Future scenarios: the impact of climate change and droughts on transboundary water dispute and management
- Resumen
- Future climate scenarios predict a general increase in the temporal variability of hydroclimatic conditions. With water demand on the rise at the same time, water systems will likely become less reliable and more vulnerable to the occurrence of extreme events such as droughts. The paper explores how future changes in hydroclimatic variability and drought occurrence may influence the hydropolitics of transboundary rivers and discusses the challenge of integrated management of international river basins. Analyses are based on global data of past events of conflict and cooperation in international river basins from the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database of Oregon State University, and on hydroclimatic variables for the basins. The records suggest that drought has been a major hydrological event to influence hydropolitics worldwide. A model classifying risk for conflict explores and confirms a strong relevance of hydroclimate, in particular its variability, for potential conflict. While global climate and hydrological models do not yet produce reliable predictions of future changes to drought events, climate scenarios generally suggest that water stress will increase in many of the basins that have experienced conflict before. The likelihood for many basins in climatic transition regions to experience changes from moderate to severe water scarcity suggests an urgent need for robust water allocation agreements for transboundary rivers. Formulating such agreements is difficult in a situation in which water resources management can no longer rely on assumptions of stationarity to predict water availability and in which future water demand is highly uncertain.
- Autor
- Stahl, Kerstin
- Palabras Clave
- Cambio climático, Sequías, Recursos hídricos, Cuencas fluviales, Cooperación internacional
- Idioma
- Inglés
- Documentos
- Ponencia ( 12 pag, 311 Kb )
- Presentación
Otros Documentos relacionados:
- Documento Final Semanas Temáticas
- Conclusiones Tribuna del Agua
- Existe un Video disponible en el Centro de Documentación