Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: Realistically, water managers (planners, designers,operators) can’t do much about preventing globalwarming, any more than they can affect contemporaryclimate. Historically, water management has been aprocess of continuous adaptation to the considerablevagaries of climate variability, and accommodations forany uncertainties associated with our lack ofunderstanding about climate cycles by introducingredundancies into engineering design. Adaptivemanagement (monitoring and learning from mistakes)has been the foundation of water resources managementsince the time of Noah. The key point is that societalresponse to both conditions, variability and change, isvirtually the same, i.e., to upgrade and intensifyintroduction of innovative and cost effective supply-sideand demand-side management measures, and continue tocreate institutions that are more flexible in adapting toboth social and physical changes. However, policyinitiatives that affect legal and institutional controls onwater management are likely to play a much larger rolein future adaptation to climate change than technical andengineering responses. Engineers can design and operatetheir systems more efficiently to increase robustness andresiliency and reduce vulnerability, but institutionalarrangements must be reconfigured to ensure that futurewater resources services can be provided in a sustainableand equitable manner under a wider range of circumstances.There are two tiers of adaptive management changes -policy mandates and agency/utility implementation.Many of the changes that will position society to betterdeal with future climate change uncertainty are alreadybeing debated and implemented in the context of policiesand institutional reforms to deal with an evermorecomplex host of issues, and include such matters as riverbasin compacts; defining new partnership roles betweenFederal, state, and local entities; nonstructural flooddamage reduction; the valuation of water both as aneconomic and environmental good; and the increasingrequirements for environmental protection and aquaticecosystem restoration. These are the strategic policychanges that will impose or influence future watermanagement goals, objectives, and responses on therespective water management agencies. The componentsof water resources management that are directly under thecontrol of or influenced by water managers includeadoption of improved methods of hydrologic analysiscoupled with risk analysis, improvement of forecastingmethods for system-wide analysis, and more integratedanalyses of multiple watershed needs and outcomes. Inaddition, fundamental criteria that affect projectinvestment analysis and the choice of moreenvironmentally benign alternatives are being modifiedso that future systems will be more robust and resilient toanticipated climate change, as well as to evolving societaldemands.
Authors: Eugene Z. Stakhiv, Kyle E. Schilling
Language: English
Subfield: Water Science and Technology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W158330040