting challenges for local and regional water management and planning as practiced today. Traditional methods of decision analysis based on risk assessments, cost-benefit studies, and optimization modeling fail to incorporate the deep uncertainties about climate change and the institutional change needed to cope with them.

There is growing concern that assessments focused on water resources alone ignore vulnerabilities related to water’s connections to energy, land, and food, the so-called WELF nexus. Chapter 4 tackles these interconnections. The international trade in food includes embedded water sometimes with unintended consequences. The 2010 Russian drought and heat wave, for example, hurt domestic wheat production, raised global food prices, and reduced access to food by poor people. It was one aspect of the social unrest that led to the Arab Spring (Perez 2013). Future climate conditions will stress energy production infrastructure in all US regions—particularly those with the most water-intensive generation portfolios (US Department of Energy 2013). A major threat to the US energy grid is the localized lack of water for cooling thermoelectric power plants (US Department of Energy 2014). Increased air and water temperatures will increase the likelihood of partial or full shutdown of generation facilities. The so-called governance gap between land use planning and water in the American West allows land use planners to assume that water will be available for projected growth and will not limit development (Bates 2012). In 2016, the Arizona State Legislature passed bills that would have made it possible for developers to construct new homes in places that do not have sufficient groundwater to meet the state’s 100-year assured supply rule without informing new homeowners of the water status of their properties. The state’s governor vetoed the bills, but they came dangerously close to realizing Bates ’ gap between land and water management (Howard Fisher Media Services 2016; Glennon and Leshy 2016). Reducing hidden vulnerabilities in water systems increasingly involves the capacity to manage and model WELF relationships (Moss et al. 2016).

Water policies develop in a cultural context where human beliefs, attitudes, and values influence how society processes and responds to climate- and water-related hazards. Chapter 5 lays out the cultural context and values basis for climate and water policy. Water is value laden, locally significant, and non-substitutable. Communities and countries have vastly different views of water as a human right, water as a commodity, and the role of the private sector versus the government in resource allocation and regulation. Recent public opinion surveys provide insight into global attitudes about climate change and the science basis for them. This research shows remarkable international variation in public acceptance o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Case for Adaptation
• 2. Human Dimensions of Water Security
• 3. Why Is Uncertainty a Game Changer for Water Policy and Practice?
• 4. Hidden Vulnerabilities in the Water-Energy-Land-Food (WELF) Nexus
• 5. Meaning, Purpose, and Value of Water
• 6. Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU)
• 7. Urban Climate Adaptation
• 8. Social Learning for Water Sector Resilience
• 9. Strategies for Resilience
• Back Matter