Beyond Scarcity : Water Security in the Middle East and North Africa

Water has always been a source of risks and opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet rapidly changing socioeconomic, political, and environmental conditions make water security a different, and more urgent, challenge than ever before. This report shows that achieving water security means much more than coping with water scarcity. It means managing water resources in a sustainable, efficient, and equitable way. It also involves delivering water services reliably and affordably, to reinforce relationships between service providers and water users and contribute to a renewed social contract. Water security also entails mitigating water-related risks such as floods and droughts. Water security is an urgent target, but it is also a target within reach. A host of potential solutions to the region's water management challenges exist. To make these solutions work, clear incentives are needed to change the way water is managed, conserved, and allocated. To make these solutions work, countries in the region will also need to better engage water users, civil society, and youth. The failure of policies to address water challenges can have severe impacts on people's well-being and political stability. The strategic question for the region is whether countries will act with foresight and resolve to strengthen water security, or whether they will wait to react to the inevitable disruptions of water crises

Towards a new generation of policies and investments in agricultural water in the Arab region: fertile ground for innovation. Background paper prepared for the high level meeting on agricultural water policies and investments

The Arab region needs a new generation of policies and investments in agricultural water. Agricultural water management has always posed challenges and opportunities in the Arab world. However, unprecedented and accelerating drivers such as climate change, population growth, and land degradation make agricultural water management a more urgent priority than ever before. In addition, as part of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, Arab countries have committed to work towards an ambitious set of development targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unless the right policies and investments are put in place, it will be difficult to achieve the SDGs, including ending hunger and providing clean water and sanitation for all. This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute to foster dialogue on agricultural water policies and investments in the context of the FAO led Regional Water Scarcity initiative. The purpose of the paper is to frame the key challenges and opportunities in the sector – including emerging innovations in digital agriculture, water accounting, water supply and wastewater reuse – and to lay out broad strategic directions for action

Tackling the Trickle: Ensuring Sustainable Water Management in the Arab Region

Abstract Water scarcity in the Arab region is intensifying due to population growth, economic development, and the impacts of climate change. It is manifested in groundwater depletion, freshwater ecosystem degradation, deteriorating water quality, low levels of water storage per capita, and added pressures on transboundary water resources. High‐income Arab countries have sought to circumvent the ever‐present challenges of water scarcity through agricultural imports (virtual water trade), desalination, and, increasingly, wastewater reuse. In this review article, we argue that the narrative of water scarcity and supply‐side technological fixes masks more systemic issues that threaten sustainable water management, including underperforming water utilities, protracted armed conflict and displacement, agricultural policies aimed at self‐sufficiency, evolving food consumption behaviors, the future of energy markets, and educational policy. Water management challenges, particularly on the demand side, and responses in the Arab region cannot be understood in isolation from these broader regional and international political and socioeconomic trends. Recognizing the complex and interdependent challenges of water management is the first step in reforming approaches and shifting to more sustainable development outcomes and stability in the Arab region and beyond

Decision Analysis for Management of Natural Hazards

Losses from natural hazards, including geophysical and hydrometeorological hazards, have been increasing worldwide. This review focuses on the process by which scientific evidence about natural hazards is applied to support decision making. Decision analysis typically involves estimating the probability of extreme events; assessing the potential impacts of those events from a variety of perspectives; and evaluating options to plan for, mitigate, or react to events. We consider issues that affect decisions made across a range of natural hazards, summarize decision methodologies, and provide examples of applications of decision analysis to the management of natural hazards. We conclude that there is potential for further exchange of ideas and experience between natural hazard research communities on decision analysis approaches. Broader application of decision methodologies to natural hazard management and evaluation of existing decision approaches can potentially lead to more efficient allocation of scarce resources and more efficient risk management

Il Progetto SEE-GeoForm: uno strumento per la consultazione di dati geologici e di pericolosità sismica riferiti all’intero territorio nazionale

Il progetto SEE-GeoForm (Site Effects Evaluation - Geological Form: http://www.seegeoform.it) nasce con l’obiettivo di realizzare uno strumento semplice, potente e completo per la consultazione e la rappresentazione, tramite un WebGIS, di dati geologici, geomorfologici, geotecnici e geofisici relativi all’intero territorio italiano. In questo modo, si vogliono concentrare in un sistema flessibile e intuitivo, dotato di un’unica modalità di accesso e consultazione, una serie di informazioni che attualmente sono disperse in numerosi database mono-tematici consultabili via Internet. Attualmente il WebGIS contiene dati georeferenziati e carte tematiche relative alla pericolosità sismica a differenti scale territoriali e per diverse unità amministrative (regioni, province e comuni). Le informazioni provengono sia da banche dati esistenti che da elaborazioni effettuate “ad hoc” nell’ambito di questo progetto (carte tematiche in scala 1:100.000 del territorio italiano). Per rendere il sistema più flessibile ed aggiornabile è stata sviluppata una piattaforma che utilizza esclusivamente tecnologie “open source”, basate sulle linee guida dell’Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC); in questo modo è stato possibile realizzare alcuni moduli tematici che sono totalmente compatibili con il protocollo standard denominato WMS (Web Map Services) per la consultazione e la visualizzazione spaziale dei dati tramite Internet

Sustainability nexus AID: infrastructure resilience

Infrastructure resilience advanced through nexus thinking is pivotal for societies to handle disruptions and ensure sustainable functionality. This interconnected approach understands infrastructure as an interdependent complex system and enables cooperative planning to achieve resilience. However, challenges like data inadequacy, financial limitations and governance issues impede its adoption, especially in developing regions. The United Nations University (UNU) Sustainability Nexus Analytics, Informatics and Data (AID) Programme strives to promote integrated resource management for sustainable development and fulfilling the UN 2030 Agenda. Through its Infrastructure Resilience Module, the initiative provides tools, data platforms and localised capacity building to empower professionals and communities for evidence-based, collaborative decision-making accounting for intersectoral relationships. By supporting context-specific analytical capabilities, bridging data gaps, and governance silos, the programme aims to pave the way for resilient and sustainable infrastructure development, particularly across vulnerable regions in the Global South, which face disproportionate infrastructure service disruptions

Quantifying climate risks to infrastructure systems: a comparative review of developments across infrastructure sectors

Infrastructure systems are particularly vulnerable to climate hazards, such as flooding, wildfires, cyclones and temperature fluctuations. Responding to these threats in a proportionate and targeted way requires quantitative analysis of climate risks, which underpins infrastructure resilience and adaptation strategies. The aim of this paper is to review the recent developments in quantitative climate risk analysis for key infrastructure sectors, including water and wastewater, telecommunications, health and education, transport (seaports, airports, road, rail and inland waterways), and energy (generation, transmission and distribution). We identify several overarching research gaps, which include the (i) limited consideration of multi-hazard and multi-infrastructure interactions within a single modelling framework, (ii) scarcity of studies focusing on certain combinations of climate hazards and infrastructure types, (iii) difficulties in scaling-up climate risk analysis across geographies, (iv) increasing challenge of validating models, (v) untapped potential of further knowledge spillovers across sectors, (vi) need to embed equity considerations into modelling frameworks, and (vii) quantifying a wider set of impact metrics. We argue that a cross-sectoral systems approach enables knowledge sharing and a better integration of infrastructure interdependencies between multiple sectors

Realizing resilience for decision-making

Researchers and decision-makers lack a shared understanding of resilience, and practical applications in environmental resource management are rare. Here, we define social-ecological resilience as a property of social-ecological systems that includes at least three main characteristics — resistance, recovery and robustness (the ‘three Rs’). We define socio-economic resilience management as planning, adaptation and transformational actions that may influence these system characteristics. We integrate the three Rs into a heuristic for resilience management that we apply in multiple management contexts to offer practical, systematic guidance about how to realize resilience

Why I study Earth sciences

I present here the reasons why I chose to pursue a University degree in Earth sciences. Although this topic might at first seem unrelated to geoethics, it is somehow connected to it. I will show how my decision to study Earth sciences was influenced by geoethical considerations, even though I did not consider them as such when I made my decision. My choice is explained using four representative words: ‘wonder’, ‘environment’, ‘system’ and ‘Anthropocene’. The idea of Anthropocene is discussed in detail because of its relevance to geoethic

Climate change and water resources: risk-based approaches for decision-making

Water-resource managers are facing unprecedented challenges in accommodating the large uncertainties associated with climate change in their planning decisions. Integration of climate risk information is a pre-requisite for water resources planning under a changing climate, yet this information is often presented outside the decision-making context and in a way which is not relevant for the decision at hand. Furthermore, there is a lack of approaches that explicitly evaluate the impact of nonstationary climate change on decision-relevant metrics and variables. This thesis describes novel methods for incorporating uncertain information on climate change in water resources decision-making and estimating climate change-related risks in water resources systems. The main hypotheses of this thesis are that: (1) shifting away from planning approaches based on abstract supply-demand balance metrics towards risk-based approaches that quantify the frequency and severity of observable outcomes of concern to water users, such as water shortages, can help decision-makers establish preferences among actions and identify cost and climate risk reduction trade-offs (2) adopting risk-based planning methods allows water managers to characterize and account for different sources of uncertainty in the water planning process and to understand their impact on outcomes of value and decisions. To test these hypotheses, this thesis presents an analytic approach for (1) incorporating nonstationary climate change projections and other uncertain factors related to demand changes into water resources decision-making, (2) understanding trade-offs between benefits of climate risk-reduction and cost of climate change adaptation, and (3) characterizing water supply vulnerability to unprecedented drought conditions. The approach is applied to London’s urban water supply system located in the Thames river basin, south-east of England. Results from this thesis demonstrate how a systematic characterization of uncertainties related to future hydro-climatic conditions can help decision-makers compare and choose between a range of possible water management options and decide upon the scale and timing of implementation that meet decision-makers' risk tolerability. Additionally, results show the benefits of combining climate information with vulnerability analysis to test decisions' robustness to unprecedented drought conditions. The application of the proposed methods to the London urban water supply system suggests that the risks of exceeding reliability targets in the future will increase if no further supply or demand side actions were to be taken. Results from the case study also show that changes in demand due to population growth could have greater impacts on water security than climate change and that small reductions in climate-related risk may come at significantly higher costs. It should be stressed that the results from the case study are based on a simplified representation of London’s water supply system and that they should be further tested with the full system model employed by the water utility which implements more complex operational rules.</p