Climate change is accelerating even as countries across the globe devise strategies to mitigate its impacts and adapt to new normal. The effects of climate change are most acutely felt through impacts on the water cycle and water-related extreme events. In order to ensure water supply for humans and the environment while simultaneously meeting the world’s ambitious climate and development goals, decision makers and regulators will need to adopt a new paradigm for resilient water management that embraces the uncertain future ahead. Enabling climate resilience and sustainable development depends critically on urgent and ambitious emissions reductions coupled with coordinated sustained and increasingly ambitious adaptation actions (IPCC, 2019). The goal of this three-day conference, held immediately prior to COP26, is to build capacity around new approaches to assessing and addressing climate risk across sectors, including their vast potential within global climate policy and sustainable development agendas.
The first day of the conference will begin with an overview of the role of water in sustainable development policies. The event will then move to high-level policy discussion on how a new paradigm of “bottom-up” approaches for resilient water management fit into NDCs, SDGs, and other national climate or development programs. The first day will be finalized with the launch of a policy brief.
On the second day, the opening remarks on a complementary set of bottom-up approaches to climate adaptation will be followed by three panels with selected speakers from the webinar series “Adaptation in an age of uncertainty: tools for climate-resilient water management approaches” co-organized by UNESCO, AGWA and ICIWARM.
Finally, on a third day, high-level speakers will bring their insights on the priorities and ambitions for COP26, followed by a session on practical approaches to institutionalize solutions, secure stakeholder engagement and enhance capacity building. The event will conclude with a synthesis of the conference to be presented at COP26.
General and Specific Objectives
The objectives of this conference are: 1) to introduce participants to the technical and practical components of bottom-up approaches for climate adaptation; 2) to share a global set of case studies; 3) to identify the policies and institutional capacity needed to more widely incorporating these approaches within national climate programs, climate finance, and the private sector; 4) to present the outcome of the conference to policy community at COP26.
The specific objectives include:
Understanding the impact of climate change on freshwater resources in terms of both economic development and ecological sustainability
Comparing “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to risk assessment
Defining the characteristics of a “resilient” water management approach
Understanding the similarities and distinctions between different bottom-up approaches and the various contexts in which they can be applied
Understanding the role of citizen science in designing a resilient water management approach
Addressing the gap between data and information in support of integrated water resources management
Identifying the roles of natural and built infrastructure, as well as way to define and compare risks/benefits
Defining the role of stakeholder groups in the planning and decision making process
Understanding key concepts such as climate stress tests, weather generators, performance metrics, etc.
Exploring the potential of bottom-up approaches for the private sector, private sector finance, and WASH communities
Identifying potential applications relating to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or other national climate or development programs
Defining feasible funding mechanisms and the broader role of climate finance in resilient water management.
The conference will be a contribution to the citizen science strategy within the framework of the recently approved IHP-IX 2022-2029, and the open science recommendation, adopted by UNESCO in 2021.