Webinar: Putting water at the center of adaptation: urgency for transformative change

Submitted by Ase Johannessen | published 28th May 2022 | last updated 12th Sep 2022
Recording of webinar on Putting water at the center of adaptation
Tuesday, 31 May, 2022 - 09:30 to 11:00 (Europe/Copenhagen)

Summary

Background

The earth's water cycle is changing dramatically, and much faster than predicted, urging the international community to step up their actions. The upcoming convening of decision makers at the COP 27 in 2022 and the UN Water 2023 Conference in New York in March 2023 will be crucial for accelerating the water agenda. There has been a five-fold increase of weather-related disasters over the last 50 years. Nine out of ten of those disasters are water-related, often affecting the most vulnerable. This is the result of changes to the earth’s water cycle from climate and land use change.  With a warming earth, and a degrading biosphere, the weather intensifies: In relatively dry areas, it causes more intense and frequent droughts. In relative wet areas, it causes more extreme storms, and flooding.

The impact on the water cycle has serious consequences for human society. The global bill for storm damage in the past half-century comes to $521 billion. 2021 was a year of climate breakdown: Four of the ten costliest water-related disasters took place in Asia, with floods and typhoons costing a combined $24 billion. An estimated 55 million people globally are directly affected by droughts every year, making it the most serious hazard to livestock and crops. Currently, in the Horn of Africa, as many as 13 million people are experiencing acute food and water shortages and a projected 25 million will face a similar fate by mid-2022. Drought is also costly for rich countries; in 2021 drought directly cost the state of California agriculture sector about $1.1 billion and nearly 8,750 full- and part-time jobs.

The Sixth IPCC report lists four reasons for the centrality of water security in adapting to climate change.

  1. About half the world’s population are subject to severe water scarcity for at least one month per year.
  2. Climate change directly affects freshwater availability and affects water requirements for different sectors and uses, such as irrigation.
  3. A large majority (~60%) of all adaptation responses documented since 2014 are about adapting to water-related hazards like droughts, floods, and rainfall variability.
  4. Many mitigation measures can potentially impact future water security.

However, despite water’s centrality there is no adequate coordination to manage common water resources. Given the current situation, it is urgent to find a strategy for transformative change.

The IPPC report acknowledges that efforts are fragmented and inadequate.  For transformative change, the IPCC report stressed the need for joint action across the climate, biodiversity, and socio-economic development interest. Such joint action could boost the investments and benefits of adaptation. Already, such investments yield positive economic and environmental results and produce co-benefits of both mitigation and adaptation.

The purpose of this webinar was to stimulate discussion and increase understanding of how to put water at the centre of adaptation and how to find a strategy to transform the current approach and increase investment.

The issue of how to place water at the center of adaptation has been a subject of rich discussion and debate from a range of different practitioners, researchers, and experts recently.  The webinar is part of a global effort in making water to be an important part of the Global Goal on Adaptation. The Water Adaptation Community (WAC) invited some of them to this webinar:

  • Dr Aditi Mukherji Principal Researcher at IWMI, wrote in Nature in May 2022
  • Dr Shilpi Srivastava PhD Research Fellow, Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster, Institute of Development Studies, UK and others who published in Nature Climate Change in February 2022.
  • The Dutch Special Envoy Henk Ovink who is an international champion on the topic of Water as Leverage. Water as Leverage is a metaphor that has gained currency in both the climate change and water sectors to working together in an integrated manner for sustainable development and climate action. By design, Water as Leverage organizes innovation, transformation, and effective climate adaptation impact through the tools of broad collaboration, organized deliberation, and design.
  • Dr Feisal Rahman from Northumbria University, UK, who has summarised key principles about water as leverage and has made his discussion brief available on the WAC platform. The WAC is inviting comments and discussion on this living document leading up to the UN Water 2023 Conference in New York. 
  • WAC has also invited Joep Verhagen, Lead of the Water and Urban program at GCA to illustrate how water needs to become more visible in post Covid strategies.
  • Emmanuel Olet, Chief Water Development Officer at the Water Development and Sanitation Department at the African Development Bank, who facilitated the webinar

Session Overview

Chair and panel facilitator: Mr Emmanuel Olet, Chief Water Development Officer at the Water Development and Sanitation Department at the African Development Bank.

9.30 Introduction and overview of the webinar: Mr Emmanuel Olet.

9.40 Transformation required, putting water in the center: Dr Aditi Mukherji, Principal Researcher, IWMI, coordinating lead author of the water chapter of the 6th Assessment Report team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

9:50 Water as Leverage:  Mr Henk W. J. Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of The Netherlands.

