Chapter 4: Water
[...]
4.3 Observed Sectoral Impacts of Current Hydrological Changes
[...]
4.3.1 Observed Impacts on Agriculture
Worldwide, the magnitudes of climate-induced water-related hazards and their impact on agriculture are differentiated across populations and genders (Sections 4.3.6; 4.8.3). Evidence shows that hydroclimatic factors pose high food insecurity risks to subsistence farmers, whose first and only source of livelihood is agriculture, and who are situated at low latitudes where the climate is hotter and drier (Shrestha and Nepal, 2016; Sujakhu et al., 2016). Historically, they have been the most vulnerable to observed climate-induced hydrological changes (Savo et al., 2016). Indigenous and local communities, often heavily reliant on agriculture, have a wealth of knowledge about observed changes. These are important because they shape farmers’ perceptions, which in turn shape the adaptation measures farmers will undertake (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015; Savo et al., 2016; Sujakhu et al., 2016; Su et al., 2017) (Section 4.8.4) (high confidence).
|
Cross-Chapter Box DISASTER | Disasters as the Public Face of Climate Change
Case 2. COVID-19 as the compounding risk factor: Cyclone Amphan in India and Bangladesh, 2020 Cyclone Amphan hit coastal West Bengal and Bangladesh on 20 May 2020. It was the first supercyclone to form in the Bay of Bengal since 1999 and one of the fiercest to hit West Bengal, India, in the last 100 years. The cyclone intensified from a cyclonic storm (category 1) to a supercyclone (category 5) in less than 36 hours (Balasubramanian and Chalamalla, 2020). Several hours before and on 20 May, extreme rain events resulted in heavy cumulative rainfall, flash flooding and landslides in several adjoining districts (Mishra and Vanganuru, 2020). As per the initial estimates, about 1600 km2 area in the mangrove forests of Sundarbans were damaged, and over 100 lives were lost. Earlier cyclones in the region have shown that impacts of these events are gendered (Roy, 2019). The cyclone damage was somewhat lessened due to the delta’s mangroves (Sen, 2020). The estimated damage was USD 13.5 billion. Cyclone Amphan was the largest source of displacement in 2020, with 2.4 million displacements in India alone, of which 800,000 were pre-emptive evacuations by authorities (IDMC, 2020). Because it happened amidst the COVID-19 crisis, evacuation plans were constrained due to social distancing norms (Baidya et al., 2020). Social media played an important role in disseminating pre-cyclone warnings and information on post-cyclone relief work (Crayton et al., 2020; Poddar et al., 2020).
[...]
Disaster risk reduction needs to be a central component of adaptation and mitigation for meeting Sustainable Development Goals and for a climate-resilient future
Disasters resulting from extreme events are increasingly experienced by a large section of human population (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018). Disasters expose inequalities in natural and managed systems and human systems as they disproportionately affect poor and marginalised communities like ethnic minorities, people of colour, Indigenous Peoples, women and children. Therefore, disaster risk reduction is fundamental for climate justice and climate resilient development (UNISDR, 2015). Far from being disconnected policy objectives, disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation/adaptation are two sides of the same coin as recognised explicitly by the Paris Agreement and Sendai Framework of 2015. There can be no sustainable development without disaster risk reduction, as explicitly recognised by the SDGs of 2015. Furthermore, disaster events can increase awareness among citizens and provide a platform for all important stakeholders, including climate activists, to come together, and give a clarion call for the urgency of climate action.
In summary, disasters are a stark illustration of the potential for extreme weather events to impact people and other species. With the frequency, severity and (or) likelihood of several types of extreme weather increasing, disasters can increasingly be regarded as ‘the public face of climate change’ (high confidence). Detection and attribution studies make the climate change fingerprint of several types of disasters increasingly clear (high confidence). Moreover, existing vulnerabilities and exposures play an important role in turning extreme events into disasters, further exacerbating existing racial, gender and social inequalities (high confidence). Therefore, disaster risk reduction needs to be central to adaptation and mitigation efforts to meet the SDGs and the Paris Agreement for a climate-resilient future.
|
4.6 Key Risks and Adaptation Responses in Various Water Use Sectors
[...]
4.6.1 Key Risks Related to Water
Increasing hydrological extremes also have consequences for the maintenance and further improvement of the provision of WaSH services (medium confidence). Risks related to the lack or failure of WaSH services under climate change include increased incidence and outbreaks of water-related diseases, physical injuries, stress, exacerbation of the underlying disease, and risk of violence, which is often gendered (Section 4.5.3). Although globally, the regional potential infestation areas for disease-carrying vectors could be five times higher at 4°C than at 2°C (Liu-Helmersson et al., 2019), climate projections suggest up to 2.2 million more cases of E. coli by 2100 (2.1°C increase) in Bangladesh (Philipsborn et al., 2016), up to an 11-fold and 25-fold increase by 2050 and 2080, respectively (2°C–4°C increase), in disability-adjusted life years associated with cryptosporidiosis and giardiasis in Canada (Smith et al., 2015), and an additional 48,000 deaths of children under 15 years of age globally from diarrhoea by 2030 (WHO, 2014).
