ADAPTATION IN THE WATER
RESOURCES SECTOR
(A Canadian Perspective)
"Water managers are beginning to consider adapting to climate
change…[however], the extent of adaptation by many water managers is
uncertain.”
Several studies indicate that managers are generally
complacent toward the impacts of climate change. In a survey of American water resource
stakeholder organizations, no groups indicated the intention to conduct future
work regarding climate change, and all ranked the level of attention given to
climate change as low. This may be because managers generally believe that the
tools currently used to deal with risk and uncertainty will be sufficient for
dealing with any increased variability induced by climate change.
BOX
3: Commonly recommended
adaptation options
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The most frequently recommended adaptation options for the
water resources sector include:
Each of these recommendations would be considered a
"no-regrets” option that would benefit Canadians irrespective of climate
change impacts.
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Another important factor could be the lack of standards for incorporating climate change into design decisions. The reactive, rather than proactive, nature of water management may also play a role.
There are, however, exceptions to these general trends. For
example, water managers in the Grand River basin of southwestern Ontario
have begun to develop contingency plans for future droughts, and a series of
workshops has been held to evaluate decision analysis methods for dealing with
shifting Lake Erie water levels under climate
change. These initiatives contradict the
often-cited opinion that climate change will have minimal influence on water
management operations until there is better information regarding the timing
and nature of the projected changes. Researchers point out that the scientific
uncertainty associated with climate change is not very different than the other
sources of uncertainty that water managers are trained to consider, such as
population growth and economic activity.
Therefore, uncertainty should not preclude the inclusion of climate
change as part of an integrated risk management strategy.