10.00 Making water visible in the post-COVID era: Mr Joep Verhagen, Program Lead, Water and Urban, GCA.

10.10 Panel, with panellists:

  • Dr Aditi Mukherji, Principal Researcher, IWMI.
  • Mr Henk W. J. Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, The Netherlands.
  • Mr Joep Verhagen, Program Lead, Water and Urban, GCA.
  • Dr Feisal Rahman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Living Deltas Hub, Dept. of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, UK.
  • Dr Shilpi Srivastava, PhD Research Fellow, Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster, Institute of Development Studies, UK.

11.00 Closing words: Mr Emmanuel Olet, Chief Water Development Officer at the Water Development and Sanitation Department at the African Development Bank.

 

Summary

The speakers emphasised the centrality of water to climate change adaptation. “The key question is, how to scale up and accelerate water adaptation and SDGs. Water-based planning needs a cross-sector response and financing. The water community needs to get better at reaching out.”

While it is obvious to the water community that water should be at the heart of climate change adaptation, it is less so to outsiders, said speakers and participants. This is perhaps due to inadequate information on the benefits this approach has for adaptation and risk reduction. Mainstreaming water adaptation entailed appropriate actions at the appropriate level, using the principle of subsidiarity, and not an adherence to community-led actions only.

Water and climate change

Pointing out the linkages between water and climate change, they said climate change had affected all components of the water cycle including water extremes, such heavy precipitation, higher evapotranspiration, floods and droughts. In the last 50 years, there has been a rapid change in heavy precipitation in 19 regions of the world. The agriculture sector, which is most exposed to climate change, has taken many adaptation measures related to water.

Water and SDGs

While water is connected to most SDGs, we are not preparing for the future but instead, responding to the past. An assessment of Asia’s most profound vulnerabilities identified 30 hotspots where floods, droughts, subsidence, pollution and salinization were common. To solve these issues, an approach using water as leverage was developed that involved multiple levels of stakeholders and responses and was scalable and replicable. This underlines the need for a proactive holistic approach to preparing for the future, where interventions are based on an understanding of the complexity of water.

Making a difference through water

They shared examples of how this has been achieved in multiple contexts through action at the appropriate level, and how these efforts have unlocked funding. Chennai, a city that depended on capturing water in natural or man-made ponds, is beset with a severe water crisis. It has taken a carbon-intensive route to setting up desalinization plants. To reverse this, a nature-based approach using water as leverage was developed. It entailed greening the city, restoring the tanks, improving water conservation and recharge, flood and drought protection, and improving sanitation.

There are other opportunities to increase investments in water as demonstrated by the COVID pandemic. Between April 2020 and 2021, multilateral banks pledged USD250 billion while the European Central Bank committed €750 billion in March 2020, followed by another €600 billion in June.

COVID, climate change … and water

The WHO recommendations, on how COVID and climate change are linked, have water at their core. For example, in Uganda, GCA is working on a USD 60 million program to provide climate-resilient drinking water and sanitation. As part of this, it is ensuring the catchments from where drinking water is drawn are climate-resilient using green and grey solutions, using NbS. The additional benefits are additional employment and social resilience among communities.

In Chad, for example, it was found that the early warning system had stopped working because the meteorological department had stopped collecting data 15 years ago, and people monitoring rainfall data had not been paid for six years. Therefore, there were uncertainties on how climate change would impact Chad. The government had to take a decision on implementing short- or long-term solutions from the money it would borrow from the World Bank.

Engage, engage

The speakers said community engagement was essential, and that communities need to drive, not just be part of the design and provide inputs. One had to be strategic while deciding the scale of the project. At the local level, water was already at the center of adaptation but there were limitations to what local communities could do. policy level.

Water as leverage

The water as leverage framework had several elements in which the highest order of leverage was changing mindsets. Water had to be valued as a finite economic asset. Policymakers and implementers needed to embrace water as a non-stationary asset. While water is seen more as an adaptation issue, it has a large role in mitigation with co-benefits for both.

Justice and equity

Speakers emphasised the need for justice and equity to be at the core of the water as leverage approach. There were power relations at the local level, and therefore caution was required while developing locally-led adaptation measures; these may not be the panacea. Innovation could be interpreted as new ways to combine economic, social and other aspects to drive policy change, not only around new technology.

And, to the principles

Putting water at the center needed new principles, the speakers said. Corruption was the elephant in the room that reduced the effectiveness of funding in the water sector. To make adaptation work a new narrative was needed. Water had to be an important part of the global adaptation efforts.

Further resources