Opinion: To adapt, we must base our designs around water

In this article GCA Water Lead, Dr Fred Boltz, introduces “Water is a Master Variable” – which looks at the central role of water in building resilience to climate and Earth system change.

Written with global thought leaders in resilience, freshwater ecology and engineering science, the paper is now available online in a Special Issue of Water Security.

A s the global community gathers in Madrid for COP25, the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) unveils new research suggesting a pathway to navigating our immediate and future adaptation challenges.

Water is a Master Variable: Solving for Resilience in the Modern Era considers how a sound approach to understanding and solving human resilience can be found by basing our designs on water, as the planet warms and society changes.

The paper provides a lens into how we may navigate a future pathway to adaptation and resilience, in line with the ambitions of the Water Action Track of the Global Commission on Adaptation. The Water Action Track efforts are being undertaken in a close partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water, the World Bank, the World Resources Institute and a network of over 30 global partners.

The authors note: “Water is as a defining element in human and natural systems. Human civilization and water systems have co-evolved as a coupled system, with the majority of natural freshwater systems transformed to meet our demands. Shifting patterns of water availability in space and time will define key pathways and tipping points for our resilience. Thus requirements for water system resilience must guide the trajectories and boundaries of human development.”

“Water is a Master Variable” is the fruit of a rich collaboration among scientists from leading institutions in resilience and water science, including the Stockholm Resilience Center, the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, Colorado State University and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Their efforts to advance the science underpinning our understanding of resilience – and the instrumental role of water in offering pathways towards a more resilient human future – has been a signature project of The Resilience Shift, a Water Action Track partner.

The paper serves as a framing piece for a Special Issue of Water Security, entitled Building Resilience through Water, which is also being released this month. This suite of peer-reviewed papers sets out a conceptual framework supported by a portfolio of applied research into water and the resilience of human and natural systems, including cities, infrastructure, energy and river basins.

Find out more:

Authors:

• Dr. Fred Boltz, Global Center on Adaptation and The Resilience Shift
• Prof. Dr. LeRoy Poff, Colorado State University
• Prof. Dr. Carl Folke, Beijer Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• Dr. Nancy Kete, Kete Consulting
• Prof. Dr. Casey Brown, University of Massachusetts – Amherst
• Ms. Sarah St. George Freeman, University of Massachusetts – Amherst
• Dr. John Matthews, Alliance for Global Water Adaptation
• Mr. Alex Martinez, Stanford University
• Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström, Stockholm Resilience Centre

Summary

Resilience is increasingly recognized as an imperative for any prospect of sustainable development, as it relates to our ability to sustain human well-being and progress under the planetary and societal changes that we face now and into the future. Yet, we are ill-prepared to meet this challenge.
We neither fully understand nor manage consistently for resilience of the human and natural systems that we must steward through extraordinary change. A unifying approach and common currency would help us to understand and manage for resilience under uncertain futures.

Water is an essential, defining element in human and natural systems. Human civilization and water systems have co-evolved as a coupled system, with the majority of natural freshwater systems transformed to meet our demands. Shifting patters of water availability in space and time will define key pathways and tipping points for our resilience, and thus requirements for water system resilience must guide the trajectories and boundaries of human development.

Here, we consider the thesis that water offers a key to unlocking the complex challenge of designing and managing for the resilience of coupled human-natural systems. We examine what constitutes a resilient system, what drives freshwater resilience, and how pathways to human resilience may be charted and navigated through the medium of water. Our theoretical treatise frames a portfolio of research that tests this thesis, including modeling and applications to water and water-dependent systems.

The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action – they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.

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