New Streams of Thought: Managing Water and Ecosystems for Climate-Sustainable Development

This research paper by Yolanda Kakabadse, former environment minister of Ecuador and President of WWF International, argues that traditional water infrastructure design—based on the assumption of a stationary climate—has led to the degradation of freshwater ecosystems and increased societal vulnerability. The author proposes a shift toward climate-sustainable development by integrating ecosystems into infrastructure planning, managing water at a basin scale, and moving away from sectoral silos in policymaking.

• The expansion of water infrastructure and intensification of water use have caused severe declines in the health and productivity of freshwater ecosystems and increased human vulnerability to climate mismatches.
• Traditional infrastructure design relies on the unrealistic assumption that historical data can predict future water quality, quantity, and timing, which is failing as the rate of climate change accelerates.
• In the Himalayan foothills, outdated flow data leads to the miscalculation of dry-season river flows, resulting in investment losses for hydropower facilities and reduced harvest reliability for subsistence farmers.
• Sustainable water management requires focusing on flow regimes rather than just quantity and quality, managing at a basin scale across political boundaries, and restoring connectivity across the entire hydrological cycle.
• Effective climate-sustainable freshwater management is hindered more by policy gaps than by technical limitations, specifically the division of water resources into unrelated sectoral ministries and the tendency to discount high-impact risks that are not immediate.
• Financial disparities leave some nations unable to implement necessary adaptation measures, such as sea-level barriers, compared to wealthier nations.

APA

Kakabadse, Y. (2010). New Streams of Thought: Managing Water and Ecosystems for Climate-Sustainable Development. World Resources Institute. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-4-response-3.pdf

Chicago

Kakabadse, Yolanda. New Streams of Thought: Managing Water and Ecosystems for Climate-Sustainable Development. World Resources Institute, 2010. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-4-response-3.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Kakabadse |first1=Yolanda |title=New Streams of Thought: Managing Water and Ecosystems for Climate-Sustainable Development |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=2010 |url=https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-4-response-3.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{kakabadse2010new, author = {Kakabadse, Yolanda}, title = {{New Streams of Thought: Managing Water and Ecosystems for Climate-Sustainable Development}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2010}, url = {https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-02/wrr-2010-11-question-4-response-3.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }