Posts

Report shows how water insecurity is a drag on the global economy

A new report shows floods, droughts and a lack of investment in providing good quality, reliable water supplies is dragging down the global economy. The report, published today and entitled ‘Securing Water, Sustaining Growth’, was written by an international Task Force chaired by Claudia Sadoff and co-chaired by Professors Jim Hall and David Grey from the University of Oxford.

cover with borderThe Task Force was established by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report and new scientific analysis examines not only water’s destructive force but also how it contributes to human health and prosperity. It was launched at the start of the Seventh World Water Forum in South Korea, the international summit at which the world’s water challenges are addressed.

The report draws on research led by the University of Oxford and feeds into a policy statement released by GWP and OECD calling on governments to invest in strengthening the world’s institutional capacity to manage water security, with much improved information systems and better water infrastructure. It urges that special attention be paid to social risks, with a focus on vulnerable segments of society.

According to the report, South Asia has the largest concentration of water-related risks. East and Southeast Asia face rapidly increasing flood risk, although the United States has the greatest exposure to flood risk. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the risks of inadequate water supply and sanitation are rising. North Africa has the greatest percentage of population at risk of water scarcity.

The international Task Force is comprised of leading academics, researchers and practitioners from around the world.

Claudia Sadoff, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Change Institute, said: ‘Both our empirical and theoretical analyses demonstrate the importance of investment in water security for development and the importance of development for investment in water security.’

‘Effective ways of achieving water security involve combinations of investments in information, institutions and infrastructure’, says Professor Hall, report co-author and Director of the Environmental Change Institute. ‘Not all investments have been beneficial or cost-effective. Investment must be designed to be robust to uncertainties and to support adaptive management as risks, opportunities, and social preferences change. All of this will require refined analytic tools, innovation, and continuous monitoring, assessment, and adaptation.’

Report co-author and Visiting Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, David Grey said: ‘Our analysis shows that the countries that depend on agriculture for their economies are often the worst affected by floods or water scarcity. Some countries will need to think about how they can diversify from an agriculturally focussed economy to one less dependent on water. They will also focus on how better use can be made of the limited water supplies available to them.’

Read the report
Read the GWP news release
Water insecurity costs global economy billions a year, Bloomberg, 13 April 2015
Water insecurity costing global economy billions, Japan Times, 25 April 2015

 

/0 Comments/by

Climate extremes: moving from physics to solutions

Professor Paul Whitehead joined over 35 scientists in the Swiss mountains to discuss how to assess and adapt to extreme climate events.

delegate

Delegates at the climate extremes workshop, Riederalp, Switzerland

The most significant impacts of climate change are likely to be due to the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, heat waves and wind storms. The costs of damage caused by these events could be extremely high.

The University of Geneva organised the workshop in Riederalp, Switzerland on 24-28 March 2015, bringing together a wide range of expertise on the science of climate extremes. The scope of the workshop also moved beyond physical science to consider impacts and adaptation policies for reducing climate-related risks and the costs of extreme events to vulnerable societies.

Paul Whitehead, Professor of Water Science at the School of Geography and the Environment, presented his research on modelling the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna river systems in India and Bangladesh, which together form one of the largest river basins in the world, providing water to over 650 million people.

The Oxford University research, which forms part of the ESPA Deltas project, assesses how future climate change and socio-economic change in the river basin will impact the flow of water and nutrients into the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Megha Delta. The results show that climate change could have significant impacts on river flows, both increasing wet season flows and leading to more frequent droughts. Socio-economic changes could impact flows during droughts, when irrigation will further reduce water availability. The modelling work also explores how management and policy interventions can reduce these impacts.

Participants at the workshop shared case studies of a variety of extreme events, from glacier lake dam bursts in the Himalayas, to heat waves in Moscow, wind gust events in Switzerland, and extreme snow storms in Austria.

An important outcome from the workshop will be a policy document for the 21st Conference of Parties (COP) in Paris in December 2015. The meeting’s discussions will also be presented to the EU Science Managers to inform them of this key area of research, which is largely missing in the major EU Horizon 2020 research programme.

