Re-thinking drought in an era of New Normals: AGWA’s ongoing partnership with Deltares and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management
Written by Ingrid Timboe, AGWA’s Policy Director
I’m writing this blog post from my home in the western United States, a region covering over 4.85 million square kilometers of land, a staggering 95% of which is currently experiencing drought conditions. The temperature where I live in Portland, Oregon is currently 40ºC, which is about 10-15 degrees above historic summer averages, after having hit an all-time record high of 46ºC only a few weeks ago. In past years, these conditions would have rightly been considered extreme. No longer. We now know that climate change is helping to usher in a new era; we are instead experiencing “New Normals.”
One of the challenges in normalizing our changing climate is what to do about concepts like drought, which imply a departure from typical conditions. If weather patterns are changing, leading to the intensification or prolongment of dryness for decades or even centuries, are we still experiencing drought? This may sound like pure semantics, but what we call things matters. It matters in part because the primary way we currently address drought is premised on a goal of returning to a baseline, non-drought state as quickly as possible. Under New Normals that baseline, often grounded on historic 30-year averages, may no longer be relevant or even attainable.
For many of us – Portlanders such as myself included – we may never be able to go back, at least not until the climate stabilizes through a rapid and steep reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And even then, much of the change is already baked into the climate system, meaning we will still need to adapt to living with water scarcity. We can do this by transforming our drought management systems and approaches to match our transformed climate.
For the past few years, AGWA has been working with the Dutch Ministry for Infrastructure and Water Management and the Dutch research institute, Deltares, to re-think how to manage water scarcity in a world marked by rapid climate change. On the policy side, we have sought to link the policy agendas of the global disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate communities around this topic of water scarcity, highlighting the role of robust and flexible water management solutions in addressing water risks related to climate change adaptation and mitigation as well as natural hazards, such as drought.
We have also supported the work of the High-Level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water & Disasters, developing a short background paper on the need for updated drought management strategies that take climate risk into account. This year we received additional funding from Deltares to work with a core group of technical experts to develop a flagship report on drought and climate change, featuring case studies from around the world and offering recommendations for water managers, policy makers and finance institutions. Though this work, we hope to mainstream climate risk assessment into water planning and management so that events once considered extreme – both drought and floods – can be prepared for and responded to in ways that acknowledge and incorporate shifting baselines.
We firmly believe that it is possible to live with New Normals, but it will require a hard look at current practices and a willingness to reimagine our relationship to water. We feel fortunate to have such close partners in the Netherlands – and around the world – championing this important work, and we look forward to sharing it with you all very soon! If you would like to learn more, drop me a line at: itimboe@alliance4water.org.