Water-related Vulnerabilities Research Articles

Water vulnerabilities mapping: a multi-criteria and multi-scale assessment in central Chile

Abstract One of the major challenges that populations have to face is vulnerability to water: lack of water, flooding, pollution, hazard sensitivity and coping capacity. Owing to economic, social and environmental inequalities, this paper focuses on water-related vulnerabilities in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago (RMS) in Chile. Our main objective is to understand, through mapping, the multiscalar logics of water vulnerability. This study is carried out at two scales: at the regional level (RMS), we proceed with open access municipal statistical data and maps, while at the local level, a more detailed analysis focusing on the Chacabuco Province is based on the same type of data but with either a higher spatial resolution (census districts) or a spatially more intensive data processing in order to take into account intra-municipal differences. In this way, we put into perspective the discourse developed in the Chilean media and by the inhabitants of Chacabuco Province regarding the province as an environmental ‘sacrifice zone’ for the RMS. The vulnerability maps are carried out at different scales in a simple and reproducible way by multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). The results confirm the hypothesis of a sacrifice zone and show that high-resolution data and adequate data processing give, on average, lower vulnerability scores than using only statistical data on the municipal level. The results provide a cartographic decision support for stakeholders. Limitations of the study are discussed and required further research is pointed out.

Water and power, water’s power: State-making and socionature shaping volatile rivers and riverine people in Mexico

Water-related disasters have become more unpredictable amidst human-induced climatic and hydroecological changes, with profound effects on people inhabiting fragile river basins. In this article, I analyse drastic waterscape transformations and people’s differentiated exposure to water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River lower basin, southeastern Mexico, focusing on how state authority is reinforced through waterscape alterations and how altered waterscapes shape state-making and scalar politics. Examining interlinkages between 1) state-making and governance; 2) resource-making and politics of scale; and 3) hazard-making and the dynamics of socionature, the article contributes to scholarly and development practice discussions on environmental vulnerability. I argue that the goals of consolidating state power and promoting development through massive waterscape changes and resource extractions have provoked hazards that are difficult to control, resulting in differentiated distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. Drawing on archival research, documentary analysis, thematic interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the study illustrates the overlapping and cumulative effects of state-making, politics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature on socially differentiated vulnerability. Although the forms of governance shift over time, statecraft as a mode of consolidating state authority and controlling lower-basin environments and residents persists. The government prevents social mobilisation through political persuasion and pressure, and disciplines residents to adapt to altered waterscapes, while allowing few changes in prevalent power structures. Simultaneously, the study demonstrates that water cannot be controlled by political rules and requisites, while local residents reinterpret dominant ways of governing through claim-making, negotiation, everyday resistance, and situational improvisation, albeit within unequal power relations. The study enhances understanding of water-related vulnerabilities resulting from recurrent, yet temporally remoulded agendas of state-making combined with socially differentiating politics of scaling and the dynamics of socionature, which altogether reformulate human-nonhuman interactions and make local smallholders and peri-urban poor increasingly vulnerable to floods.

Households Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Variability Induced Water Stress on Downstream Kaduna River Basin

Water stress is one of the risks emanating from worsening climatic variations. It poses serious threats on vulnerable continents, people and livelihoods globally. However, little information is available on how the specific climate threat is impacting people’s livelihoods and water resources on different temporal and spatial scales in Nigeria basins. This study aimed at investigating household vulnerability and adaptation to water stress induced by climate variability on a downstream Kaduna River basin with the goal of supporting/facilitating climate change adaptation. The research analyzed hydro-climatic data and employed vulnerability-based framework consistent with stakeholders’ participatory approach, within the context of current climate conditions experienced, and/or water stress conditions already affecting household livelihoods in six communities at three study sites; Shiroro, Gbako and Lavun, and adaptive strategies engaged to deal with water stress. Findings revealed that households have been exposed and experienced changes in water availability through variations in rainfall, temperature and runoff. Consequently, these changes have impacted on food production and livelihoods. Households have individually and collectively employed adaptation techniques which are reactive, short-term indigenous coping strategies usually adopted during periods of stress to minimize water-related vulnerabilities. The study demonstrated how an understanding of the local household vulnerabilities will enable the recognition of early indicators of water stress in addition to the occurrence of extreme events. Overall, households’ vulnerability decreased from one village to another due to differences in sensitivity to stress, access to resources and local institutional capacity. Resilience of households can be increased through early warning system during flood events, providing access to water from rainwater harvesting techniques, and integration of climate change adaptation into policies regarding development initiatives especially in the area of agriculture.

