Opinion: Water insights for climate resilience from the global south

“If climate change were a shark, water would be its teeth.” The global south has been well aware of this adage for decades. But, in recent years, that shark has been biting many of the world’s high-income economies in the global north — and a new set of insights are emerging from the global south that is useful for their northern siblings. In 2022, Europe saw extreme heat and drought, with the Rhine River’s role as an ancient conduit of trade at “crisis levels” during the potentially worst drought in 500 years. The Netherlands, a country famous for pushing back floodwaters for centuries, is facing its third extreme drought in two decades and is unsure how to prepare for both an over and under abundance of water. This pattern toward a hotter and drier climate has been taking shape over the past 30 years. North America has not been immune either. The city of Seattle, in the mild Pacific Northwest of the United States, broke a daily record on Oct. 16 when temperatures reached 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius), becoming the second extreme summer in the region in three years. Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah, is at risk of seeing toxic dust storms from the exposed and still receding shorelines of the Great Salt Lake. Nevada’s Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the Hoover Dam, is at its lowest level since the dam was built in the 1930s, with water levels expected to fall below the level needed to generate hydropower, a first in its 88-year history, within a year or two. Despite this week's flooding, California’s economy is coping with what is believed to be the worst drought in 1,200 years. The state has chosen to reverse some of its greenhouse gas reduction plans by investing in several new natural gas electrical generation stations to make up for the stressed hydropower system the state depends so heavily on. Water scarcity and drought may be among the largest impacts of climate change. As these examples show, those effects play out on a landscape that extends far beyond the water sector and highlights the intersectionality of water in our societies. Taken together, these patterns are almost exclusively the result of climate change rather than “natural cycles” or the result of poor management and governance. There is increasing consensus in the scientific community to support this and that these trends are not stopping or slowing anytime soon. Most decision-makers are seeing these impacts as signs of deepening threats to the economies, ecosystems, and communities of some of the world’s most prosperous regions. Their question is: How do we respond? How do we cope with the shark’s bite? There are lessons to be learned from countries that have been facing the effects of climate change on water systems for years. A partnership gathered through the intergovernmental Adaptation Action Coalition and implemented through the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation and partners, suggests that we need to consider water as a resilience solution, choosing water as our primary defense against climate change. The work to enhance resilience within national climate plans is occurring through AGWA’s water tracker tool, which is now in use in almost a dozen pilot countries ranging from Costa Rica and Panama to Rwanda, Malawi, Egypt, Palestinian territories, and Nepal. The water tracker is designed to help governments “see” the water hidden and embedded in our energy, food, and manufacturing systems. Making this water “visible” enables conscious deliberation on tradeoffs that reflect our choices about alleviating poverty and protecting ecosystems and embraces opportunities to find synergies between our use of water resources in our economies. Until recently, most countries have primarily focused on managing the water we can see in rivers, lakes, and utilities rather than the water critical to data centers, cities, thermal and hydropower energy systems, and even in our health care and education systems. Of course, the visible water in those wetlands, rivers, and lakes remains vital, and the water tracker builds on insights so that we evolve our economies and ecosystems together. In many cases, we need to view these ecosystems as our emerging natural water resilience utilities. The water tracker is pushing for a change in awareness from reducing climate risks to understanding water as a medium for resilience across sectors and silos and from cities to aquifers. If we can manage the water between energy and agriculture, for example, as a connector and not as a sector, we can make tradeoffs that can encompass today’s water challenges. These lessons and insights shouldn’t remain in the global south. The events of 2022 show how Bangladesh’s Delta Plan to cope with intensifying tropical cyclones and flooding carries powerful ideas for coastal countries, while Uruguay’s National Adaptation Plan to Climate Change and Variability for Cities and Infrastructures planning tool provides a model for a progressive, gender-responsive, and participatory approach for developing resilient infrastructure in urban settings. A shared vision of climate adaptation from south to north is an optimistic message: We can manage these impacts, ensuring our communities and ecosystems find integrity, define new choices and economic pathways, and show our children and grandchildren that we are all moving toward resilient prosperity and development.