Visit the climate extremes workshop webpage

Read more about the ESPA Deltas project

View Paul Whitehead’s powerpoint presentation on modelling climate change and socio-economic pathways in the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers

Academic publications on modelling the the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers, in the Journal Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts:

/0 Comments/by

Researchers discuss natural hazards and uncertainty at Oxford workshop

A workshop on Decision Analysis for Natural Hazards was held at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University on 10-11 March 2015.

Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute, chaired the two-day series of seminars, tutorials and discussion on decision support methods for natural hazards, including floods, droughts and earthquakes, and their consequences in the UK and globally.

Natural hazards decisions are typically made on the basis of data with significant uncertainty and much of the workshop explored decision techniques for unquantifiable or ‘deep’ uncertainty. Professor Yakov Ben-Haim of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology illustrated this concept with examples from other fields such as economics and biology, as well as from natural hazards such as the North Sea flood in 1953 and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. Professor Ben-Haim demonstrated the Info-Gap methodology which identifies robust responses across possible future states.

Professor Hall gave examples of environmental challenges that have been practically addressed with decision analysis methods in infrastructure planning for flood prevention. A series of short presentations by participants outlined the broad range of cases in which decisions are made under uncertain conditions, such as landslide prediction, wind storm insurance and water resource management.

Professor Ben-Haim led the group with some practical exercises using Info-Gap to identify robust solutions in the context of uncertainty. Participants then developed their own analyses of relevant decision problems with help from Professors Hall and Ben-Haim, with several ideas for further research collaboration emerging.

The workshop was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council funded programme CREDIBLE (Consortium on Risk in the Environment: Diagnostics, Integration, Benchmarking, Learning and Elicitation), which researches new approaches to natural hazard modelling. Within the consortium, Oxford University researchers Jim Hall, Mike Simpson, Neil Massey and Edoardo Borgomeo focus on decision analysis, drought and water scarcity.

/by

Learning to live with floods and droughts

A panel discussion on Living with Floods and Droughts: Adapting to Hydro-Climatic Extremes was held at the School of Geography and the Environment on 1 December 2014, and brought together a number of water and climate experts in the field.

Dr Simon Dadson, School of Geography and the Environment, chaired the event and highlighted the huge impacts that floods and droughts can have in both developed and developing countries. Examples include the 2013/14 floods in the UK and the 2011 floods in Thailand which caused an estimated $43 billion in economic losses.

At the other end of the hydrological spectrum, a severe drought in 2008 led the city of Barcelona to import water in tankers from France. East African droughts in 2010/11 brought about a devastating humanitarian crisis which counted 260,000 deaths and 1 million refugees.

Dr Dadson invited the panel to reflect on how flood and drought risks might change under future scenarios of climate change, and what actions could be taken to adapt to these changes.

Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute, said that we have tended to cope with floods and droughts reactively in the past, with extreme events triggering policy action only after they have occurred.

However, he said that a transition is underway to a risk-based approach which bases decision making on a much broader range of possible events and consequences that might occur in the future. This “quiet revolution of thinking and methodology” in risk analysis means that we are better than ever equipped to live with floods and droughts, he said.

“The single most important asset we have to manage present and future risks from extreme floods and droughts is the long-term observational record” said Professor Rob Wilby from Loughborough University. He stressed the value of using historic records and information from climate models to understand the processes driving extreme events and how risks change through time.

Climate models can be used to predict future risks. However as Dr Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office pointed out, different models can produce widely varying results and it is impossible to test their accuracy. There is work to be done both in improving the science, and in improving the communication of uncertainties, he said.

Drawing on expertise in climate change adaptation in developing countries, Professor Declan Conway from the London School of Economics and Political Science reminded the audience that the adaptation process has many steps and the production of climate scenarios is just one step.

Professor Conway reflected on what lessons from climate change adaptation in the UK might be relevant for developing countries. In this country, legislation has played an important role in forcing institutions to assess and act on risks facing society. He also mentioned the importance of monitoring – of changes that are occurring now, the consequences of those changes, and the effect of adaptation policies.

