Water x resilience
Unpacking the UN Water Conference, personal reflections on a climate resilience confab, the role of cats in aviation security
Hello again! Work, travel, cats and my climate learning journey (Terra.do, check them out!) have meant for the first time I came into this month without a particular topic to focus on. So I’ll share a few themes which caught my attention over the last month:
UN Water Conference - Waterworld
Credit: Photofest/Hollywood Reporter
I’m going to massively caveat my thoughts on how the conference went on the basis that I wasn’t there (maybe next time - hopefully not in another 50 years). Conferences like this though, are inevitably judged on the basis of its outcomes - commitments, pledges, agreements of the binding kind. On the first two, there were plenty. On the latter, not so much. With that said, there are two big areas that warrant a deeper dive:
Transboundary water management x nature based solutions. In my previous post on water, I wrote about how those in the development world have long flagged the risk of water and conflict. As mentioned before, water security is in many ways people and societal security. This risk of conflict stemming from water stress and competition may be amplified when those resource cross borders - creating a “tragedy of the commons” with arms. International watersheds like the Nile, Mekong, Colorado and the Brahmaputra include countries and parties which are more often in political competition than cooperation. Water conflicts tend to increase when rates of water flows reduce and become more volatile, and accessibility (e.g. reservoirs, aquifers, wells) becomes inconsistent or restricted.
The World Resources Institute highlights - in a bright spot for climate security - an agreement from the German government to set aside US$21 million through 2029 to help the nine countries and 160 million people along the Niger River to enhance their climate resilience through enhanced water management infrastructure within a systems approach. The announced measures working with the Niger Basin Authority include:
Providing better water management frameworks, tools and data to decision-makers (yay for climate intelligence!). The core objective around intelligence is the same here: policymakers need decision-advantage data in order to have the opportunity to make smart, sustainable decisions. These frameworks are also aimed at shifting the mindset to managing water resources from competition to shared costs and benefits, in the hopes of reducing a key source of (past, present and future) political conflict and local instability.
Wetland restoration on both the main river and three of its key tributaries. Done well, targeted areas will greatly enhance their carbon sequestration capabilities. Improved soil quality enhances its ability to hold water and carbon. Vegetation will reduce soil erosion and compaction, as well as providing a key food source and shelter for wildlife. It would also enhance biodiversity including fish for which many depend upon along the river for their livelihoods. Wetlands also serve as a natural water filter, and improved water quality will have social and health benefits for local communities. You can read more about wetland restoration here. While not quite analogous, coastal wetland restoration, by one estimate from Project Drawdown, could at a global level lead to 1.2-1.62GtCO2 equivalent in avoided emissions and continued sequestration by 2050.
“Climate smart agriculture” which potentially includes enhanced irrigation, degraded land recovery via regenerative / permaculture practices such as no tillage, cover cropping, rotational grazing etc.
Local business and women empowerment schemes, to enhance community resilience and just transition.
It’s important to note that this effort to regionally manage the Niger River isn’t new; there have been multiple rounds of multilateral funding including from the US, UN Green Climate Fund and African Development Bank in 2018. It’s likely that sustained funding and buy-in is needed going forward to a) execute, b) sustain it so that the environmental, social and security dividends are secured for the long term and c) sequestered carbon is kept that way. For a region which has its social resilience seriously damaged from multiple cycles of drought and crop failures, economic migration and militancy, these measures could help strengthen the foundations of community resilience and have a security dividend payoff in contributing to measures of community cohesion and reduced levels of intra and inter-communal violence.
And the Niger is just one example. Many transboundary river basins either have no recognised coordinating body or one that is functionally ineffective. We need to see more of this type of commitment being successfully implemented in order to unlock the benefits we wish to see, and set the platform for further investment into the economies and environments of those communities.
💸 Money me: The second area to highlight is the major commitment amongst 1700 private companies to invest in over 2700 products and services by 2028, at a value of over $435 billion, as well as enhancing water-related disclosures. This is a big deal because it puts water risk up the ladder from an investor demand and appetite perspective. More momentum - especially in spaces like gray infrastructure, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) and waste management - would hopefully improve unit economics which enable scaled solutions, perhaps via blended finance. It’s great to see companies take leadership, while calling out for greater substantive binding government agreements to take action - strapped on the back of climate as a rocket booster. I’m waiting for a water-focused version of COP and TCFD…TWFD?
