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Opportunities for Agricultural Water Management interventions in the Nariarlé watershed in Burkina Faso
The document evaluates AWM strategies in the Nariarlé watershed, finding that improving rainfed agriculture and expanding gardening wells offer the broadest benefits. While small reservoirs have improved production, they face siltation and lack coordinated watershed-level governance, which is further complicated by the urban expansion of Ouagadougou.
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Document type: Policy brief
Water Management Adaptations for Aquatic Ecosystem Services in a Changing Climate: Analytical Framework and Case Study of Chinook Salmon in California
The authors developed a framework combining the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system and the SALMOD population dynamics model with climate data to identify critical temperature and streamflow thresholds for spring-run Chinook salmon in California. This approach aims to evaluate management adaptations to protect salmon, which are vulnerable to rising summer river pool temperatures before autumn spawning.
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Document type: Research paper
IAI Science Advisory Council Nominations for 2010
The IAI is seeking to fill two vacancies on its Science Advisory Council in 2010, replacing Rana Fine and Maria Carmen Lemos. The nominations will target four priority areas: Climate Science (specifically climate modeling), Ecosystems and climate (specifically biodiversity), Policy and Human Dimensions of global change (including vulnerability assessment, mitigation, adaptation, and science-policy interaction), and Integration and modeling (focusing on resilience and social-ecological systems modeling). Candidates are evaluated based on basic criteria of scientific excellence, geopolitical balance across the Americas and the Caribbean, and gender balance, as well as second-tier considerations including interdisciplinary research ability, representation of science in the Americas, and the ability to bridge the science-policy divide.
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Document type: Briefing
Water Resources Legislation: A search for common principles
The report analyzes comparative water legislation from countries including Canada, Germany, China, and the US to establish common legal principles. It argues that water is traditionally a public asset subject to government control, public ownership, and permanent regulation. Key principles identified include the 'doctrine of effective and beneficial use,' the requirement for environmental impact assessments, and the state's power to amend water rights ex-post to protect public health and the environment. The author suggests that grounding water management in these shared national legal principles can help states resist claims in investment arbitration when enacting new environmental or efficiency regulations.
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Document type: Report
Practical Guidance on the Use of Urine in Crop Production
The document outlines the nutrient composition, economic value, and safe application of human urine as a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. It details a multi-barrier approach to manage health risks, provides evidence from global field trials showing yields comparable to mineral fertilizers, and offers a framework for developing local guidelines and large-scale collection systems.
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Document type: Guide
Harnessing Current Government Practices to Plan for and Adapt to the Risks and Uncertainty Posed by Climate Change
The paper proposes a framework of seven adaptive policy-making practices, divided into planned and autonomous adaptability, to help governments navigate unpredictable climate impacts. Based on research in Canada and India, the authors suggest that while these practices exist, they are often used ad hoc and should instead be integrated into a systematic approach of continuous policy piloting to overcome political and fiscal barriers.
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Document type: Research paper
Climate Change Adaptation and Decision Making in the Sudan
Sudan is highly vulnerable to climate change due to its reliance on rain-fed agriculture, with projections indicating significant declines in crop yields and increased water scarcity by 2060. The document argues that while the country has established frameworks like the Environmental Protection Act of 2001 and the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA), effective adaptation is hindered by political instability, top-down planning, and land tenure conflicts. It recommends a comprehensive approach including land tenure reform, a national early warning system, and the integration of climate risks into all levels of national development planning.
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Document type: Research paper
Learning from Water Wars: Development Assistance for a Changing Climate
The author argues that climate adaptation should be integrated into existing national development goals and governance processes rather than treated as a separate, donor-driven agenda. He proposes five guiding principles: enhancing aid effectiveness by reducing transaction costs for recipients, integrating adaptation into short-term national priorities, ensuring national ownership of policies, avoiding sectoral 'silos' (such as the tendency for Ministries of Environment to capture resources via NAPAs), and respecting the political realities of decision-making. The paper cautions against 'overselling' available climate data and warns that traditional donor processes can sometimes impose higher transaction costs and less respect for partner preferences than emerging BRIC donors.
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Document type: Research paper
New Streams of Thought: Managing Water and Ecosystems for Climate-Sustainable Development
The document examines the negative impacts of massive water infrastructure expansion on freshwater ecosystems and the resulting vulnerability of human societies to climate-driven mismatches. It proposes a shift from stationary climate assumptions in engineering to a holistic, basin-scale approach that treats healthy ecosystems as critical infrastructure. The author identifies policy silos, a tendency to discount future risks, and financial disparities between nations as primary obstacles to implementing these resilient practices.
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Document type: Research paper
ICTs as a Key Technology to Help Countries Adapt to the Effects of Climate Change
The document argues that ICTs are essential enablers for climate change adaptation, facilitating the collection of environmental data and the dissemination of early warnings to vulnerable populations. It highlights the role of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in supporting the Nairobi Framework and the Hyogo Framework for Action by developing standards, improving telecommunications infrastructure, and deploying weather stations in under-served regions like Africa.
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Document type: Research paper
Making Climate Companies’ Business
The document examines how national governments can engage the private sector to support climate adaptation, noting that business participation depends on a strong business case. It suggests that governments must move beyond treating the private sector as a homogenous unit and instead target specific actors—such as small and medium enterprises or specialized solution providers—whose interests align with public goods. While 'win-win' scenarios exist in sectors like water purification and agriculture, the paper warns of 'negative alignment' where private investments can lead to land grabbing or the displacement of local populations. It recommends a policy mix of incentives, procurement contracts, and collaboration with civil society to ensure private actions support rather than undermine community resilience.
