Water and Climate change

Credit: WaterAid / Jim Holmes

It's clear that climate change will alter the global water cycle, but we can't predict the exact impacts. However, we already work with communities which are vulnerable to variable seasons and extreme weather events – climate change will make this work even more important.
The simple technologies that WaterAid use, such as hand-pumps, help protect poor people from the impacts of a variable climate by giving them more reliable water sources.

Background

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) remains the world’s authoritative source of information and science on climate change. There are many debates around the science of climate change, but the IPCC is the only intergovernmental body that reviews all major peer-reviewed literature on climate change in a robust and scientific manner to give a balanced assessment of the science.

In its 4th Assessment Report, the IPCC makes clear that climate change is real – that the planet is warming; that we are causing it; and that it is getting faster.
The potential impacts are serious - future warming is likely to:

• increase water availability in some areas, decrease water availability in others
• expose hundreds of millions of people to increased water stress
• although there are several knowledge gaps related to climate change and water, globally, the negative impacts of future climate change on freshwater systems are expected to outweigh the benefits

The impacts of climate change are also uncertain and complex – we don’t know how rainfall patterns will change at a local level and the impact of changing rainfall on groundwater is also unclear – so we don’t know the exact nature of these impacts.
Climate change is one of several pressures on water security – in many cases population growth, changing use of land, urbanisation and migration can be even bigger threats.

Our response
Climate change is one of many pressures on water, so we have developed a water security framework to ensure that our work takes into account changes to water resources through

• Empowering communities – using a community-based approach to water resources management, we are helping communities to better understand their own water and manage its use at a community level. And we are working with watershed management organisations to ensure the voice of domestic water users is heard.
• Improving storage – we are working with communities to improve water storage through basic technologies such as sand-dams, traditional methods such as birkads and interventions that enable aquifers to recharge.
• Monitoring changes – we are collecting data at water points we have supported and sharing this information with national and international bodies with the responsibility for water resource information and data management
• Research – to understand how changes in water affect local communities, how they are responding and what the gaps are.
• Lobbying – developed countries have promised $100bn a year in climate finance by 2020, using this money to improve sanitation and water provides a real 'no-regrets'opportunity to both reduce the impacts of climate change on poor people AND help lift them out of poverty.

WaterAid's principal interest is ensuring access to water and sanitation for poor, excluded and vulnerable people. We are committed to strengthening our capacities on water resource management and that of our partners, and are developing clear strategy and guidelines to integrate water resource management in all areas of our programme and policy work.

Look out for future updates including details of water resource management in the countries where we work.

For more information on WASH and climate change, see: ODI Working Paper 337 – Climate change, water resources and WASH: A scoping study