Better Living through Water Infrastructure

j.matthews@conservation.orgccg | ci

22 may 2012

Ecology, Economics, & Communications

How should conservationists

talk about water infrastructure?

Istanbul

Matatheile, South Africa

• (Most) dams profoundly alter hydro-ecological connectivity

• Few alternatives are normally considered (such as demand reduction)

• Bad dams aren’t forever, but they do last many decades or centuries

• They are usually climatically “fixed” and unable to shift to changes in precipitation or flow regime, potentially empoverishing poor countries and trashing ecosystems (Matthews et al. 2011)

• They are hard to manage to mimic natural flows (Poff et al., ELOHA, 2009)

• They often lead to secondary development (i.e., deforestation)

anti argumentsCan the sustainability community support more infrastructure?

• The developed world should be humble. The US has ~80,000 dams out of a global total of 845,000, which are largely concentrated in the most developed countries

• Dams are often the key to delivering stable, long-term energy, health, agricultural, and urban security; they are both a symbol and a cause of economic growth

• Most dam construction now is occurring in mid-income nations (China, India, Brazil, Turkey)

and pro arguments

do they help alleviate poverty?

John Briscoe (neé World Bank, now with Harvard University)

• 1976, Bangladesh: Marxist and skeptical, Briscoe tries to kill a flood barrier; he is unsuccessful

• 1998, Bangladesh: Briscoe returns to a society transformed, more economically equal, healthier, more economically diverse

• Ethiopia: one drought lowered growth rates over a 12-year period by 10%; droughts normally happen every 3 to 5 years

• per capita water storage:

! Ethiopia: 28 m3

! South Africa: 687 m3

! USA: 5,961 m3

Sadoff & Muller, 2009

if we can’t/shouldn’t stop new infrastructurefrom being built,

can we make better dams?

Hoover Dam, USA

a better dam would

• be ecologically viable over its operational lifetime (or longer)

• provide its designed services without empoverishing economies

• be managed flexibly, for shifting ecological and economic conditions

do we need new policies for dams, or should we intervene

one by one?

Mekong basin, Qinghai, China

“formal negotiated agreements”

“functional operating rules for institutions”

๏ domestic — state & federal legislation๏ international: EU Water Framework Directive๏ global: UNFCCC, Ramsar, Rio+20, CBD

๏ drought management plan ๏ human resources rules๏ International Hydropower Association guidelines๏ World Bank lending technical guidelines

focusing on policy

for dams, four “boxes” of technical policy are important for long-term sustainability

hydrology & climate science

finance and economics

ecology and engineering

governance/flexible operations

• Climate is integral for long-lived elements of water management: infrastructure, institutions, & ecosystems

• Expertise is available but often fragmented and separated within silos, disciplines, and individuals

• Decisions are made every day that will resonate for decades

• Resilience is more often an accident than systematic

• How can we bring together the policies and tools to support long-term resilience —!soon?

how do we enable better decisions?

hydrology & climate sciencecoordinated by the US Army Corps of Engineers

How do you integrate climate information into your design and planning processes?

finance and economicscoordinated by the OECD, World Bank, and European Investment Bank

How do you create finance mechanisms that mainstream long-term sustainability management?

Can the risks of uncertainty and delaying action be converted into cost curves?

engineering and ecologycoordinated by CI and the Inter-American Development Bank

How do you manage infrastructure and ecosystems for resilience?

Can you integrate “soft” ecosystems into “hard” infrastructure networks?

governance and flexible operationscoordinated by the US State department and the Environmental Law Institute

How do you manage across institutional and political boundaries?

How do you help institutions learn to be flexible?

assumptions

• our audience is skeptical if not jaded; we must show how we arrived at our thinking via an evidence-based approach

• projections (ie, GCMs) are generally insufficient for high-precision needs

• if possible and credible, quantitative methods are preferable

• we should look as similar to the traditional design process as possible

• we need a clear audience: project-level managers, planners — “Luis’s engineer”

resilience & breaking points

• What causes a system to lose resilience and “break” into a new stasis point?

• Where are the linkages between hydrological, ecological, and infrastructure resilience?

Confidence in data, future climate conditionsConfidence in data, future climate conditionsConfidence in data, future climate conditionsConfidence in data, future climate conditions

High Medium Low

Adaptive management plan with focus on ‘hard’

measures

Adaptive management plan with ‘soft’ and ‘hard’

measures

Adaptive management plan with focus on ‘soft’ measures

Adaptive management plan with ‘soft’ and ‘hard’

measures

Adaptive management plan with ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ with

delayed investment

Adaptive management plan with focus on ‘soft’ measures

and delayed investment

Exit to traditional planning

Adaptive management plan with focus on ‘soft’

measures and delayed investment

Adaptive management plan with focus on ‘soft’ measures

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the AGWA network alliance4water.org

Development banks and capacity-building groups.The Asian Development Bank, European Investment Bank, KfW, the Inter-American Development Bank, GiZ, the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate, and the World Bank.

Non-governmental OrganizationsThe Delta Alliance, International Water Association, the Swedish Environmental Institute (IVL), the Global Water Partnership, Deltares, Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI), Organization for European Cooperation and Development (OECD), Stockholm International Water Institute, Wetlands International, IUCN, The Nature Conservancy, ICIMOD, WWF, Conservation International.

Governmental

CONAGUA, Seattle Public Utilities, US State department, NOAA, US Army Corps of Engineers, UN Water, UN Habitat, UNECE, Water Utilities Climate Alliance, WMO

The Private SectorCeres, UNEP FI, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Key partnersWater & Climate Coalition, the Adaptation Partnership, the Global Environment Facility, Nairobi Work Programme

Is there something wrong with how conservationists

talk about climate change?

Istanbul Marseille

The climate change landscape

• Climate change mitigation: reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

• Climate science: what the heck is going on with weather and climate?

• Climate change impacts science: mostly descriptive environmental science about what is happening or might happen

• Climate change adaptation: adjusting to emerging and realized climate change impacts

The Copenhagen Accord, most climate change policy

The IPCC’s WG 1; physical sciences

The IPCC’s WG 2, most hysterical media coverage

Not very much science, policy, or practice (or journalism)

Water is the medium through which humans will experience ... most climate change impacts

IPCC, 4th Assessment Report, 2007

Village wetlands festival, Korea

The language of climate change is the language of water.

Carter Roberts, WWF-US CEO, Copenhagen, December 2009

Climate adaptation — not new, but a new approach to thinking about sustainability

80 kmaway

“bathtub ring,” ca. 7000 BC

Warner “Lakes,” Great Basin, Oregon

Definitely not. The climate has made major shifts before, even in the relatively

recent past.

So what’s the problem?

Mitigation vs adaptation: coherence?

• How do we move beyond listing/projecting impacts to foster adaptation thinking?

• How do we choose between hope and fear in our communications?

• How do we communicate the connections between carbon and water?

" Solar, nuclear, hydro, biofuels

" REDD: forest carbon

• UNFCCC technical workshop on water & climate

Sun Koshi basin, Nepal

“We can’t wait 30 years for precise science.... I want to see climate adaptation programs based on non-precise decision making. Now.”Vahid Alavian, World Bank Water Advisor

Stockholm, Sweden

August 2008

Lessons

Be humble about building for the future; climate conditions are shifting rapidly, and your dam may shame you and ultimately hurt people

Build with redundancy — reinforce social and ecological infrastructure as you build new infrastructure

Plan strategically across a whole basin — land management, ecosystems, and cities and farms, across sectors, demand and supply, and from snows to oceans

Present choices and trade-offs to the people

j.matthews@conservation.org