Water Futures:Building Capacities for Scenario-Based Planning

David A. Wiberg

8 June, 2016Towards Sustainable Food Systems

Pelawatte, Sri Lanka

Half our planet’s population are water insecure… uncertain futures

Absent or unreliable WSS Food security and Irrigation

The impacts of unmitigated variability including floods & droughts Degraded water environments

Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam(Flickr CC)

Photo: Felix Antonio / IWMI

Photos: Neil Palmer / IWMI

Photo: Hamish John Appelby / IWMI

Water: Global ChallengesWater Scarcity

• In many areas, withdrawals exceed local renewable

water resources, leading to groundwater mining, land

subsidence, saltwater intrusion, water transfers.

Population Explosion Continues

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• 25% more people by 2050

• Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century (FAO & UN-Water)

Photo: Hamish John Appelby / IWMI

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Urban Population Share (%)

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• Water use grows with income.

• GDP/capita rises everywhere, while GDP in China could start to decrease in the latter half of the century.

Photo: Neil Palmer / IWMI

Increasing Demands, Increasing Challenges

• Domestic water withdrawals triple

• Industrial water withdrawals more

than double.

• Agricultural water withdrawals

increase.

Multi-model Assessment

Models Institution

HiGW-MAT IIASA, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES, Japan)

LISFLOOD IIASA, JRC

VIC IIASA, Wageningen University (The Netherlands), Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (Norway); University of Washington/Princeton University (USA)

WaterGAP Kassel University (Germany), Frankfurt University (Germany);

PCR-GLOBWB Utrecht University (The Netherlands)

LPJmL Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany) and Wageningen University (The Netherlands)

WBM CUNY (USA); ISI-MIP

Schew et al. (2013)

Relative change in annual discharge at 2 °C compared with present day, under RCP8.5.

Approach

Dry areas get drier, wet areas wetter, but little aggregate change.• Most Asia-Pacific regions experience increasing water availability, except Central and Western

Asia.However: • Per capita water resources decline in much of Asia, severely in South Asia (up to -31%) and the

Pacific (up to -51%)• Pakistan, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, and Timor-Leste are all projected to have less than 10 cubic

meters of water per person per day by the 2050s.

[yr]

20952031

20172046 2055

2066

2053 2081

20062028

2058

2044

2027

2056

2032No

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20242036 2026 2027

No

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2047

How long do we have time to prepare for the change?When will drought shift into the unprecedented phase?

Historicallyexperienced range

Historicalperiod

Time series of regional mean of DDyr

RCP8.5(5 GCMs)

2100

Never return!!

Satoh Y, et. al. (2015)

Water Security: Hydro-Economic Conditions

HE–2Water Secure, Rich

HE–1Water Secure, Poor

HE–3Water Stress, Rich

HE–4Water Stress, Poor

Eco

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mic

-in

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uti

on

al c

apac

ity

Hydro-climatic complexity(resources/cap, withdrawals/resources, variability, dependency)

low high

low

h

igh

Currently in HE-4:

• 44% population, 20% of GDP

• 65% of Asia’s population

By 2050 in HE-3 and HE-4:• 60% population, 60% GDP• > 80% of Asia’s population and GDP

Source: Water Futures and Solutions Initiative

Water: Management Challenges

• Water management must intensify.

• Managing the water sector alone is no longer enough– Water integrates across scales and sectors, which all use and

influence increasingly scarce water resources.

• Water management is risk based, but how does risk change?– Large uncertainties

• Data

• Scenarios

• Models

– No stationarity

• More robust, flexible solutions required

Water: Management Challenges

Water a priority?• There is no global organization for management and

standard-setting, like with the oceans, or the IPCC for climate.

• 35-80% of water-related projects are failing.

• We have very little knowledge or data in the areas where the

problems are greatest and do not know how to manage them.

• Water monitoring systems have been degrading globally, so

that we have less information than we did in the past

• Water management is done separately by many sectors, but

is not always coherent/compatible

• Funding for water projects is difficult to obtain.

Domestic water demand Industrial water demand

2050 2050

SSP2[k

m3

/yr]

[km

3/y

r]

[km3/yr][km3/yr]

Increasing uncertaintyDecreasing knowledge

Median rainfall and standard deviation USA - SSA

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14/6

Yield gap ratios comparing actual crop production of year 2000 with potentials achievable in current cultivated land with advanced farming. Source: GAEZ2012.

Yield Gaps

IWMI’s vision - A water-secure world

IWMI’s mission - To provide evidence-based solutions to

sustainably manage water and land resources for food security, people’s livelihoods and the environment

Water Futures vision - An IWMI decision support toolkit that

helps planners, managers and stakeholders understand and assess possible futures and sets of solutions.

Mission - To identify contextually-appropriate pathways to achieving

sustainable water security.

There are more than 200 SDG indicators being discussed for countries to monitor.

In areas where challenges are greatest, water data, information, and capacity are

usually weakest.

Global data and models are not yet well enough resolved, or sufficient, to be used to

assess the impacts, tradeoffs, benefits, costs and synergies among local options

within a river basin.

To be effective and sustainable, intervention options must fit both the local

biophysical and socio-economic context and development priorities. What works in

one area may not be effective in another.

There are a multitude of options for development and enhancing resource security.

Decision makers can be confused by differing opinions and advice on possible

solution options, which can delay decisions.

