Pat Mulroy - Part 2: Adapting the Invisible Utility
21/10/11 22:28
Part 2 — Institutions and Infrastructure
Expanding on topics brought up in Part 1, water manager Pat Mulroy explores in Institutions and Infrastructure how the policy, governance, and history of the Colorado river region are interacting with the “new normal” water-scarce conditions.
How are ordinary people and decision makers responding to a long drought? How do we pursue consensus over conflict? While institutions can shift, bend, and anticipate, water infrastructure like dams, pipes, and valves are far more fixed and rigid. If they weren’t designed for current (or projected) conditions, then how can people either adjust to inefficiency or modify that infrastructure? Perhaps most importantly, how do we begin to think about sustainability in the context of a shifting climate?
For more information and background on the Colorado River and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, select Read More. Read More...
Expanding on topics brought up in Part 1, water manager Pat Mulroy explores in Institutions and Infrastructure how the policy, governance, and history of the Colorado river region are interacting with the “new normal” water-scarce conditions.
How are ordinary people and decision makers responding to a long drought? How do we pursue consensus over conflict? While institutions can shift, bend, and anticipate, water infrastructure like dams, pipes, and valves are far more fixed and rigid. If they weren’t designed for current (or projected) conditions, then how can people either adjust to inefficiency or modify that infrastructure? Perhaps most importantly, how do we begin to think about sustainability in the context of a shifting climate?
For more information and background on the Colorado River and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, select Read More. Read More...
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ClimateWater: Final Symposium, Stakeholder Platform
20/10/11 05:02
From our colleagues at Europamedia.wordpress.com
The link between climate change and water resources and the water cycle might not be so evident to all of us immediately. However, the impacts of climate change on the environment are not only the increase in the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere
and the change in temperatures. Due to climate change induced events, we are observing more and more frequently floods as well as water scarcity and droughts in the same year. At the same time, several water-related sectors such as marine navigation, hydropower energy production and agricultural production are also negatively affected. Water resources and natural hydrological cycles are having quite a tough time in trying to cope with the impacts of climate change. Read More...
The link between climate change and water resources and the water cycle might not be so evident to all of us immediately. However, the impacts of climate change on the environment are not only the increase in the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere
Pat Mulroy - Part 1: Adapting the Invisible Utility
20/10/11 04:50
Part 1 — Connections and Threats
Pat Mulroy manages water over a vast piece of real estate in the southwestern United States. But — as she will quickly make clear — there isn’t a lot of water there. There never was much water there, in fact. As a result, the cities, farms, and factories spanning the greater Colorado River basin have learned to live with less. The best of them have also learned to be efficient and smart in their growth. But the past twelve years have either been a drought or the start of a new normal, where only a few inches of rain each year became even less. That’s the threat.
As a result, the region whose water is governed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority that Pat manages has had to look beyond its borders for allies and cooperation. The stability, security, and growth of economic engines such as Las Vegas depend on these alliances. Those are the connections.
In the first of three videos presented here, Pat discusses the actual and virtual basin where southern Nevada is embedded.
For more information and background on the Colorado River and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, select Read More. Read More...
Pat Mulroy manages water over a vast piece of real estate in the southwestern United States. But — as she will quickly make clear — there isn’t a lot of water there. There never was much water there, in fact. As a result, the cities, farms, and factories spanning the greater Colorado River basin have learned to live with less. The best of them have also learned to be efficient and smart in their growth. But the past twelve years have either been a drought or the start of a new normal, where only a few inches of rain each year became even less. That’s the threat.
As a result, the region whose water is governed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority that Pat manages has had to look beyond its borders for allies and cooperation. The stability, security, and growth of economic engines such as Las Vegas depend on these alliances. Those are the connections.
In the first of three videos presented here, Pat discusses the actual and virtual basin where southern Nevada is embedded.
For more information and background on the Colorado River and the Southern Nevada Water Authority, select Read More. Read More...
The first adaptation-only climate change legislation in the US
17/10/11 04:51
With stealth and no acclaim, a group of US federal legislators have submitted the first-ever climate adaptation federal legislation for approval to the Congress. Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised that this bill is focused exclusively on water management. Called the Water Infrastructure Resiliency and Sustainability Act of 2012, the legislation is designed to assist city-level water infrastructure in the US. You can download a copy here. Read More...
