Diagnosing challenges and setting priorities for sustainable water resource management under climate change.

Managing transboundary river basins requires balancing tradeoffs of sustainable water use and coping with climate uncertainty. We demonstrate an integrated approach to exploring these issues through the lens of a social-ecological system, combining remote and in-situ earth observations, hydrologic and climate models, and social surveys. Specifically, we examine how climate change and dam development could impact the Se Kong, Se San and Sre Pok rivers in the Mekong region. We find that climate change will lead to increased precipitation, necessitating a shift in dam operations, from maintaining low flows to reducing flood hazards. We also find that existing water governance systems in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia are ill-prepared to address the problem. We conclude that the solution space for addressing these complex issues will be highly constrained unless major deficiencies in transboundary water governance, strategic planning, financial capacity, information sharing, and law enforcement are remedied in the next decades.

Integrating Ecosystem Services Into Water Resource Management: An Indicator-Based Approach.

Natural ecosystems are fundamental to local water cycles and the water ecosystem services that humans enjoy, such as water provision, outdoor recreation, and flood protection. However, integrating ecosystem services into water resources management requires that they be acknowledged, quantified, and communicated to decision-makers. We present an indicator framework that incorporates the supply of, and demand for, water ecosystem services. This provides an initial diagnostic for water resource managers and a mechanism for evaluating tradeoffs through future scenarios. Building on a risk assessment framework, we present a three-tiered indicator for measuring where demand exceeds the supply of services, addressing the scope (spatial extent), frequency, and amplitude for which objectives (service delivery) are not met. The Ecosystem Service Indicator is measured on a 0-100 scale, which encompasses none to total service delivery. We demonstrate the framework and its applicability to a variety of services and data sources (e.g., monitoring stations, statistical yearbooks, modeled datasets) from case studies in China and Southeast Asia. We evaluate the sensitivity of the indicator scores to varying levels data and three methods of calculation using a simulated test dataset. Our indicator framework is conceptually simple, robust, and flexible enough to offer a starting point for decision-makers and to accommodate the evolution and expansion of tools, models and data sources used to measure and evaluate the value of water ecosystem services.

Operationalizing Integrated Water Resource Management in Latin America: Insights from Application of the Freshwater Health Index.

Water crises in Latin America are more a consequence of poor management than resource scarcity. Addressing water management issues through better coordination, identification of problems and solutions, and agreement on common objectives to operationalize integrated water resources management (IWRM) could greatly improve water governance in the region. Composite indices have great potential to help overcome capacity and information challenges while supporting better IWRM. We applied one such index, the Freshwater Health Index (FHI) in three river basins in Latin America (Alto Mayo, Perú; Bogotá, Colombia; and Guandu, Brazil) to assess freshwater ecosystem vitality, ecosystem services, and the water governance system in place. The approach included convening management agencies, water utilities, planning authorities, local NGOs and industries, community groups and researchers to co-implement the FHI. The results provide detailed information on the ecological integrity of each basin and the sustainability of the ecosystem services being provided. All three basins show very low scores for governance and stakeholder engagement, thus improving both in the region should be a priority. The results also shed light on how the FHI framework can help inform decision-making to improve IWRM implementation by facilitating stakeholder engagement while contributing to coordination, identification of problems and solutions as well as agreement on common objectives. Because implementation of IWRM is part of the solution for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.5 ("By 2030, implement IWRM at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate"), our case studies can serve as examples to other Latin American countries to achieve SDG 6.5.

Integrating the social, hydrological and ecological dimensions of freshwater health: The Freshwater Health Index.

Degradation of freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide is a primary cause of increasing water insecurity, raising the need for integrated solutions to freshwater management. While methods for characterizing the multi-faceted challenges of managing freshwater ecosystems abound, they tend to emphasize either social or ecological dimensions and fall short of being truly integrative. This paper suggests that management for sustainability of freshwater systems needs to consider the linkages between human water uses, freshwater ecosystems and governance. We present a conceptualization of freshwater resources as part of an integrated social-ecological system and propose a set of corresponding indicators to monitor freshwater ecosystem health and to highlight priorities for management. We demonstrate an application of this new framework -the Freshwater Health Index (FHI) - in the Dongjiang River Basin in southern China, where stakeholders are addressing multiple and conflicting freshwater demands. By combining empirical and modeled datasets with surveys to gauge stakeholders' preferences and elicit expert information about governance mechanisms, the FHI helps stakeholders understand the status of freshwater ecosystems in their basin, how ecosystems are being manipulated to enhance or decrease water-related services, and how well the existing water resource management regime is equipped to govern these dynamics over time. This framework helps to operationalize a truly integrated approach to water resource management by recognizing the interplay between governance, stakeholders, freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide.