Water crowding, precipitation shifts, and a new paradigm in water governance

Concerns regarding the quality and quantity of available freshwater are mounting worldwide. Rising human populations and our ravenous consumption have given rise to the Anthropocene, an age in which humanity has begun to alter the functioning of the earth's natural life-support systems, including the planet's renewable water resources. In the journal Ecohydrology, a large consortium of authors from global water institutions and universities makes the case that humankind needs to embrace a new paradigm in water management and governance to address this challenge. They describe the water science that supports their conclusion, and outline the demands on this new governance structure.
 
Using numerous examples, the authors demonstrate that the risk and prevalence of water-related shocks has grown in recent decades. With indications that this pattern of growth will continue, there is a growing urgency for a water governance strategy centered on the concept of resilience that will allow society to mitigate potential future damage, while coping with changing conditions. According to the authors, two factors spur the demand for a new approach: water crowding and instability in the water supply. Water crowding refers to the growing demand for finite water resources, which leads to competition between domestic users, ecological systems, agriculture, and industry. And water instability has become an increasingly acute challenge as the result of climate change and human-induced changes in the landscape that affect regional water storage capacity and precipitation patterns. The interaction between water crowding and supply instability complicates and magnifies the challenge of water management.
 
Competition for water resources is increasing as a result of numerous factors, they write. Most obvious is the continued growth and development of many national populations. Each person requires a minimum amount of water. Domestic water scarcity corresponds to an accessible supply of less than 1,000 m3 of water per person per year. Already 2.3 billion of the world's people fall victim to water scarcity. The expansion of the global middle class will further increase water demand as consumption rises with income. Food production, for example, is projected to grow by 50 to 70 percent by the year 2050. Industrial water use is also forecast to increase by a factor of four. All increases in human consumption compete with ecological water requirements, and crowding results. 
 
On a crowded planet, unreliable access to resources can lead to disaster. Climate change is one source of instability, as both floods and droughts are expected to occur more frequently in the coming decades. Neither improves access to freshwater resources. Additionally, the observed pattern of glacial melt threatens the water supply in many regions around the world. Changes in water supply can also result from accumulated impacts at the landscape scale. Deforestation and other changes in land cover are driving regional shifts in the pattern of precipitation. Such shifts can lead to desertification and lower water availability, leaving communities and ecosystems high and dry. 

The escalation of these troubling patterns highlights the tight socio-ecological coupling of water issues. The authors suggest that a strategy sufficient to cope with these challenges will be grounded in resiliency and must look beyond the traditional boundaries of the water sector. Such an approach will require building connections between organizations, levels of governance, and realms of ecological and intellectual discourse that today remain isolated and insufficient. Linking multiple stakeholders in a conversation surrounding productive approaches to water management will provide an opportunity to unlock innovations with the broadest possible benefit. 
 
The authors suggest numerous policies constituting a new water paradigm based in resiliency and cognizant of intimate social-ecological relationships. For example, they argue that an increasingly diversified economy could increase water security through smart trading practices that ship goods with large amounts of embedded water to regions of the globe suffering under regional water scarcity (Allan 2001). Intelligent "virtual water" trading can alleviate both social and ecological stress. Monetary incentives could also be provided to farmers that implement water-wise agricultural practices. Carbon tax revenues, yet to be realized, could provide a sustainable source of funding for this and similar programs. More broadly, the wider implementation of accounting practices that capture the true value of water in all of its many functions will be required. By focusing on strategies such as these that mutually benefit human and ecological systems we can build a more resilient future for the planet and the water that nourishes us all.