Water & Climate Change Task Force

• Conduct a survey to identify areas this task force could bring most value to early career and young professionals
• Establish a social media campaign focused on highlighting IWRA early career and young professional (ECYP) members
• Start a webinar series focused on topics of importance to ECYPs
• Establish partnerships with international young water professional organizations
• Develop plan for engaging ECYPs in IWRA’s upcoming congress and other major activities, including the World Water Forum
• Increase membership and engagement of ECYPs in overall IWRA activities

This is the process of planting new trees and creating new forest lands, thereby increasing carbon sequestration, flood protection and stabilising soils. These advantages along with shortcomings posed by a lack of biodiversity and reductions in recharge will be explored, along with case studies from Ethiopia and Pakistan.

The Paris Agreement and IPCC have called for deployment of various negative carbon emission measures over the next decades. In partnership with the French Water Partnership, an analysis of the benefits and risks of CDR strategies will be explored. Examples include bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and agriculture, forestry and other land-use (AFOLU); a formalized literature search on these strategies will be conducted.

An important climate mitigation strategy is to change how energy is used in pumping water, either by reducing pumping, changing the supply of energy to “greener” energy, or increasing efficiency of energy use. For example, drinking water and wastewater systems account for about 3 to 4% of energy use in the USA (EPA, Energy Efficiency in Water and Wastewater Facilities). Similarly agriculture is the biggest user of water, and much of that is pumped. UN Water says that one quarter of the energy used globally is expended on food production and supply. The energy, water and climate change working group will explore solutions to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emitting energy use in supplying water. The group will look at supply and demand for technologies, their management and policies to support change to less energy demanding practice.  The first task will be a review article and to lay out the issues. We will also aim to produce a review paper for water international.

From a global perspective, the last 30 years have been the warmest since accurate records began over 100 years ago. The period has also been remarkable for the frequency and intensity of extremes of weather and climate, including increased rainfall in intensity and amount, increasing the likelihood of flooding.  The working group will cover issues of flood risk, urban infrastructure and transportation, policy and regulations, insurance, landslides, early warning systems and climate change.

With climate change, and temperatures rising faster at higher elevations, mountains around the world are experiencing high glacier and snow melt compounded with changing precipitation patterns.  The consequences are changing river flow patterns which serve cities, ecosystems and agriculture.  Often times the rivers are transboundary in nature.  For example, the Hindu Kush-Himalaya In spite of the possibly high economic and environmental consequences, less is known about the impacts and how to manage them. This working group, led by David Molden, will prepare a policy brief and overview paper for Water International.

In many areas, the water quality of surface water and groundwater is being increasingly degraded due to factors including a lack of human waste management, urbanization, and agricultural practices. The influence of climate change on these developing concerns will be analyzed in the context of existing man-made and naturally-occurring water pollution. Existing and emerging water quality restoration technologies will be presented.