Predicting and communicating flood risk of transport infrastructure based on watershed characteristics

This research aims to identify and communicate water-related vulnerabilities in transport infrastructure, specifically flood risk of road/rail-stream intersections, based on watershed characteristics. This was done using flooding in Värmland and Västra Götaland, Sweden in August 2014 as case studies on which risk models are built. Three different statistical modelling approaches were considered: a partial least square regression, a binomial logistic regression, and artificial neural networks. Using the results of the different modelling approaches together in an ensemble makes it possible to cross-validate their results. To help visualize this and provide a tool for communication with stakeholders (e.g., the Swedish Transport Administration - Trafikverket), a flood ‘thermometer’ indicating the level of flooding risk at a given point was developed. This tool improved stakeholder interaction and helped highlight the need for better data collection in order to increase the accuracy and generalizability of modelling approaches.

Risk perception: The social construction of spatial knowledge around climate change-related scenarios in Lima

Lima's environmental sustainability is threatened by increasing water scarcity, heavy rain events and limited attention for water vulnerability and climate change scenarios. In this paper we examine how knowledge construction and risk perception on water-related disaster risks and vulnerabilities affects decision-making and implementation in urban governance networks, specifically looking at some of the reasons behind high levels of risk tolerance and the lack of decision-making initiatives in putting adaptation and/or preventive measures in place.New forms of metropolitan governance have constructed spatial knowledge about water-related vulnerabilities using inclusive scenario-building processes. These unpack complexities, uncertainties and spatial inequalities in water governance, making them visible by mapping and spatial representations as strategic instrument for social and policy learning.This article analyzes two case studies, which either already are or can become disasters (scenario-building). The first, concerns the long-term plausible scenario of water scarcity and droughts analyzing population growth rates, water distribution and consumption through the Chance2Sustain research project and presenting spatial representations. The maps were used to define possible spatial intervention priorities to deal with future water vulnerabilities in Lima. The second, refers to short term extreme weather events that already manifest as mudslides and floods and El Niño in Chosica, eastern Lima. We investigate the first at the metropolitan city scale level and the second at the scale of vulnerable communities. The cases illustrate iterative spatial knowledge construction, in which processes of risk prioritization, normalization and tolerance occur, and the resulting [in-]action by a variety of actors so far.The methodology used collective and iterative mapping processes, using technical, organizational and geographical knowledge from a variety of governance, experts and practitioner networks in Lima. The main outcome is the social learning derived from bringing together different kinds of knowledge and integrating several dimensions through spatial representations. This has raised awareness, increased capacities for dealing with uncertainty and contributed to the approved metropolitan Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, but not implemented by the Lima Municipality yet.The main conclusions are two: 1) spatial planning is a quite political process (c.f. Flyvbjerg 1998), in which knowledge is contested or even when acknowledged, does not necessarily steer decision-making processes, either by local communities, authorities and private institutions. And 2) existing models linking knowledge construction to risk framing, risk tolerance and how these influence decision-making processes and actions to prevent disaster may ignore the issues of risk tolerance, through normalization and prioritization at their peril.

Room for improvement: Hydroclimatic challenges to poverty-reducing development of the Brahmaputra River basin