4.6.4 Adaptation in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector
During periods of water insecurity, people often implement maladaptive strategies (Magnan et al., 2016), that is, strategies that can increase the risk of adverse health impacts, increase exposure to violence or cause malnutrition (Kher et al., 2015; Pommells et al., 2018; Collins et al., 2019a; Schuster et al., 2020) (medium evidence, high agreement). Examples include walking further, using less safe water sources, prioritising drinking and cooking over personal/ household hygiene, or reducing food/water intake. Conversely, some rebalancing of gender roles can occur when women and girls cannot source sufficient water, with men building additional water supply or storage infrastructure or fetching water (Singh and Singh, 2015; Magesa and Pauline, 2016; Shrestha et al., 2019b). Some adaptation strategies create unintended health threats such as increased odds (1.55) of mosquito larvae in water storage pots (Ferdousi et al., 2015), which could have even more significant impacts in the future given projected range expansion for vectors as a result of climate change (Liu-Helmersson et al., 2019). Other unintended consequences include pathogen contamination (Gwenzi et al., 2015) and time or financial trade-offs (Schuster et al., 2020) (medium evidence, high agreement). Wastewater reuse for irrigation may have adverse health impacts if wastewater is not treated (Dickin et al., 2016). Conversely, especially where women are responsible for domestic and productive water management, adaptive agricultural water strategies, such as waterefficient irrigation or low-water crops, mean that less water from finite water supplies are used for agriculture, leaving more water locally available for domestic purposes (see section 4.6.2). These co-benefits across sectors become important community water stress adaptations (Chinwendu et al., 2017), with water savings from one use leading to more water available for other uses. This can reduce domestic water burdens and, therefore, gender inequities (Section 4.8.3) (limited evidence, high agreement). Further analyses of co-benefits, particularly employing a gender lens, are required to improve adaptation strategies (McIver et al., 2016).
|
Box 4.4 | COVID-19 Amplifies Challenges for WaSH Adaptation
Compound disasters have arisen due to either the co-occurrence of drought, storms or floods and COVID-19. COVID-19 acts as a stress multiplier for women and girls in charge of water collection and minorities and disabled people who are not engaged in water management (Phillips et al., 2020; Rodriguez-Lonebear et al., 2020). Across the world, existing inequalities deepened due to lockdowns, which further limited access to clean water and education for women and girls, and reinstated gendered responsibilities of child, elderly and sick care, which had been previously externalised (Cousins, 2020; Neal, 2020; Zavaleta-Cortijo et al., 2020). Accordingly, COVID-19 has further steepened the path to reach SDGs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 11 (Lambert et al., 2020; Mukherjee et al., 2020; Neal, 2020; Pramanik et al., 2021). In addition, the pandemic exacerbated food insecurity in drought-affected eastern and southern Africa (Phillips et al., 2020; Mishra et al., 2021). As the twin risk of COVID-19 and hurricanes on the US Gulf Coast (Pei et al., 2020; Shultz et al., 2020) and cyclone Amphan in Bangladesh (Pramanik et al., 2021) showed, increased hand washing, additional WaSH and evacuation and shelter infrastructures proved essential for preventing further spread of COVID-19 (Baidya et al., 2020; Ebrahim et al., 2020; Guo et al., 2020; Mukherjee et al., 2020; Pei et al., 2020; Shultz et al., 2020; Pramanik et al., 2021). Moreover, while immediate steps can be taken during disaster response to minimise climate-attributable loss of life, climate adaptation requires long-term strategies that intersect with pandemic preparedness (Phillips et al., 2020).
|
4.6 Key Risks and Adaptation Responses in Various Water Use Sectors
[...]
4.6.7 Adaptation Responses for Water-Related Conflicts
Some adaptation options, such as water conservation, storage and infrastructure, voluntary migration, planned relocation due to flood risk/ sea level rise, and international water treaties, can reduce vulnerability to climate change and conflicts. However, on the other hand, these adaptation options sometimes may have unintended consequences by increasing existing tensions (Milman and Arsano, 2014); displacing climate hazards to more vulnerable and marginalised groups (Milman and Arsano, 2014; Mach et al., 2019), for example, pastoralists (Zografos et al., 2014); and favouring some over others, such as industry over agriculture (Iglesias and Garrote, 2015)¸ upstream countries over downstream countries (Veldkamp et al., 2017), and men over women (Chandra et al., 2017). Such unintended consequences may happen when adaptation measures intended to reduce vulnerability produce maladaptive outcomes by rebounding or shifting vulnerability to other actors (Juhola et al., 2016). For example, in the Mekong River basin, the construction of dams and water reservoirs contributes to the adaptation efforts of the upstream Southeast Asia countries while increasing current/future vulnerability to floods and droughts in downstream countries and can emerge as a cause of conflict (Earle et al., 2015; Ngô et al., 2016).
