Water: Drought, Crisis and Governance in Australia and Brazil (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, 2015
Extreme events are part of climate variability. Dealing with variability is still a challenge that might be increased due to climate change. However, impacts of extreme events are not only dependent on their variability, but also on management and governance. In Brazil, its semi-arid region is vulnerable to extreme events, especially droughts, for centuries. Actually, other Brazilian regions that have been mostly concerned with floods are currently also experiencing droughts. This article evaluates how a combination between climate variability and water governance might affect water scarcity and increase the impacts of extreme events on some regions. For this evaluation, Ostrom's framework for analyzing social-ecological systems (SES) was applied. Ostrom's framework is useful for understanding interactions between resource systems, governance systems and resource users. This study focuses on social-ecological systems located in a drought-prone region of Brazil. Two extreme events were selected, one in 1997-2000, when Brazil's new water policy was very young, and the other one in 2012-2015. The analysis of SES considering Ostrom's principle "Clearly defined boundaries" showed that deficiencies in water management cause the intensification of drought's impacts for the water users. The reasons are more related to water management and governance problems than to drought event magnitude or climate change. This is a problem that holdup advances in dealing with extreme events.
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The International Journal of Water Governance (IJWG) aims to become an important source of knowledge on governance of complex water systems, and an inspiration for all professionals in the water domain to improve the governance capacity in the domain in which they operate. In order to achieve this two-sided ambition we want to focus on actual and urgent theoretical issues and bring them further by application and elaboration in the domains of water. This will be the primary aim in the special issues. At the same time we will take care of the actual topics practitioners in the water domain are dealing with. From a variety of disciplines we will gather new insights on what constitutes the governance capacity with regard to specific topics, like water quality, flooding or scarcity.
Sustainability needs to be attained, not managed, 2008
The transition to water sustainability involves challenging questions about problem assessment, stakeholder involvement, and response coordination. To overcome these difficulties, new approaches have been developed to inform regulatory changes and to help to improve the level of water sustainability. One of the preferred methods is integrated water resources management (IWRM) that combines different aspects and a plurality of goals associated with water use and conservation. However, important obstacles remain in the way of IWRM and, ultimately, water sustainability. A case study in the Paraíba do Sul River Basin in the southeastern region of Brazil illustrates the multiple barriers to appropriate integration of socioeconomic considerations into the sustainable management of water systems. The opportunity to improve environmental conditions and to engage local stakeholders has been frustrated by the contradictory directions of regulatory reforms. On one hand, IWRM-informed policies have introduced flexible instruments of water regulation and pushed for the reorganization of the river-basin committee. On the other hand, the focus has been restricted to technical and managerial solutions that tend to ignore the influence of social inequalities and political asymmetries and, as a consequence, undermine water sustainability.
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Water use in the Basin has increased five-fold in less than a century. The problems caused by over-allocation have been exacerbated by severe drought and the early impacts of climate change. There is insufficient water to maintain the Basin's natural balance and ecosystems, resulting in a marked decline in its ecological health. Many species that were once common are now rare and listed nationally for protection under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. At least 35 bird species and 16 mammals that live in the Basin are endangered. Twenty mammal species have become extinct … .
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