Professor Mike Acreman of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said that natural ecosystems are completely adapted to floods and droughts as these events are all part of the natural cycle. Floods or droughts can only been seen as ‘good or ‘bad’ when considering how they impact human uses of the environment.

The natural environment can play a role in influencing the hydrological cycle, Professor Acreman said, but only on a small scale and to a limited degree. For example, restoring wetlands can help store floodwater and release it slowly during drier periods. Payments for ecosystem services may provide a mechanism to fund conservation and restoration of the natural environment to help combat future floods.

/0 Comments/by

Coping with the curse of freshwater variability

Oxford scientists say that institutions, infrastructure and information are the key ingredients for coping with freshwater variability and enabling economic growth, in an article published in Science.

The authors, which include Prof Jim Hall, Prof David Grey and Dr Simon Dadson, say that a key challenge to achieving water security is managing the risks posed by variable and unpredictable freshwater resources. Building resilience to these risks requires a transformation in the way investments are made.

Extreme events such as floods and droughts are hard to predict and future changes in variability are highly uncertain. The article highlights three dimensions of freshwater variability: change within the year (seasonal and monthly), year-to-year, and the unpredictable timing and intensity of extremes. When these three dimensions combine the situation is “most challenging – a wicked combination of hydrology that confronts the world’s poorest people,” say the authors.

The article warns that the inability to cope with variability can place serious burdens on society and the economy. Extreme events such as droughts and floods have ripple effects through the economy. For example, floods in Thailand in 2011 caused $43 billion in losses. Meanwhile in Ethiopia economic growth is 38% less that what would be expected based on average rainfall, due to the country’s complex hydrology.

Countries can do very little about their natural endowment of water: when and where it rains and how much water evaporates, infiltrates into the ground, and runs into rivers and lakes. However for those countries burdened with highly variable hydrology, investment in water management can help buy their way out of water insecurity.

The study’s analysis shows that countries that have achieved economic growth, despite high variability in freshwater resources, have invested heavily to reduce risk. In river basins with complex hydrology where there has been low investment, the economy suffers.

Countries along river basins with less variability are more wealthy, even though investments have sometimes been quite modest. Where the hydrology is highly variable, additional investment is needed to transition from water-insecure to secure, but this is least affordable and hardest to deliver in the poorest countries. Climate change may increase variability further, making water security an even more distant goal for countries already underequipped to cope.

F2

 

The authors highlight “the three ‘I’s” as essential for adapting to freshwater variability: institutions and good governance (such as river basin organisations, legal systems, and water pricing), infrastructure (such as water storage, wastewater treatment, groundwater wells) and information (including monitoring, forecast and warning systems, and modelling tools).

Crucially, coping with variability involves a combination of institutions, infrastructure and information – rarely will they generate their full benefits alone.

The article calls for a new approach to investing in water security. A broader and longer-term vision is needed that looks beyond individual projects to the sequence of investments that can create a pathway to water security. Context also matters when it comes to what combination and sequence of investments are needed.

This new approach will focus on risks, trade-offs and uncertainties to enable decision-makers to choose between alternative investment pathways and build a more water secure future.

This research stems from the work of a global Task Force on Water Security and Sustainable Growth, an initiative of the Global Water Partnership and OECD, co-chaired by Oxford University’s Professor Jim Hall and Professor David Grey.

Reference

Hall, J.W., Grey, D., Garrick, D., Fung, F., Brown, C., Dadson, S.J. and Sadoff, C.W. (2014) Coping with the curse of freshwater variability. Science, 346(6208): 429-430.

/0 Comments/by

Attributing extreme weather to climate change in real-time

Dr Friederike Otto examines the question of how extreme weather events might be linked to climate change in this blog entry for the Carbon Brief.

The question of how extreme weather events might be linked to climate change is a key one.

It’s particularly important because in many regions, extreme weather like heatwaves, floods and droughts cause more damage than other, more predictable consequences of climate change, such as sea-level rise.

Scientists know that an increase in average temperature as the climate changes will lead to an increase in the number or magnitude of some extreme events, while others will get less likely.

But the chaotic nature of weather means it’s generally impossible to say, for any particular event, that it only happened because of climate change.