Furthermore, adaptation in the context of water-related conflicts is also constrained by economic, institutional and political factors, competition for development (Anguelovski et al., 2014) and gender considerations (Sultana, 2014; Chandra et al., 2017), which need to be taken into account when designing adaptation plans/measures.
4.6.8 Adaptations Through Human Mobility and Migration
AR5 noted that whether migration is adaptive or maladaptive depends on the context and the individuals involved; however, it did not focus specifically on hydrological change-induced migration (Noble et al., 2014). Migration is often regarded as a transformational adaptation strategy in response to climate-induced hydrological changes (Gemenne and Blocher, 2017) but rarely as the primary or only adaptation measure (Wiederkehr et al., 2018; de Longueville et al., 2020; Cross-Chapter Box MIGRATE in Chapter 7). Migration is among one of the top five adaptation responses documented in Asia and Africa (Figure 4.27) and confers several benefits to migrants, yet maladaptations are also documented (Figure 4.29). This strategy is not available to everyone. Vulnerable populations exposed to hydrological changes may become trapped due to a lack of economic and social capital required for migration (Adams, 2016; Zickgraf, 2018) (medium confidence).
Spontaneous migration, undertaken without outside assistance, has shown the potential to improve the resilience of migrants and communities (Call et al., 2017; Jha et al., 2018a), but may also lead to increased vulnerability and insecurity in some instances (Adger et al., 2018; Linke et al., 2018a; Singh and Basu, 2020). Migration is not a viable strategy for everyone, but age, gender and socioeconomic status play a significant role in encouraging or inhibiting the chances of successful migration (Maharjan et al., 2020; Bergmann et al., 2021; Erwin et al., 2021). Migration has increased vulnerability among women and female-headed households (Patel and Giri, 2019), but has also triggered gender-positive processes such as increased female school enrolment (Gioli et al., 2014) (medium confidence). Remittances, that is, transfers of money from migrants to beneficiaries in sending areas, may reduce vulnerability and increase adaptive capacity to climate-induced hydrological changes (Ng’ang’a et al., 2016; Jha et al., 2018b) (medium confidence). Managed retreat refers to the planned and assisted moving of people and assets away from risk areas, such as governmentor community-led resettlement (Hino et al., 2017; Maldonado and Peterson, 2018; Tadgell et al., 2018; Arnall, 2019). Such initiatives may reduce exposure to risk (Lei et al., 2017). However, they often fail to include affected populations in the process and may lead to greater impoverishment and increased vulnerability (Wilmsen and Webber, 2015) (medium confidence).
4.7 Benefits and Effectiveness of WaterRelated Adaptations, Their Limits and Trade-Offs
[...]
4.7.1.2 Benefits, Including Co-benefits of Water-related Adaptation Responses and Resulting Maladaptation
Not all adaptation responses reduce risks, and some may have longterm maladaptive outcomes, even if they are beneficial in the short term. Maladaptation often stems from poor planning and implementation of adaptation responses and because of not addressing the root causes of vulnerability (Schipper, 2020; Eriksen et al., 2021). Of the 319 case studies where adaptation response was found to have some beneficial outcomes, around one third of them also mentioned the possibility of maladaptation. Migration can often have maladaptive outcomes because migration can exacerbate the inherent vulnerabilities of migrants (Section 4.6.8). For example, slum dwellers in cities may earn higher incomes, but their quality of life worsens (Ayeb-Karlsson et al., 2016). In some instances, even wage rates in migration hotspots can remain low due to the high volume of the migrant population (Fenton et al., 2017b); as such, it does not help buffer consumption against rainfall shocks (Gao and Mills, 2018). Migration also has gendered impacts, with girls from migrating families being taken out of school (Gioli et al., 2014) or interrupting children’s education overall (Warner and Afifi, 2014). In planned relocation from vulnerable urban slums, relocation sites can be far from job sites and increase social conflicts (Tauhid and Zawani, 2018).
4.8 Enabling Principles for Achieving Water Security, Sustainable and Climate Resilient Development Through Systems Transformations
4.8.3 Gender, Equity and Social Justice
SR1.5 acknowledged that the adaptive capacity of a population was going to reduce with each degree of warming and that vulnerability to climate change was due to gender, race and level of education, which can compound existing and future vulnerabilities (IPCC, 2018a).
