Coping with Global Warming and Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC 2007, p. 9 has identified five key areas subject to impacts from increasing global average temperature: water, ecosystems, food, coasts, and health. A closer reading of the text of the IPCC report shows that many of the most serious impacts on the nonwater areas are, in fact, mediated via water. So, for instance, impacts on food are largely due to hydrological changes; in fact, aridity has major impacts on food, ecosystems, and human health. The pivotal role of water impacts, and hence water’s importance to adaptation, is also stressed in the Stern Report 2006 . Thinking about the relative issues involved in climate change, Mike Muller 2007 of the Global Water Partnership GWP said, “if it’s mitigation, then the focus is rightfully energy, and if it’s adaptation, it will be water resources!” By this he implied that the bulk of the mitigation strategies for climate change deal with handling the use of energy resources, while the adaptation strategies will be mostly driven by water concerns. Hence, we should focus on the water-adaptation strategies, bearing in mind that adaptation for other sectors may include many of the same, or similar, strategies.