Abstract The Brahmaputra river is the largest (by annual discharge) of the three in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) system, and by itself carries more flow than all but 4 rivers in the world. It is the primary water source for over 130 million people, many of whom are mired in chronic poverty. The potential in the Brahmaputra River basin for poverty-reducing development of agriculture and hydropower is great. However, progress in these sectors and others has been hindered by significant natural and anthropogenic challenges. As they attempt to develop their water resources in a manner that reduces water-related vulnerabilities, the people of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, Bhutan, Northeast India, and Bangladesh face a number of challenges, including: endemic poverty; floods; droughts; groundwater over-abstraction; political unrest; and the broader development ambitions of the member nations (leading to net import or export of resources from the basin). To those challenges have recently been added climate change and difficult decisions regarding hydropower development. A critical compounding factor in the Brahmaputra basin is the lack of an authoritative, reliable, and comprehensive network of basin-wide information on climate, streamflow, natural hazards, and economic factors, such as agricultural production, prices, and trade. Anthropocentric development in the Brahmaputra basin must balance the goal of immediate poverty reduction with the preservation of the vulnerable, rich natural heritage of the basin, in the interest both of intergenerational human equity, and biocentric egalitarianism. In the space allotted here, we provide a snapshot of the demographic and hydroclimatic characteristics of the basin of greatest concern to water system planners aiming at poverty reduction through sustainable development. We propose that the basin's hydro-climatological, economic, and political complexities are such that a basin-wide water system knowledge platform is needed to organize quantitative thinking on potential water-related investments in the basin.

Knowledge-building in adaptation management: concertación processes in transforming Lima water and climate change governance

Recently, three processes were used to analyze the consequences of plausible climate change scenarios for urban water governance in Lima. The first process, led by a German-financed research team, developed climate change scenarios using innovative tools. The second, Chance2Sustain, brought spatial perspectives to urban development and water governance, mapping spatial inequities in water-related vulnerabilities and including community-based knowledge. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima (MML) initiated the third process, to prepare a city development and Climate Change Adaptation Strategy. This paper examines how these processes of knowledge construction contributed to transitions in water governance and climate change adaptation strategies. Although all processes used concertación(1) in their knowledge construction, the actors and the incorporated knowledge differed considerably. While the first example was dominated by professional groups and technical–professional knowledge, the Chance2Sustain and city processes included a wider range of actors and shifted thinking about adaptive management towards including contextual-embedded knowledge.

An Analysis of Gender–Water Nexus in Rural Bangladesh

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the gender–water nexus in rural Bangladesh based on extensive field survey, focus group discussion, and interview with key informants, all carried out at seven study locations across Bangladesh. It presents the findings in four key areas: household water management, health and well-being, irrigation water management, and water related vulnerability. It has been observed that water for household use is collected by women and children, who face an array of physical, psychological and social problems. How water is collected depends on income/social class, location of water source, time of the day, and religious/cultural factors. The time spent for water collection imposes significant opportunity costs as loss of income and education opportunities. Tube well water is widely used for drinking, but pond and river water is extensively used for other purposes.This, along with the lack of sanitation, causes frequent outbreak of water-borne diseases. Improper storage of water, poorly maintained tube wells, and arsenic in shallow wells pose additional threats to health. Women in arsenic affected areas face excommunication if detected with arsenicosis; in coastal areas women are forced to fry collection under very unhealthy and unsafe conditions.These difficulties are exacerbated during natural disasters such as floods and droughts. Presently, there is very little participation of women in agricultural water management as ‘right to water’ is perceived as linked with ‘right to land’, over which women have little control. These hardships and deprivations are fundamentally caused by the lack of a number of factors: awareness, education, access to resources, empowerment, and institutional support. This article suggests a range of policy interventions to address these issues.

Global water assessment and potential contributions from Earth Systems Science

Earth Systems Science has made significant strides over the last decade in developing consistent, high quality, spatially-contiguous, and in many cases real-time bioegoephysical data sets. Many of these data sources depict key elements of the land-based water cycle. To date, this information has been poorly integrated into global water assessment and vulnerability studies. This paper presents a review of newly-emerging Earth Systems Science products together with a strategy for entraining these into global water assessments. The text highlights several conceptual, technical, and institutional obstacles that require attention before a successful integration can be realized. A major challenge rests in developing a common conceptual framework and nomenclature to bridge gaps between the physical sciences and current generation of water resource assessments, which have traditionally relied heavily on descriptive case studies and a socioeconomic approach. Another goal of this paper is to better articulate the scope of human control of the terrestrial water cycle – beyond climate change alone – and to quantify its impact on sustainable water supplies. Opportunities for integration across disciplines are identified, and specific recommendations are formulated. An argument is made for the unique role that geographically-referenced continental and global-scale analysis can play in future assessments of freshwater resources and water-related vulnerability.