Multiple institutions manage water and related resources and must be brought

together to ensure that their projects work together synergistically.

Uncertainty: The future is uncertain. Data and models are uncertain, and tradeoffs

among some options are not fully understood.

IWMI’s nicheContext specific futures and solution sets

Products

• Trends in water uses at basin/sub-basin scale(locations and times of use, quality required, technology used, developments over time)

• Policy/Institutional/Legal mapping(which organizations are responsible for which decisions, monitoring, enforcement, impacts of change)

• Options Analysis and Database(benefits, costs, impacts, synergies, tradeoffs)

• Priorities/Values Mapping(what are the priority options for stakeholders in the regions)

• Decision Support Tools(preferably simplified online tools for rapid visualization of the impacts of various options with stakeholders and decision makers. e.g. AQUADUCT Flood Analyzer, IIASA/FAO GAEZ, IIASA Energy Multi-Criteria Analysis tool, etc.)

• Papers, reports, policy briefs on best practices, and training in scenario based options analysis and planning.

Indicators, trends, and scenarios

• Full, spatial accounts of water supply and demand (withdrawal and consumption) by quantity and quality and source.

– groundwater data?, use, efficiencies and technologies?

• Potentials and gaps

• Institutional mapping

• Trend analysis and scenario construction

http://wateraccounting.org/index.html

Open Source Weather Stations: Innovative solutions to Water Management problems

Soumya Balasubramanya, Yann Chemin, Lahiru Wijesinghe, Farah Ahmed, Mohamed Aheeyar, David Wiberg

Options Analysis

• Options Database

– Benefits, costs, potentials, constraints

• Impact Evaluations

• Best practices

Yield gap ratios. Source: GAEZ2012.

Boston Water Conservation

Climate, Land, Energy, Water Tradeoffs

Transforming Mauritius sugar-processing plants to produce second-generation ethanol is a positive, improving trade balances, energy security and reducing emissions, while maintaining land productivity.

But, if rainfall is reduced as under the worst climate scenario, energy costs and emissions would increase to deliver the required water to all uses.

Integrated systems analysis across scales and sectors is needed to assess these synergies and tradeoffs and develop innovative solutions that are effective and consistent

Source: Howells et al (2013), Nature Climate Change

• Web-based information systems and options analysis

– GW solutions

– Rural-urban linkages

– Sustainable irrigation

• Hydro-economic modeling and Decision Support

– Systematic, network analysis

– Modular

– Multi-objective optimization

– Water valuation, pricing, subsidies

Decision Support Systems

Fulfilling IWMI’s Roles

A think tankby improving IWMI’s flexibility to rapidly respond with science-based analysis of current issues, and take advantage of planning insights gained from options analysis

A provider of science based products and tools examining options, tradeoffs and synergies among options and developing systems frameworks across them.

A facilitator of learning, strengthening capacity and achieving uptake of research findings.

by enhancing communication, information and knowledge sharing, and providing tools, frameworks and training.

Areas of EC/IWMI CooperationMethods for implementing EU commitments

• Climate change policy (mitigation and adaptation)

• Better understanding of Climate Change impacts/loss/damage at local levels

• Capacity-building around intervention options (what works where)

SDGs

• How to we achieve SDGs at the local/river-basin scale taking into account local priorities and values

• What indicators are most important to monitor and provide the greatest coverage of the SDGs

Transparency

• Information and knowledge transfer across scales.

• Options databases and typology

• Capacity-building and training

Soumya Balasubramanya

Aditya Sood Maksud Bekchanov

Yann CheminMadar Samad

IWMI-HQ

Luna Bharati

IWMI-Nepal

Lisa-Maria Rebelo

IWMI-Laos

Touleelor Sotoukee

Krishna Kakumanu

Archisman MitraMarie-Charlotte Buisson

IWMI-India

Pamela Katic

Bedru Balana

Yoro Sidibe

IWMI-Ghana

Jonathan Lautze Greenwell MatchayaSibusiso Nhlengethwa Charles Nhemachena

IWMI-South Africa

Water Futures Team

Robyn Johnston

Myanmar

Ted Horbulyk

Ambika Khadka

Sub-themes

• Indicators, trends, and scenarios(locations and times of use, quality required, technology used, developments over time)

– Policy/Institutional/Legal mapping(which organizations are responsible for which decisions, monitoring, enforcement, impacts of change)

• Options Analysis(benefits, costs, impacts, context-specific best practices, potential)

• Decision Support Tools(simplified online tools for rapid visualization of the impacts of various options with stakeholders and decision makers. e.g. AQUADUCT Flood Analyzer, IIASA/FAO GAEZ, IIASA Energy Multi-Criteria Analysis tool, etc. and a more sophisticated node-link hydro economic model. e.g. WEAP, RiverWare, MIKE)

increase (°C)

mean water temperature

van Vliet M, Kabat P, et al (2013), Global Environ. Change

B1 (2071-2100) A2 (2071-2100)

maskedchange (%)

low (10-percentile) flow

masked

Climate change impacts on Q & Tw

1850 1900 1950 2000 2050

Gm

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Biomass woCCS

Preliminary results

Climate policy may be insufficient to significantly reduce water demand2˚C Mitigation Scenario

Co-benefit of climate mitigation

Source: Fricko et.al.2016

Storage-Yield Curves With and Without Evaporation

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