Gender, class, race, age, physical ability and educational level determine access to water and financial and societal resources, potentially adverting climate-induced water hazards, reducing vulnerability and facilitating adaptation. However, insufficient attention has been given to the role of improving equity in access to water (Abedin et al., 2019; Eakin et al., 2020). Not all water adaptation strategies are accessible to the poorest, who may turn to maladaptive strategies if their access to water is negatively affected (Eakin et al., 2016). Consequently, there have been calls for mainstreaming equity considerations into adaptation (Blackburn and Pelling, 2018) (medium evidence, high agreement). It has been shown that people living in poverty, racial minorities and those ageing are more vulnerable to climate-induced water hazards and that their adaptive capacity is limited (Szewrański et al., 2018; Winsemius et al., 2018; Nyantakyi-Frimpong, 2020; Erwin et al., 2021). Among these categories, gender is the one that has been most analysed in the context of water and climate change.
Women’s water rights are hampered by societal patriarchal norms that prevent women from accessing water and participating in water management. Gender power relations effectively limit women’s decision-making power, mobility and access to resources, including water, which makes them more vulnerable to climate-related hazards (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015; Djoudi et al., 2016; Sultana, 2018; Yadav and Lal, 2018). In most societies in developing countries, women and girls are in charge of fetching water. The necessity of water collection takes away time from income-generating activities and education (high confidence) (Fontana and Elson, 2014; Kookana et al., 2016; Yadav and Lal, 2018). In addition, the distances women and girls would have to walk as a result of growing water scarcity due to climate change may increase (limited evidence, high confidence) (Becerra et al., 2016) (Sections 4.3.3, 4.5.3). Numerous studies substantiate a male bias in information access, employment opportunities, resource availability and decision-making in water-related adaptation measures (Huynh and Resurreccion, 2014; Sinharoy and Caruso, 2019).
Although women are often depicted as victims of climate changeinduced water scarcity (Huynh and Resurreccion, 2014; Djoudi et al., 2016; Gonda, 2016; Yadav and Lal, 2018), they are also proactive adaptation actors (Singh and Singh, 2015) (Cross-Chapter Box GENDER in Chapter 18). Notably, women are not a homogenous group, and local gender roles are not immutable or generalisable (Carr and Thompson, 2014; Djoudi et al., 2016; Gonda, 2016; Sultana, 2018). Coping responses and adaptation mechanisms to climate change are profoundly gendered. Women and men approach the diversification of agricultural and pastoral livelihoods differently in response to climate change (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015; Kankwamba et al., 2018; Singh et al., 2018; Basupi et al., 2019). For example, reliance on women’s self-help groups and associations has proven successful in ensuring women’s participation in decision-making in adaptation interventions as a response to climate change-induced shifting precipitation patterns and increasing droughts (Chu, 2017; Mersha and van Laerhoven, 2018; Phuong et al., 2018; Walch, 2019). Studies feature water harvesting, crop diversification, cash transfer programmes and food subsidies as adaptation measures that enhance gender equality. Adaptation to climate change in these instances promoted gender equality because it allowed women to reap the benefits of these new measures in terms of economic and health well-being (Tesfamariam and Hurlbert, 2017; Lindoso et al., 2018; Walch, 2019).
Meanwhile, adaptation interventions such as drip irrigation, the adoption of more labour-intensive crops and livelihood diversification through male out-migration have proven to increase women’s burden (Caretta and Börjeson, 2015; Kattumuri et al., 2017). Hence, a lack of gender-sensitive analysis before implementing water management projects can lead to maladaptation and increase gender vulnerability (Phan et al., 2019; Eriksen et al., 2021) (high confidence).
Acknowledging and understanding the implications of climate-related water adaptation policies in terms of equity and justice is a prerequisite for ensuring their legitimacy and inclusiveness and promotes social justice (Carr and Thompson, 2014; Djoudi et al., 2016; Jost et al., 2016; Sultana, 2018). Furthermore, integrating the principle of gender inclusivity in adaptation is morally and ethically appropriate and effective because women hold much of the local and TK in many agricultural communities and can fruitfully provide insights on how to design and implement adaptation responses (Fauconnier et al., 2018; James, 2019).
In summary, there is high confidence that the effects of climate change-induced water insecurity are not evenly felt across populations. Particularly vulnerable groups are women, children, disabled and Indigenous Peoples whose ability to access adequate water is limited and varies across race, ethnicity and caste. Equity and justice are central to climate change adaptation and sustainable development, as the world’s poorest people and countries feel the adverse impacts of a changing climate most acutely. These groups can become even more vulnerable due to adaptation actions that are not equitable.
