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Appendix 01: Speakers’ summary notes
Adaptation to water scarcity and drought in the Mediterranean region
ANA IGLESIAS
PLENARY SESSION 7:
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION, RESILIENCE, AND LINKAGES TO FOOD SECURITY
Drought and water scarcity will intensify in the future
From Syria to Spain, the Mediterranean has sustained his people for millenniums. But rapid changes in population, lifestyle and climate change are turning the region into conflict over water and land. The last ten years were the hottest on the global record and in many Mediterranean areas were also the driest. The resulting crop failures and water imbalances, causing instability in many rural areas, and challenging human development. There is a great collective effort to address the drought problem, from science to policy, but many issues remain unsolved.
A new report by the United Nations highlights the alarming increase in human and economic losses from drought. In the Mediterranean countries drought, aridity, water shortage, water scarcity and desertification are common and overlapping problems.
Climate change projections for the region indicate an increased likelihood of droughts and variability of precipitation – in time, space, and intensity – that would directly influence water resources availability. The combination of long-term change (e.g., warmer average temperatures) and greater extremes (e.g., droughts) can have decisive impacts on water demand, with further impact on the ecosystems. Under all climate change scenarios in the Mediterranean region, available water resources decrease while irrigation demand increases. The human dimension of climate change in
the Mediterranean may not stop at the country’ boundaries, since there is the potential for more pronounced water conflicts with neighbouring regions (i.e. transboundary issues in the Nile and in many shared aquifers).
Drought management and policy
Water scarcity and drought have multidimensional implications for society and therefore no single management action, legislation or policy can respond to all aspects and demand objectives. However, effective measures to cope with long- term drought and water scarcity are limited and difficult to implement due to the variety of stakeholders involved and the lack of adequate means to negotiate new policies.
In the Mediterranean, national governments and the local authorities have responded to extreme drought vigorously, taking emergency measures, but so far the responses have focused on the effects of drought ex post, rather than on anticipatory measures ex ante (i.e., developing a drought management plan, and coherent resource management). In general, these efforts have neglected to build the capacity needed to deal with similar situations in the future. Information on possible longer-term climate forecasts and/or development of plausible scenarios has not yet been incorporated into any specific action plans.
Drought management plans are actions taken by individuals, industry, organisations or institutions before drought occurs to minimise the risk of damage. The plans may be developed under the Hyogo framework, and therefore provide a comprehensive setting to address disaster risk reduction.
There are strong differences among actions in their nature, expected effectiveness, societal impact or economic costs, so it is necessary to organize their timely activation within the framework of the drought management plan. Not all actions are suitable and applicable in every situation and moment. Drought management plans may be simple or complex depending on the territorial and institutional scope. Nevertheless, a drought management plan may propose some main common elements. First a plan needs to define the institutional and stakeholders roles in the declaration of drought and the evaluation and revision of the plan. Second the plan should provide the tools and methods for the diagnosis of drought risk. This is not easy since drought is characterized by a high level of complexity. The diagnostic rules and criteria have to capture the complexity of drought and at the same time be transparent and easily evaluated by the stakeholders. There is a range of tools and models that can be use in this diagnostic process -- from indices
to complex models of hydrological and land use dynamics. Although indicators are simplifications of reality, they play an important role in the definition of thresholds for risk management. Third, an essential component of the plan is the definition of the management objectives in each drought level and selection of the drought management
FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change, land use and food security