From: Yona Maro

Briefing Note: The challenge of securing safe and plentiful water for all is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today. … Shortages of water contribute to poverty. They cause social hardship and impede development. They create tensions in conflict prone regions. Too often, where we need water we find guns …

Ban Ki-moon, 2008

Key messages

• There is evidence that the global climate is changing and that some of the change is human-induced.

• As stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001, ‘climate change impacts will be differently distributed among different regions, generations, age, classes, income groups, occupations and genders’ (McCarthy et al., 2001).

• Climate change will be a fundamental driver of changes in water resources. Furthermore, the hydrological cycle will be the main medium through which the impacts of climate change will be felt. The sustainable management of water must be a priority.

• While climate change will create further serious pressures on water supply, it is currently not the only, or the main, source of stress. The most important drivers are forces and processes generated by human activities, such as rising populations and the increasing demands for water and water-dependent products that come with rising per capita incomes.

• The consequences of these demographic and income-related effects are being felt in critical, water-dependent, economic sectors. The world is facing global crises in energy and food. These cannot adequately be addressed without considering the key role of water resources and their effective management.

• Public policy has so far been dominated by mitigation of climate change, but there needs to be a better balance between mitigation and adaptation. The World Bank (2010) has estimated the annual cost of adaptation to a 2 degree warmer world up to 2050 to be US$75–100 billion, of which 70 per cent is water-related.

• At a 2007 United Nations (UN) Security Council discussion on climate change impacts, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that climate change has implications for peace and security as well as serious environmental, social and economic implications, especially in ‘vulnerable regions that face multiple stresses at the same time’.

• Adapting to climate change is a critical challenge, particularly for developing countries, whose capacity to adapt is low. For some, the incremental costs of climate change adaptation will soon approach the current value of aid inflows.

• Governments must give priority to water resources management in their adaptation policies. The impacts of climate change on water resources and services should be factored into development planning at regional, national and local scales and in all water-dependent sectors.

• Adaptation programmes for water should prioritize no-regret or low-regret measures, namely those which create benefits both with and without a climate change scenario. Particularly important are measures to protect and secure the resilience of ecosystems, and their sustainable use by humans.

• Groundwater is the major source of water across much of the world and it is likely to play an even greater role in human development under changing climatic conditions.

• Lateral ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking is essential for both decision-makers with a direct responsibility for the management of water and for all others whose decisions have a major impact on water resources and their management.

• While the world is taking steps to respond to the impacts of future climate change, little is being done to act on the water crises we are already experiencing.

United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, UNESCO, 2011

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/SC/pdf/WWAPCOP16_BN_PICA_WEB_090811.pdf

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