The Australian Water Partnership (AWP) has published a policy brief based on the research conducted by Dr. Hemant Ojha, IFSD and Prof Nicholas Schofield, Global Future Research.
The brief highlights seven key messages:
- Focus on content: For an integrated risk assessment it is crucial to localize risk assessments to specific socioecological zones and work across different sectors.
- Anticipate and iterate: Realizing the possibility of limited knowledge and uncertainty along with testing, learning, and iterating over time is necessary to manage large uncertainties.
- Identify solutions that work to achieve multiple goals: Since water is a cross-sectoral system, implementing solutions in local water system can provide benefits across other sectors in different scales. Strengthening cross-sectoral coordination in water management can deliver multiple benefits and help build system-wide resilience.
- Be inclusive and co-design solutions: For proper water management, it is imperative to ensure inclusive participation in the decision-making process.
- Link policy and actions across scales: It is important to strengthen policy making and implementation related collaboration among and across all levels for effective policy outcomes.
- Share knowledge and strengthen partnerships: The process of sharing and further co-creating knowledge by building on local knowledge is required to enhance water security.
- Integrate focused projects with high-level coordinated management: Current risk management can be enhanced by articulating the risk mitigation strategy in a coordinated way to stakeholders in different sectors and scales
The report is titled Climate Risk and Water Security in the Indo-Pacific: Risks, Responses, and a Framework for Action. It has reviewed hundreds of studies of both predicted climate impacts and responses at multiple levels of governance, to distill a framework for climate action for water security.
To read the policy brief, please visit this AWP page.