Cleveland Columbus rocks!
I had the privilege of being able to attend a climate resilience conference last week, hosted by Battelle. It’s a great initiative from them to bring a lot of talented folks across government, research labs, academia, and a bit of the private sector together to present new research findings and share case studies of what works / doesn’t work. What gave me hope and optimism that just perhaps, wagmi:
There is a LOT of cool basic and applied research happening that needs to be more widely broadcasted - from new models to cost out climate resilience projects to new tech that encourages certain types of bacteria growth that enhance soil quality and carbon sequestration.
A lot of people are thinking about resilience and adaptation and delivering solutions. This excited me the most. Listening to case studies on helping deliver watershed resilience solutions via stakeholder engagement, or building oyster beds under the channels of the Port of Houston - highlighted that at its heart climate adaptation projects work best
When it is locally focused and the beneficiaries are local
Are underpinned by robust data modeling that generates actionable intelligence (e.g. how often and how far would the river flood by 2050 if no further measures were taken and we are in a RCP4.5 / 2C world).
Remote sensing technologies and data have their key role to play, but it does not replace the value of local managers who know the terrain and the stakeholders to validate, challenge and contextualise.
Community engagement is absolutely critical no matter how brilliant the technical design or the project economics. You need to meet them where they are. They won’t come to you! Projects and their benefits - like with any climate communications - needs to be concrete and relevant to their lived experiences, using language and framing that resonates with them.
There may be limitations to scaled approaches, but many of the solutions and frameworks I saw can be replicated in many parts of the Global North and South.
National security and geopolitical concerns are very much top of mind. The US department of defense is increasingly vested in climate resilience - particularly through the lens of operational readiness and force preparedness. Emergency response and related funds helps, but may create perverse incentives wherein a natural disaster may “need to happen” before a piece of infrastructure or an installation is upgraded. Infrastructure just isn’t exciting for many of those who hold the purse strings. Really uplifting stuff.
Relatedly, a bit of oxygen spent too on critical minerals and supply chains. Plenty written on this, but it hit home that if we really want to hit 2050 net-zero targets, we just may not be able to dig enough holes in the ground quickly enough, without risking profound climate injustice issues. What’s going to give?
Many of the projects were funded by government grants. VCs are already active in parts of the adaptation space, and private capital is seen as an enabler to take on risk to bring “potential winners” to the forefront. I wish I heard more of those stories, though to be fair there were a few private firms highlighting their work e.g. long-dated carbon credits.
I’d be curious to hear people’s views on geoengineering - it’s something of a bogeyman in the climate space as there are genuine fears of weather manipulation being weaponised and used unilaterally, with potentially unanticipated and devastating effects on ecosystems, communities and economies. Not to mention the moral hazard these technologies would create vis-a-vis climate mitigation and adaptation. Yikes.
What else caught my eye?
The IPCC came out with its latest report (the AR6 Synthesis Report), which streamlines a lot of previous analysis in highlighting the extremely gloomy and depressing outlook if we don’t step up massively. It’s easy to get very doomer about it, which isn’t helpful. Much has been written about the findings (did they really need 8,000 pages?) already, but the below sums up nicely what we must do to genuinely secure our climate.
Shout out to Lorraine Schneider, the Executive Director of The Resilience Initiative and one of the best in the emergency management game, who now has her own Substack. I’m looking forward to reading her perspectives on our climate crisis. Go check it out!
Some events which popped up in my inbox:
The Wilson Center and the Center for Climate and Security are hosting a webinar on climate security issues related to China, 11 April.
The University of Chicago is hosting a talk on preparedness communities in the US for resilience against flood and drought risks, 12 April.
SF Climate Week - one of the premier confabs on the climate tech circuit. With the wild weather they’ve had the past few months, trust and believe that remote sensing and early warning solutions will be more prominent than in previous iterations, 17-23 April.
The Slovenian government, European Commission and Chatham House are running a conference on African climate security and cooperation, 20-21 April.
Know of a cool event? Give me a shout.
And finally, it must be a new thing JetBlue is doing with bringing out the pilot to meet the passengers before takeoff:
Apparently it made it back to its kennel / cockpit. Unwillingly of course. See you next time!
Very insightful as always! Thanks for the shoutout, and I’ll be checking out the Wilson Center event.