Water: The Resilience Multiplier

Greetings!

Recently I was in a meeting that included members of the global intelligence and strategic economic engagement community. Our shared question was how we should achieve water security, but the mix of players was, for me at least, unusual and interesting: was there a way I could reframe resilience in a way that made sense for this audience?

I relish those times when I can work beyond the world of water specialists. In this case, I drew upon a discussion in the UN Security Council recently that described climate change as a “threat multiplier.” What was meant here is that climate change per se is most important in terms of how climate impacts interact with other drivers, such as human mobility, urbanization, weak or unequal governance systems, and overuse or damage to our natural capital and ecosystems. 

Water, I suggested to the group, functions as a “resilience multiplier,” especially if we can see water as a connector and a medium for resilience rather than just as a hazard, threat, or sector. I believe this also means that we can shift from talking about climate change adaptation primarily as a way to avoid negative impacts to asking very different questions: what does prosperity look like in a shifting climate? How do we build equity and social-ecological resilience in a shifting climate? Perhaps we can even communicate with our kids and even young professionals in a more positive way: how can we make your lives better than ours? 

We (and by we, I mean we as members of AGWA) know enough now about climate adaptation that we can articulate resilience as a way to build better communities together rather than just excising the illness of global warming.

John Matthews

Corvallis, Oregon, USA