Charting Policy for Climate Adaptation Through Integrated Water Management

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Adanna C. Kalejaye
August 30, 2024

The goals set out in the Paris agreement to elicit and strengthen responses to the threat posed by climate change globally are laudable and quite ambitious. While the Agreement has ignited a plethora of climate policies across the globe, with promises to take climate action and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a lot of regional and geo-political issues as well as bureaucratic and financial constraints have posed obstacles to achieving the set goals. Thus, nine years after setting the goals, instead of a decrease in global temperature, the world has instead had the warmest climate ever with July 2024 standing out as the warmest July on record.

Given this pace of anthropogenic global warming, scientific extrapolations give us an estimation of less than 12 years as the closing window to the distance of the 1.5°C threshold. So, while climate policies across the globe have been designed and are being designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, the climate challenge besetting us requires climate policy to articulate measures needed to build climate resilience. This means preparing humans and infrastructure for the projected impacts of climate change through adaptation.

The United Nations notes how water is at the center of the climate crisis. What this means is that climate change impacts are water related, affecting the available water resources and invariably the living things that rely on those resources. The impacts, ranging from rising sea levels to shrinking ice sheet, flooding and droughts to unpredictable rainfall patterns, point to how intertwined water and climate change are. Thus, the ability to manage water resources adequately will greatly influence the ability to adapt to the climate change crisis. Essentially the nature of our water system investments and infrastructure, how we sustainably manage water and its resources will determine how successful we will be in addressing the drivers of climate change and in the long run climate adaptation. This can often be seen in the measures being articulated in climate policies that are adopted and implemented at both the national and global level.   

Climate policies in articulating the adaptive and mitigative measures necessary for building resilience, are increasingly beginning to reflect the significance of water in climate adaptation. The groundwork for this was laid at the International Conference on Water and the Environment in 1992, where it was established that though essential to sustain life, development and the environment, water is not infinite, and it is a vulnerable resource. In 2000 the European Union adopted its first water framework directive with the objective being to sustainably manage water and for the protection of the aquatic environment and in 2021, the European union implemented its strategy on climate adaptation underscoring the need to use water sustainably to reduce the severity of the extremity associated with droughts and floods.

However, the nexus between climate change and water demands more concerted effort where an integrated approach is taken with the management of water systems/resources. An integrated approach means managing water and coordinating its development in tandem with associated resources like land in such a way that it maximizes its economic and social welfare without compromising the sustainability of essential ecosystems. Because climate risk cuts across various sectors, an integrated approach ensures that there is coordination between the different sectors like agriculture, energy and urban planning, ensuring that water needs are considered in broader development strategies. This is especially important for climate adaptation as it requires integrated planning across sectors to address the interconnected impacts of climate change. Integrated water management facilitates this by ensuring that water considerations are central to adaptation efforts in all relevant sectors.

Linking integrated water management with climate adaptation strategies helps the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). This is because, applying an integrated approach helps policymakers to identify and define sustainable development in a national context, considering the various uses of water and the range of people’s water needs thereby promoting sustainable water management practices that are resilient to climate change.

In the United States, water crises are becoming more frequent and intense in rural towns and struggling cities where climate crisis is threatening the supply of water, and in vulnerable communities where old failing infrastructure deprive people of safe drinking water. The United States Bi-partisan Infrastructure Law in acknowledging the challenges posed by climate change to water security, notes how this could adversely affect “public health, individual safety and dignity, equity and national security.” The law thus seeks to tackle these challenges by investing in water infrastructure to build new water reuse, efficiency, storage and conveyance facilities that secure and grow the country’s water supplies. Clearly incorporating principles of integrated water management.           

Integrated Water Management is a critical component of climate adaptation to address the challenges of climate change, as it provides a holistic framework for managing water resources in a way that enhance the resilience of communities, ecosystems and economies to climate impacts, ensuring sustainable water management for future generations. 

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Author: Adanna Kalejaye is an internationally specialized lawyer in the fields of commercial law, environmental law, energy law and maritime law. She holds an LL.M (Master of Law) from Swansea University, Wales, UK. She is currently a doctoral candidate and research assistant in Public Policy at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston. She teaches courses on sustainable development and zero waste at the Osher Life-Long Learning Institute (OLLI) in UMass Boston. Her research interests are in environmental law and policies, climate change, sustainable development, renewable energy, waste management, policy building and analysis at both national and international level. She can be contacted at [email protected].

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