Read more on the Carbon Brief website

Dr Friederike Otto is a research fellow in the ECI Global Climate Science Programme at the Uiversity of Oxford and scientific coordinator of climateprediction.net.

/0 Comments/by

Global experts discuss drought risk

A symposium was held in Oxford on 22 September, bringing together global experts on the causes and impacts of droughts. The speakers shared experience and expertise from Australia, America, Europe and the UK, providing interdisciplinary insights into the climatic and socio-economic factors that contribute to drought.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got!” said Professor Donald Wilhite, University of Nebraska, stressing the need to change the way droughts are managed. Although drought is a normal part of climate variability, unprepared governments and vulnerable societies often react to droughts with shock and alarm. Professor Wilhite proposed that droughts can act as a window of opportunity to change from post-impact crisis response to a pre-impact drought risk management approach. The cost of preparedness action against drought is insignificant when compared to the cost of inaction, he said.

The speakers at the symposium are members of the International Advisory Board of the Oxford-led MaRIUS project on drought and water scarcity in the UK. Oxford University’s Professor Jim Hall presented the project which was launched earlier this year and adopts a risk-based approach to understanding droughts and water scarcity; analyses the impacts on people, the environment and the economy; and will develop methods to support decision-making and improve drought risk management.

Dr Henny van Lanen from Wageningen University in the Netherlands said that there is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st Century in some areas and during some seasons in southern and central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil and southern Africa. Elsewhere in the world inconsistencies in models make it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. The ability of scientists to identify future drought trends is constrained by available data, various definitions of droughts, different ways to quantify or identify a drought, and the inability of models to include all the factors that influence a drought.

Climate change poses a challenge to water planners, as drought risks in the future may be greater than in the past. Professor Casey Brown, University of Massachusetts, argued that the best approach to address these uncertainties is to focus on understanding the project and its vulnerabilities to climate change. By identifying the key climate variables to which the system is sensitive and the magnitude of climate changes that cause unacceptable outcomes, a water planner can incorporate the desired or acceptable level of resilience into the project.

Drawing on research in the Shale Hills / Susquehanna wetland catchments in northeastern United States, Professor Christopher Duffy from Penn State University presented a methodology for assessing the vulnerability of wetlands to climate change and droughts. Early results show that upland catchments are the most vulnerable based on depth to groundwater which acts as a buffer during periods of low rainfall.

Professor Lucia De Stefano stressed that stakeholder input is essential for understanding vulnerability and response to drought. Her research in Spain and on a pan-European scale found that there are inconsistencies in drought perceptions across scales and that improving communication could benefit drought management and address mismatches between policy objectives and implemented measures.

Dr Narendra Kumar Tuteja from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology shared experiences from Australia, a country that has faced around eight major drought events in the last century, with the Millennium drought (1997-2009) radically influencing national water reform. He talked about the need for water availability forecasts at a range of time scales for operational water planning and management, and the challenges in generating these. He underscored the importance of continued and extensive consultation with stakeholders and users in order to deliver useful research, data or tools.

/by

Report identifies the ‘most vulnerable’ to climate-related disasters

Extreme weather events leave populations with not enough food both in the short- and the long-term, says a new report by the Environmental Change Institute that examines the impacts of climate-related diasters on food security. The authors conclude that better governance could have lessened the impact on the poorest and most vulnerable, and affected populations have been let down by the authorities in past disasters.

The report, commissioned by the charity Oxfam, tracks the effects on four countries: Russia which experienced a heatwave in 2010; flood-hit Pakistan the same year; East Africa during the drought of 2010-2011; and the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. The researchers conclude that the authorities in each of the countries studied were unprepared for extreme weather events, and citizens suffered even more than they needed to.

The report, ‘A Sign of Things to Come?’, says that during the floods in Pakistan ‘coercive landlords’ took advantage of smallholders and people affected by the floods. Overall, the flooding is estimated to have led to an 80% rise in wheat and rice prices in 2010.

The drought-affected people of East Africa did not receive international or domestic aid for six months, partly due to the risks posed by armed groups. Food prices reached record levels in several markets that included the cost of wheat in Ethiopia, maize in Kenya and red sorghum grain in Somalia, says the report. It notes that children under five accounted for over half of all deaths in Somalia.

