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Lecture and readings summary Water & Climate Systems ERM
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Summary of all lectures and readings for the ERM course Water & Climate Systems .
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ContentsLecture 1: Integrated Water Management...........................................................................................................1
Lecture 2: The water cycle....................................................................................................................................4
Lecture 3: Global water use & risk........................................................................................................................8
Lecture 4: Water scarcity and food.......................................................................................................................8
Lecture 5: Climate change.....................................................................................................................................9
Lecture 6: Scenarios............................................................................................................................................12
Lecture 8: Flood risks...........................................................................................................................................15
Lecture 10+11: Water Markets...........................................................................................................................19
Lecture 12: Water Quality...................................................................................................................................25
Lecture 13: NL water management.....................................................................................................................27
Lecture 14: Economics of flood risk management..............................................................................................34
Lecture 1: Integrated Water Management
1
,Funke et al. (2007). IWRM in developing countries: Lessons from the Mhlatuze Catchment in South Africa,
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. Parts A/B/C, 32(15), 1237–1245
At the Second World Water Forum in 2000 at The Hague, the current water crisis facing the world was
attributed primarily to ‘‘poor’’ or ineffective governance and water resources management practices. Purely
technocratic approaches to problems in the water sector that did not take proper account of the intricate
social, economic and political nature of water resources management continue to prevail in many countries.
The philosophy and principles of integrated water resources management (IWRM) have been widely accepted
and adopted as offering the most sustainable solution to this problem. IWRM doesn’t only address
environmental sustainability problems, but also poverty, gender equality and health issues.
IWRM: contents and criticism
“IWRM is a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related
resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without
compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.’’ (Global Water Partnership, 2000). But: no unambiguous
and universally accepted definition of IWRM.
Important contents of IWRM are:
Call for coordination.
Both natural and human systems amongst themselves and with each other; a balance between
resource use and resource protection.
Different dimensions of water resources management.
Dublin Principles, which form the core of IWRM:
1. Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and
the environment.
2. Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach,
involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels.
3. Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.
4. Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognised as an
economic good.
Critiques:
Difficulty in integrating the actions of different sectors, such as energy. Needs more ‘constructive
engagement’, with inputs from government, the private sector and civil society.
To implement effective IWRM, three things are needed:
1. Enabling environment, comprising the national, provincial or local policies and legislation that enable
all stakeholders to play their respective roles.
2. Information and capacity building to facilitate stakeholder participation.
3. Legal framework.
→ Politics cannot be avoided.
A balance between resource use and resource protection consulting all stakeholders is difficult to achieve in
developing countries since they often lack sufficient institutional and technical capacity to achieve this amount
of coordination and cooperation. IWRM required good governance in order to be successful.
Developing countries have unique local characteristics which may make it difficult for a ‘‘transplanted’’ solution
to work. Particular care must therefore be taken to ensure that both the IWRM principles and the specific
practices that are implemented in an African country (or any other developing country) take sufficient account
of local conditions if they are to be sustainable and effective in the long-term.
2
,Lecture
IWRM developed in the ‘80s, need for demand oriented multi sectoral approach, involving users/
stakeholders. Identifying water users is key for IWRM. What
are their objectives and challenges?
With ‘integrated’ is meant:
Different objectives, such as economic and social.
All water resources, not only groundwater or coastal
water, in holistic water management.
Water- and land issues.
Different types of water use (agricultural, domestic,
industry).
Social, economic and ecological impacts of water
policies alongside legal and political factors.
Challenges of IWRM:
Institutional capacity/good
governance
Fragmentation
Insufficient technical capacity
Insufficient cooperation between the different sectors and different policies that impact on water.
3
, Lecture 2: The water cycle
Bengtsson, L. (2010). The global atmospheric water cycle. Environmental Research Letters, 5(2), 025202.
Short overview of water on planet Earth and the role of the hydrological cycle: the way water vapour is
transported between oceans and continents and the return of water via rivers to the oceans. Changes in the
hydrological cycle will lead to a more extreme distribution of precipitation (wet areas wetter, dry areas dryer)
and more intense precipitation.
Most of the world’s water is stored in
oceans and ice caps, smaller parts as
groundwater and 0.001% as water
vapour.
Precipitation in oceans is hard to
measure due to influence by wind.
Another way of evaluating the
hydrological cycle is to measure the
river outflow and compare this with
the net water flux of the river
catchments.
Water vapour as a greenhouse gas
Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas and accounts for around 75% of the total greenhouse effect on
Earth. It is controlled by atmospheric circulation. Water vapour stays in the atmosphere about a week, which is
shorter than other gasses like CO2, which includes multi-centennial time scales. Water vapour is, of course,
continuously replenished by evaporation from the oceans and the land surfaces but is nevertheless regulated
by temperature. The amount of water vapour varies strongly in both time and space. Water vapour should be
seen as a part of the response of the climate system to external forcing 1. All indications are that water vapour
constitutes a positive feedback but the strength of the feedback is debated.
1
An external forcing is a type of climate forcing agent that impacts the climate system while being outside of the climate
system itself. Example solar variations or orbital variations.
4
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