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Document type: Research paper
World Resources 2010-2011
The report identifies five critical elements for effective climate adaptation decision-making: public engagement, decision-relevant information, institutional design, planning tools, and resources. It argues that governments must move from reactive disaster relief to proactive risk management, accounting for extremes, heightened variability, and long-term change. The document emphasizes that vulnerability—shaped by social, economic, and geographic factors—determines the impact of climate change, necessitating targeted interventions for the most disadvantaged. Through various case studies and research, it recommends integrating climate risks into existing sectoral policies and utilizing flexible, robust, and durable decision-making frameworks to manage uncertainty.
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Document type: Report
The costs of drought: the exceptional 2007-2008 case of Barcelona
The 2007-2008 drought in Barcelona was the most severe in the last century, resulting in total estimated losses of 1,661 million Euros for a one-year period, approximately 1% of the Catalonian GDP. The study categorizes costs into direct losses for economic agents (540.26 million Euros), indirect losses to the regional economy (358.47 million Euros), and non-market welfare losses (761.95 million Euros). To mitigate the crisis, the Government of Catalonia implemented demand-side restrictions and supply-side measures, including the shipping of water from France and Tarragona. The authors find that demand-side constraints were significantly more cost-efficient than water transport. Climate projections for the region suggest that the frequency of drought events may double, with increased duration and intensity.
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Document type: Research paper
Future water availability and global food production potential: Green water increasing resilience to global change
This research paper argues that green water is dominant in food production and that managing local green water resources can increase agricultural resilience to climate change and population growth, potentially allowing water-short countries to produce sufficient food.
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Document type: Research paper
Indicators of Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change for Agriculture in the Prairie Region of Canada
The research establishes a GIS-based index of adaptive capacity for the Canadian Prairies, using six determinants: economic resources, technology, information/skills/management, infrastructure, institutions/networks, and equity. The analysis finds that adaptive capacity is generally higher near large urban centres and lower along the northern boundaries of the agricultural region. While the six determinants align with producer perspectives, the study concludes that aggregated census data only accurately represent a fraction of the specific factors producers identify as critical for adaptation, emphasizing the need for site-specific research to inform policy.
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Document type: Research paper
Investigating Stakeholder Decision Priorities for Adapting to Climate Change in the Lake Balaton Recreational Area of Hungary
The report details the results of four workshops held between October 2007 and February 2008 in Siófok, Keszthely, and Balatonalmádi, Hungary. Stakeholders identified significant weather shifts, including summer peak temperatures reaching the +40˚C range and increased extreme rainfall events, which impact agriculture, tourism, and human health. Current adaptation is largely ad hoc and driven by economic loss, but participants proposed a range of future 'win-win' strategies. These include diversifying tourism to be less weather-dependent, reintroducing traditional building materials like reed, and implementing rainwater storage in viticulture. The report emphasizes that successful long-term resilience requires shifting from individual initiatives to collaborative regional planning and updating building codes and legislation to support sustainable practices.
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Document type: Report
Manitoba Adaptation Day: Understanding Manitoba-focused adaptation activities, research and capacity
The report details a workshop held on March 26, 2009, which brought together academics, policy-makers, and researchers to assess Manitoba's readiness for climate change. It identifies key climate risks for the Prairie region, such as water scarcity and ecosystem shifts, and outlines existing provincial activities like the 'Beyond Kyoto' action plan and various sustainable agriculture and water management projects. Participants highlighted significant barriers to adaptation, including short-term policy thinking, a lack of community-level capacity, and the absence of an overarching provincial adaptation strategy. The document proposes the creation of a Manitoba Climate Research Table to coordinate efforts and break down institutional silos, and discusses the Regional Adaptation Collaborative (RAC) program funded by Natural Resources Canada to address water issues in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
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Document type: Report
Challenges and Lessons Learned from Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) Projects
The report analyzes 10 ILM projects across North America and Europe, identifying a general framework consisting of baseline assessment, future scenario envisioning, collaborative planning, and monitoring. Key findings highlight the difficulty of integrating socio-economic and biophysical data, the challenge of translating scientific models into usable policy tools, and the necessity of early stakeholder engagement to ensure local relevance and ownership of project outcomes.
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Document type: Report
THE GSI’S METHOD FOR QUANTIFYING IRRIGATION SUBSIDIES
The Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) presents a methodology for measuring irrigation subsidies by calculating the difference between the cost of making irrigation water available and the revenue received from beneficiaries. The framework focuses on 'full supply cost,' incorporating annual capital costs (interest and depreciation) and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs, while excluding complex elements like opportunity costs and full social costs due to data constraints. It provides detailed guidance on allocating joint capital costs in multi-purpose projects using the Alternative Justifiable Expenditures (AJE) and Separate Costs, Remaining Benefits (SCRB) methods. The methodology also addresses specific subsidies such as discounted electricity for groundwater pumping and identifiable government expenditures on environmental externalities. Revenue components include water sales, hydropower, fishing rights, and pollution taxes.
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Document type: Research paper
STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF THE HYDROPOWER MASTER PLAN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POWER DEVELOPMENT PLAN VI
The report evaluates the social and environmental impacts of the hydropower projects planned under Viet Nam's PDP VI, comparing them against thermal power alternatives. It concludes that while hydropower is the least-cost option for meeting energy demand, current mitigation for displacement and environmental loss is inadequate. The study proposes a comprehensive mitigation package based on the Impoverishment, Risk and Reconstruction (IRR) model and recommends the institutionalization of SEA in the national power planning process to internalize external costs and enhance sustainability.
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Document type: Report