Small Islands, Big Changes: Freshwater Scarcity in the South Pacific
14/10/11 10:58
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote long ago, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Although he was living in England at the time, Coleridge could have been describing the lives of people currently living in the South Pacific. According to recent reports, some islands have less than one week’s worth of bottled water left. Considering that small islands like Tuvalu, Tokelau and Samoa sit in the world’s largest ocean, the irony of Coleridge’s words rings a bit desperately. What caused this crisis — and what’s the solution?
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UNEP-FI workshop: Water & Climate Risk in the Private Sector
12/10/11 10:00
Recently, I was speaking to a representative for a major global corporation in China about climate change and the need for preparing and adapting for coming impacts. He was curious but somewhat skeptical. Climate change was primarily an issue he had heard about from a carbon perspective — how can we reduce carbon emissions? Why should he worry about impacts? I asked him about some of his business interests. He mentioned preparing infrastructure, medium- and long-term planning, investment strategies. He mentioned agriculture and energy. He never mentioned water. I said, even if you don’t realize you’re in the water business, you’re in the water business. And the water business means that you’re also in the climate adaptation business. Carbon may be important for meeting laws and regulations. Water is going to be important for profits and economic security.
Along those lines, last March the United Nations Environment Program–Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) approached the World Bank, Conservation International, and (most importantly) the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation to help organize a workshop for corporate and private investors and banks to look at how the risk landscape is shifting and will continue to shift with climate.
The workshop is scheduled for 21 October 2011 in Washington, DC, USA, and only a few slots remain. REGISTER NOW! Registration and workshop details are below! Read More...
Along those lines, last March the United Nations Environment Program–Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) approached the World Bank, Conservation International, and (most importantly) the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation to help organize a workshop for corporate and private investors and banks to look at how the risk landscape is shifting and will continue to shift with climate.
The workshop is scheduled for 21 October 2011 in Washington, DC, USA, and only a few slots remain. REGISTER NOW! Registration and workshop details are below! Read More...
UN Human Rights Council: Water & Sanitation
12/10/11 09:06
The issue of whether or not water is a basic human right is actually quite controversial and has been opposed by some surprising groups. This may seem puzzling, but I suspect the fear comes from attempts to leverage water as a tool in international (or even international) conflict. The Israeli-Palestinean conflict, for instance, has a strong water component, as does the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. In some cases, there is probably also fear that if we guarantee water as a basic human right, then someone has to deliver that water, regardless of the cost involved. This has been a practical issue for water managers and policymakers in countries that already enshrine water as a “right” such as India. If not handled carefully, the right to have water may also include the right to waste water or use it inefficiently, at the expense of someone else (or the environment). Water pricing can help with efficiency, but it may not always lead to sustainable use.
Given these caveats, below we reprint a statement from the UN Human Rights Council and Amnesty International about a new statement “guaranteeing” water and sanitation as a human right — a bold statement for our time. Climate change is not mentioned, but the question of how you guarantee water in the context of major changes in the hydrological cycle seems important for making this document both effective and real. Read More...
Given these caveats, below we reprint a statement from the UN Human Rights Council and Amnesty International about a new statement “guaranteeing” water and sanitation as a human right — a bold statement for our time. Climate change is not mentioned, but the question of how you guarantee water in the context of major changes in the hydrological cycle seems important for making this document both effective and real. Read More...
The Three Eras of Adaptation Thinking (so far)
10/10/11 11:10
To my knowledge, no one has written a good history of how climate adaptation has evolved since the first uses of the term in the early 1990s or late 1980s. Based on conservations with many hundreds of people over the past five years, it seems clear that climate adaptation reached began to reach more coordinated activity around 2001 or 2002; the record becomes clearer and more traceable from that point. Here, I submit my sense of the three major transitions that climate adaptation has undergone since the beginning of the twenty-first century. These transition represent significant new movements; in all cases, adherents and proponents of older views have not disappeared. Perhaps a better term to describe these observations are the three wavefronts of adaptation — to date.
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