Nine Challeges to Freshwater Management from Climate Change
10/08/08 11:21
One of my key hunches
is that climate change alters the framework of
economic development and conservation. My
proprietary and parochial interest is in freshwater
ecosystems, but the insight (if insight it be)
extends more broadly. Here, I propose a list of
some of the climate-related elements I think we
should be debating in regard to freshwater
management. It is not complete, but these cover
many of the big points we should probably be
resolving now and over the next few years.
1. Does climate change represent a fundamentally new challenge for freshwater conservation and development? Does restoration exist as a useful concept in conservation? How do we know if we have successfully managed adaptive responses? What do success and failure look like in climate-aware freshwater program? Should we manage for species, biological communities, habitats, or economically important behavior? Can we become agents of change?
2. Uncertainty and confidence: What do vulnerability and risk mean for planning and action? How much faith should we place in modeling and scenarios? Are there best practices for integrating hydrological and precipitation models into project design? How do we manage systems, places, and species for multiple conflicting climate scenarios? How changing ecosystem service values alter our practice?
3. What do protected areas, ecoregions, and livelihoods mean given fast-shifting climate envelopes? Do we manage for past or future climates? Do we “design” climate refugia, let them appear, or fight them? What are the limits to adaptation? How well do freshwater protected areas “age” as conservation institutions? What is an invasive species?
4. Looking backward, modeling forward: how can we make e-flows, water infrastructure, and water stewardship climate-sustainable? Flexible policy structures, the realistic potential for long-term planning, negotiating for and during crises, transboundary conflicts — these are the focus of attention here.
5. How can water-management institutions and policies become effective instruments for addressing climate change impacts? What are the implications for agriculture and irrigation, groundwater management and monitoring, equity and market mechanisms, intensive industrial use and pollution
6. Shifts in water timing and drought frequency and severity: how can watersheds and basins be managed for changing natural flow regimes? How should implement water funds, water ownership, monitoring and analysis networks, large-scale water transfer schemes (India, China, Mexico).
7. Peak shifts in flood intensity, timing, and frequency: how can we change the dialogue about using floodplains rather than channelization? Can floodplains be “restored” or created de nova in the face of sea-level rise and rapid urbanization? How do we choose between marginal economic activities and marginal species and habitats?
8. When freshwater adaptation and mitigation are in conflict: high latitude wetlands and land-use shifts, hydropower versus connectivity. How do we balance major conflicting development, conservation, and greenhouse gas reduction interests within our organization on climate change issues? How should we balance these issues in international climate treaties?
9. Can NGOs, GOs, and businesses that manage water become climate-adaptive institutions: how do we capture and distribute effective lessons and principles? What formal and informal vehicles are effective instruments of internal change? Should we communicate new issues in new ways (e.g., wikis and case studies)? Do we effectively capture the best science in the literature, at conferences, and in the laboratory? How can new worldviews be developed in existing programs and personnel? How do we communicate these visions to funders, policymakers, resource managers, and the media?
