From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Approaches to Risk Discovery: A Paradigm Shift in Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Studies Related to the Water Sector (original) (raw)

Healthy water resources are key to every nation’s wealth and well-being. Unfortunately, stressors such as climate change, land-use shifts, and increased water consumption are threatening water availability and access worldwide. The pressure on water resources is projected to increase dramatically in the future and turn into a global crisis unless bold actions are taken. Researchers and practitioners are therefore under great pressure to develop methodologies and tools that can streamline projected changes into adaptation decisions. The vast majority of climate change adaptation studies use a top-down approach, which essentially consists of using of a limited set of climate change scenarios to discover future risks. However, recent research has identified critical limitations to that approach; for instance, even when multimodel multi-scenario projections are used, not all possible future conditions are covered and therefore plausible risks may be overlooked. There is also no establis...