Financing Climate Change Adaptation in Transboundary Basins

3 Financing Climate Change Adaptation in Transboundary Basins FIGURE 1.1. Building Resilience to Climate Change in Transboundary Waters Source: World Bank 2017a. Climate impacts Climate impacts result in vulnerabilities of di erent systems, depending upon their sensitivity and adaptive capacity Water information, institutions, and infrastructure actions are required to manage hydrological variability to reduce sector vulnerability Integrating resilience into water management systems enables economic, livelihood, and natural systems Adaptation to maintain function Transformation to a better system Integration and connectedness Diversity and redundancy Robustness Preparedness Regional actions National actions Local actions Information Institutions Infrastructure Climate impacts: • Aridity • Flooding • Droughts • Hydrological variability • Temperature Economic systems related to energy, irrigation, municipal supply, industrialization, and navigation Livelihood systems related to smallholder farming, €isheries, and settlements Natural systems related to biodiversity, ecosystems goods and services, and catchment land Vulnerability to climate impacts Water-related actions needed at multiple levels Develops resilience characteristics in water management systems Leads to overall systemic resilience respond to climate impacts in one country can have multiple and substantial ramifications for neighbor- ing countries, not the least of which is national and regional security. Acting solely at the national level limits the scope of resilience that countries can build compared to transboundary approaches. Adaptation and resilience building strategies must necessarily understand and account for transboundary consider- ations if they are to be effective, sustainable, and avoid maladaptation. In the absence of increased resilience, climate impacts are likely to reduce food security, reverse poverty alleviation gains, and slow economic growth nationally and regionally. Failure to address the negative impacts of climate change in a river basin in a coordinated manner can threaten socioeconomic development and create new or reinforce existing competition and conflict over water resources between riparian states. For example, irrigation man- agement upriver can impact water availability for agriculture downstream, ecosystem management in one area can lead to species migrations with conse- quent economic impacts, or lack of flood preparation in one area can obviate investments and planning in an adjoining area. Furthermore, such actions can result in maladaptation compounding difficulties and dam- ages to basin countries. Building integrated resilience throughout a basin promotes efficiency of resource use, while avoiding potential negative consequences of actions that are fragmented, lack broad consultation, or do not con- sider the basin’s interrelated nature. Transboundary approaches are based on a geographically complete picture of the impacts and provide a broader geographic scope of contribution to the solutions. For example, in basins where upstream storms lead to flooding downstream, monitoring and management of increased water load upstream can help to reduce and even prevent damage to downstream areas.