Guidance on Water and Adaptation to Climate Change
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Publication Title | Guidance on Water and Adaptation to Climate Change |
Publication Type | |
Author(s) | |
Publication Date | 2009
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Contents |
Summary
Climate change will result in significant impacts on our water resources and some of the effects are already visible now. Nearly all the countries in the region of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and beyond, are expected to be negatively affected by impacts ranging from increased frequency and intensity of floods and droughts, worse water scarcity, intensified erosion and sedimentation, reductions in glaciers and snow cover, sea level rise, and damage to water quality and ecosystems. Moreover, climate change impacts on water resources will have cascading effects on human health and many parts of the economy and society, as various sectors directly depend on water such as agriculture, energy and hydropower, navigation, health, tourism – as does the environment.
Adaptation to climate change is therefore a moral, economic and social
imperative: action is needed now and water management should be a
central element in the adaptation strategy of any country. Inaction could
put sustainable development at risk: during the first years of the 2000s
alone, thousands of lives and billions of dollars were lost through water-related disasters worldwide. On the other hand, the potential rewards of
early action are high, as improved prevention, disaster preparedness and
other adaptation measures, as well as adaptation of lifestyles, can vastly
reduce these figures.
A particular challenge for water resources management is connected
to the fact that almost half of the world’s total land surface is drained
by international river basins. Additionally, numerous groundwater
resources are also transboundary. These transboundary waters create
hydrological, social and economic interdependencies between
countries. As both water and climate change do not respect borders,
it adds an international dimension to climate change adaptation. This
can have obvious security implications: namely, a growing potential for
conflict arising from competition over dwindling water resources and
the risk of countries taking unilateral measures with possible negative
effects on riparian countries. Thus, in addition to the uncertainty over
climate change impacts, countries are faced with uncertainty about their
neighbours’ reactions. Transboundary cooperation is therefore necessary
to prevent negative impacts of unilateral measures and to support the
coordination of adaptation measures at the river-basin level. This makes
transboundary water resources management one of the most important
challenges today and in the years to come.
The 1992 UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary
Watercourses and International Lakes provides a sound framework
for transboundary cooperation, also in the context of adaptation to
climate change. Developed under the Convention and its Protocol on Water and Health, this Guidance aims to spur climate change adaptation
that takes into account the transboundary dimension of water management.
It is a novel and innovative advancement: the first document of
its kind to focus on the transboundary setting and illustrate the steps
needed to develop an adaptation strategy. Based on the concept of
integrated water resources management, the Guidance provides advice
to decision makers and water managers on how to assess impacts of
climate change on water quantity and quality, how to perform risk assessment,
including health risk assessment, how to gauge vulnerability,
and how to design and implement appropriate adaptation strategies.
The Guidance is a collaborative achievement: more than 80 experts
from national authorities, academia, non-governmental and international
organizations contributed to its preparation. Building on
the principles of the Convention and on the experience gained in
its implementation, the Guidance places special emphasis on the
specific problems and requirements of transboundary basins, with
the objectives of preventing, controlling and reducing transboundary
impacts of national adaptation measures and thereby preventing and
resolving possible conflict. The Guidance also underlines the benefits
of cooperation in adapting to climate change in transboundary basins:
sharing the costs and benefits of adaptation measures, better managing
uncertainty through the exchange of information, broadening the
knowledge base, and enlarging the range of measures available for
prevention, preparedness and recovery, thus allowing us to find better
and more cost-effective solutions.
Only concerted and coordinated action will enable countries to deal
with the uncertainties of climate change and to tackle its impacts
effectively. We trust that this Guidance will help countries to jointly
cope with climate change impacts in the UNECE region and around
the world. As the first product of its kind in the region – and worldwide
– it is hardly an endpoint for the work on adaptation to climate
change in transboundary basins. Rather, it is an initial step towards
the planning and implementation of sound, cooperative adaptation
strategies and measures.
References
See also
Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes
External Resources
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