Environmental Knowledge Center
CLIMATE CHANGE: WATER
Cimate Change and Water
The UNESCO World Water Development Report (2012) provides a comprehensive review that helps people understand the state of the world's freshwater resources and aims to provide decision-makers with the tools to implement sustainable use of our water. Excerpts are reproduced here, with permission, as an example of the kind of knowledge that will be linked to the Civiliti Catalog.
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Ecosystems – including, for example, forests, wetlands and grassland components – lie at the heart of the global water cycle. All freshwater ultimately depends on the continued healthy functioning of ecosystems, and recognizing the water cycle as a biophysical process is essential to achieving sustainable water management.
Water availability and quality, in terms of direct use by humans, are also ecosystem services, as are the benefits ecosystems offer to mitigate the extremes of drought and flood.
The subject of ‘water demand’ by ecosystems therefore involves identifying ecosystem ‘deliverables’ and managing water accordingly. The valuation of these services is central to this, and the advances made over the past 20 years provide a range of techniques that can be used in practice. A new paradigm is emerging, which shifts understanding of the ‘ecosystem’ (environment) as an unfortunate but necessary cost of development to an integral part of development solutions. Ecosystems are increasingly seen as solutions to water problems, not just as a casualty. This is a welcome and positive trend as it also reflects improvement in dialogue and a step towards better-integrated water resources management, and therefore more sustainable development.
Source: World Water Development Report 2012
The accelerating changes in our global climate will undoubtedly cause major changes in the patterns of water cycle and geographical distribution, in the near future. Some regions will receive less precipitation, some more, and this will significantly affect agricultural activity. While some regions will see a reduction in arable land, others will have more suitable land for agriculture. It’s likely that certain types of agriculture will migrate and traditional areas for crops will change. In other words, climate change will alter the geography of traditional crop areas, which may impact on the world’s capacity to provide enough food for all.
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Since the 1990s, the scientific community has been warning about the rapidly changing climate, endeavouring to convince people to take urgent measures to mitigate the changes. These multiple warnings have been ignored until very recently, but the issue is now a priority with many international organizations. However, all reliable climate scenarios run by the IPCC and published in the fourth assessment reports show the following results:
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agriculture and rural development will be violently hit by climate change
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poverty and under-nourishment will grow with the uncertainty of food supply
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the climatologic regime will imply more risk of vulnerability for both humans and biodiversity
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a reduction of glaciers will imply a growing security risk for hundreds of millions living near coasts.
In other words, ongoing climate change will mean that the water supply for human communities will become more and more uncertain. The IPCC has stated that between 2000 and 2005 in the northern hemisphere, climate change accelerated faster than predicted, with the consequence that the water cycle could change in an unpredictable way, leading to the possibility of increases in extreme weather.
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The fear is that with all these changes, even if the quantity of water in the world does not change, the level of accessibility of the theoretically available water may significantly change.
Ilya Raskin EcoArt photographs, Canada
