Wilby 2020 Water - Resilience Viewed through the Lens of Climate Change and Water Management.pdf (2.84 MB)
Resilience viewed through the lens of climate change and water management
Resilience is not a new idea but there has been an upsurge in efforts to operationalize the concept within water management. This review begins with a synopsis of related themes around persistent and emerging pressures on freshwaters; environmental thresholds (or tipping points); ‘safe’ operating conditions; multiple stable states; regime shifts. A case is made for viewing and managing the resilience of water systems at nested scales. Indicators are needed to track evolving climate risks as well as to measure socio-ecological responses. Catchment properties can identify those river systems that are more or less likely to return to a pre-disturbance state; resilience further depends on institutional and social landscapes. Ideally, allied notions of resistance and reliability are applied alongside resilience to broaden the portfolio of adaptation measures. Water managers would also benefit from more consistent use of resilience terminology; incentives to build back better after catastrophes; strategic monitoring of incipient threats and tipping points; availability of long-term adaptation indicators; coordinated efforts to reduce non-climatic pressures on freshwaters (especially in headwaters); evidence-based, practical guidance on adaptation measures that build resilience.
Funding
Environment Agency
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
WaterVolume
12Issue
9Pages
2510Publisher
MDPIVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
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© The authorPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-09-03Publication date
2020-09-09Copyright date
2020ISSN
2073-4441Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Prof Robert Leonard Wilby . Deposit date: 9 September 2020Article number
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