On a global level, the report warns that climate change is expected to increase the intensity and frequency of heatwaves and floods. It says although there is no scientific evidence to show a specific weather event would not have happened without climate change, scientists can estimate whether it increases the risk of an event. It finds that the Russian heat wave and the East African drought were more likely because of climate change, but there is not yet the evidence to say that climate change played a part in the floods in Pakistan or Typhoon Haiyan.

One of the lead authors Dr John Ingram said: “Weather has always affected food security, particularly for many of the world’s poorest people. Perhaps we think of farmers or fishermen first, but extreme weather will affect many more people in other ways too. While direct measures such as emergency preparedness and the strengthening of response-related institutions is helpful, this study has identified the need for a wider cultural shift to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable are properly protected. This goes beyond mere technical improvements to equipment or redirected funding and gets to the very heart of what ‘climate justice’ should be about.”

Reference

Coghlan, C., Muzammil, M., Ingram, J., Vervoort, J., Otto, F. and James, R. (2014) A sign of things to come? Examining four major climate-related disasters, 2010-2013 and their impacts on food security. Oxfam Research Reports, Oxford. Oxfam.

/0 Comments/by

Safe enough? Proportionate climate change adaptation in London’s water supply system

London faces increased risk of water shortages in the future due to climate change and population growth if no actions are taken to increase supply or reduce demand, according to a new study led by Edoardo Borgomeo and Jim Hall at the Environmental Change Institute. The research presents a new methodology for water managers to incorporate climate change uncertainties into water resources planning.

Water resources managers have significant experience in planning and operating their systems in the face of hydrological and weather variability. The reality of climate change, however, poses new challenges for water resources managers. Whilst the precise impacts of climate change for temperature, precipitation and water availability remain uncertain, water managers still need to take into account these uncertainties in their water plans. In the UK water companies are now legally obliged to evaluate the impacts of climate-related risks on their systems.

To help water managers address this challenge, this study develops a methodology for incorporating climate change related uncertainties in water resources planning. The methodology uses a risk-based metric to compare different water management options on the basis of their ability to reduce risks of water shortages under continuously changing climate conditions.

This methodology responds to the need in the UK and worldwide for a way of identifying water management investments which are proportionate to the risks the water systems are facing. Supply-side and demand-side management strategies can be compared based on how cost-effective they are at reducing risks to acceptable levels.

The risk-based methodology was applied to the London water supply area to characterise the most important uncertainties and identify water management options that are capable of reducing the harmful impacts of climate change. Results from the study demonstrate that without further supply or demand interventions, the combined effects of climate change and population growth are projected to increase the risk of water shortages in the future in London.

This research, led by Edoardo Borgomeo and Jim Hall, was carried out in partnership with Thames Water and the Environment Agency. The study contributes to the ongoing discussion in the UK water sector on whether the current approach to water resources planning should change for the next round of water resources management plans in 2019.

Reference

Borgomeo, E., Hall, J.W., Fung, F., Watts, G., Colquhoun, K. and Lambert, C. (2014) Risk-based water resources planning: Incorporating probabilistic nonstationary climate uncertainties. Water Resources Research. DOI: 10.1002/2014WR015558

/0 Comments/by

Unravelling the history of droughts in the UK

Oxford Univeristy is a partner in a cross-disciplinary research project on historic droughts and water scarcity funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council’s programme on ‘UK Droughts and Water Scarcity’.

The project, led by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, will characterise and quantify the hydrometeorological, environmental, agricultural, policy and resource management, and social and cultural history of droughts and water scarcity in the UK since the late 19th century.

The research aims to identify interactions between natural and social systems in the production and management of droughts over the historic record. A major research outcome will be the first droughts inventory for the UK – an evidence base that will provide a common reference for policy makers, regulators, water supply companies, and UK business.

Drs Bettina Lange and Chris Decker, based at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University, will analyse the history of regulating water scarcity and its economic impacts in the UK, drawing on case studies of key historic droughts.

Related links

/0 Comments/by