Climate change is having an unprecedented impact on global water resources on which billions of people rely and because water is linked to everything else, global food, energy and economies are similarly affected by impacts on water systems. As a result, in 2014 the UK Department for International Development, sponsored the Action on Climate Today (ACT) program as a political compliment to technical or scientific strategies for addressing climate related impacts on water.
Using a Climate-Resilient Water Management (CRWM) approach as a way of increasing the resilience of global water systems, ACT has been working to encourage policies that manage and protect water systems from the impacts of climate change in the water sector. Although implemented in five South Asia countries, to date, this paper proposes that the ACT strategy for water management including assessment, supply augmentation and demand; floods and droughts and other extreme events; and public and governmental education on the need for CRWM, can be applied by practitioners and policy makers working in water resource management around the world.
The paper concludes by calling for the need for a new paradigm to meet the urgent need to address the rapidly growing global water crises including:
“1. Move beyond ‘business as usual’ to integrate the best available climate data and information in managing water resources;
2. Adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to mainstreaming the risk of climate change in programs and policy;
3. Map and lock into existing government priorities at different levels to secure political will;
4. Firmly acknowledge that CRWM is political as opposed to being a purely technical or scientific paradigm; • Frame and communicate about climate change using language and concepts that are relatable and impacts that are tangible;
5. Frame and communicate about climate change using language and concepts that are relatable and impacts that are tangible.”