Climate Change and Water

For our Exploring Sustainability course we were charged with reviewing a work relating to our chosen ambit. I chose water management issues for my ambit, and for this assignment I chose a documentary I found on www.videos.google.com entitled:

Global Warming:Change Begins With Learning - Four Part Series - Global Warming: Science and Society, Climate Change and Water, Rights and Runoff,Program Four featuring the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Corporate Environmental Manangement Dr. Gary Libecap, and Professor of Hydrology Dr. Christina Tague, moderated by Jon Clark from the CEC
Produced by the University of California Santa Barbara Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management the Community Environmental Council (CEC) February 12, 2007

I would imagine that some may find this documentary to be a little dry (no pun intended), but I found it very interesting. I guess I must be used to it, after watching the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation I’m eager to see how other states are handling water management issues. California has some tough times ahead of it, because its water rights are so intermingled with those of the Pacific North Western states, Arizona and Nevada.

It was not so long ago that water management was controlled locally. It is only in the last hundred years or so that water use has moved from a rural concentration to an urban concentration. With the advent of running water, the demand increased both in urban environments and in rural ones.

Global warming is being manifested in many different ways, which is affecting natural capital with changes in ecosystem services, biodiversity and water availability. These changes are having effects on all aspects of the environment. The media is bringing a lot more attention to this growing change in our planet’s ecology and we all wonder what this will mean in the future? It is this question that Climate Change and Water seeks to answer.

As the planet heats up, the hydrologic cycle is affected. Snow melts, glaciers melt, ocean levels rise. There will be a change in the seasons, with a change in when water is available to plants and animals. Species that have depended on and adjusted to a certain schedule will now find that they are off just enough to make life difficult for them. In California, plants are dependant on lots of water in the spring with late summer droughts. If there is a shortage of snow, or if the snows melt too early, there will be less water in August, and that will affect both plants and animals.

The ecosystems will be able to respond if we give them room. We have to accept that we no longer have a static climate, and adjust accordingly. One of the first things we need to address is food production. The agricultural areas in California have a choice of whether to sell their excess water downriver, and are doing that now, because they have enough. There are even some farmers letting fields lie fallow because it is more lucrative to sell the water than the produce. We've grown up in a society of abundance and now must rethink water management practices. We need to decide whose needs are best served by management practices. We will need to learn to grow food in urban landscapes (Don's urban farming!)
We need to put a dollar amount on natural capital, allowing that it is a valuable resource in its own right, taking into account its Total Economic Value. Urban centers actually don't use tremendous amounts of water in a hedonistic manner, as is thought. The cost to water in urban areas is actually what they're putting in the water, the damage they do to the ecosystem services.

The next steps, according to Professor Tangue and Professor Libecap are to look at watersheds as being much larger than we currently do. We need to look at regional management, not on the micro level. Water managers need to be trained in all aspects of water managers, not in specialties, as they are now. Water markets need to be developed, like the one in Chili. And we must begin to consider the total economic value of water. We can't afford not to. It is the gold of the 21st century, and if we can learn to manage water, we might actually learn how to heal this beautiful world.