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"Yu, Winston"
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Rural water for thirsty cities: a systematic review of water reallocation from rural to urban regions
Background: Competition for freshwater between cities and agriculture is projected to grow due to rapid urbanization, particularly in the Global South. Water reallocation from rural to urban regions has become a common strategy to meet freshwater needs in growing cities. Conceptual issues and associated measurement problems have impeded efforts to compare and learn from global experiences. This review examines the status and trends of water reallocation from rural to urban regions based on academic literature and policy documents. Methods: We conduct a systematic literature review to establish the global reallocation database (GRaD). This process yielded 97 published studies (academic and policy) on rural-to-urban reallocation. We introduce the concept of reallocation 'dyads' as the unit of analysis to describe the pair of a recipient (urban) and donor (rural) region. A coding framework was developed iteratively to classify the drivers, processes and outcomes of water reallocation from a political economy perspective. Results: The systematic review identified 69 urban agglomerations receiving water through 103 reallocation projects (dyads). Together these reallocation dyads involve approximately 16 billion m3 of water per year moving almost 13 000 kilometres to urban recipient regions with an estimated 2015 population of 383 million. Documented water reallocation dyads are concentrated in North America and Asia with the latter constituting the majority of dyads implemented since 2000. Synthesis: The analysis illustrates how supply and demand interact to drive water reallocation projects, which can take many forms, although collective negotiation and administrative decisions are most prevalent. Yet it also reveals potential biases and gaps in coverage for parts of the Global South (particularly in South America and Africa), where reallocation (a) can involve informal processes that are difficult to track and (b) receives limited coverage by the English-language literature covered by the review. Data regarding the impacts on the donor region and compensation are also limited, constraining evidence to assess whether a water reallocation project is truly effective, equitable and sustainable. We identify frameworks and metrics for assessing reallocation projects and navigating the associated trade-offs by drawing on the concept of benefit sharing.
Journal Article
The Indus Basin of Pakistan
This study, Indus basin of Pakistan: the impacts of climate risks on water and agriculture was undertaken at a pivotal time in the region. The weak summer monsoon in 2009 created drought conditions throughout the country. This followed an already tenuous situation for many rural households faced with high fuel and fertilizer costs and the impacts of rising global food prices. Then catastrophic monsoon flooding in 2010 affected over 20 million people, devastating their housing, infrastructure, and crops. Damages from this single flood event were estimated at US dollar 10 billion, half of which were losses in the agriculture sector. Notwithstanding the debate as to whether these observed extremes are evidence of climate change, an investigation is needed regarding the extent to which the country is resilient to these shocks. It is thus timely, if not critical, to focus on climate risks for water, agriculture, and food security in the Indus basin of Pakistan.
eBook
Water Resources Management in the Ganges Basin: A Comparison of Three Strategies for Conjunctive Use of Groundwater and Surface Water
The most difficult water resources management challenge in the Ganges Basin is the imbalance between water demand and seasonal availability. More than 80 % of the annual flow in the Ganges River occurs during the 4-month monsoon, resulting in widespread flooding. During the rest of the year, irrigation, navigation, and ecosystems suffer because of water scarcity. Storage of monsoonal flow for utilization during the dry season is one approach to mitigating these problems. Three conjunctive use management strategies involving subsurface water storage are evaluated in this study: Ganges Water Machine (GWM), Pumping Along Canals (PAC), and Distributed Pumping and Recharge (DPR). Numerical models are used to determine the efficacy of these strategies. Results for the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) indicate that these strategies create seasonal subsurface storage from 6 to 37 % of the yearly average monsoonal flow in the Ganges exiting UP over the considered range of conditions. This has clear implications for flood reduction, and each strategy has the potential to provide irrigation water and to reduce soil waterlogging. However, GWM and PAC require significant public investment in infrastructure and management, as well as major shifts in existing water use practices; these also involve spatially-concentrated pumping, which may induce land subsidence. DPR also requires investment and management, but the distributed pumping is less costly and can be more easily implemented via adaptation of existing water use practices in the basin.
Journal Article
Arsenic Mobility and Groundwater Extraction in Bangladesh
High levels of arsenic in well water are causing widespread poisoning in Bangladesh. In a typical aquifer in southern Bangladesh, chemical data imply that arsenic mobilization is associated with recent inflow of carbon. High concentrations of radiocarbon-young methane indicate that young carbon has driven recent biogeochemical processes, and irrigation pumping is sufficient to have drawn water to the depth where dissolved arsenic is at a maximum. The results of field injection of molasses, nitrate, and low-arsenic water show that organic carbon or its degradation products may quickly mobilize arsenic, oxidants may lower arsenic concentrations, and sorption of arsenic is limited by saturation of aquifer materials.
Journal Article
Estimation of flood damage functions for river basin planning: a case study in Bangladesh
Located at the low-lying deltaic floodplain of Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna river basin, Bangladesh suffers damages from flooding with regularity. From the perspective of long-term planning and management, a reliable flood damage function is a critical component in the estimation of flood-induced economic loss. Such functions are, however, notoriously difficult to develop. This study utilizes in-stream water level and flood-affected area (FAA) data from Flood Forecasting and Warning Center and Bangladesh Water Development Board to evaluate the best form and data input characteristics of flood damage functions for Bangladesh. The performance of various function configurations (geographic data, water level data, and function form) was tested. The Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency and residual error analysis results suggest that, in general, the logistic function performs better than the other two function forms, and the maximum of daily-maximal water level is the best suited to estimate (FAA). As expected, when information is available from all basins (the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna), the resulting flood damage functions provide the most accurate estimations of FAA. Furthermore, the comparison between single- and multivariable flood damage functions does not demonstrate a clear advantage of using multivariate function in our study area. When flood damage functions with finer spatial and temporal resolution can be constructed using remote sensing technology or hydrodynamic modeling, the intra-year and district-level changes to FAA can be evaluated. These findings provide a better flood management plan for Bangladesh and have potential to be generalized to other similarly flood-affected nations.
Journal Article
Climate Change Risks and Food Security in Bangladesh
Contents; List of Figures and Tables; Acknowledgements; Foreword; Executive Summary; Glossary of Terms; Acronyms; Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Vulnerability to Climate Risks; Chapter 3 Future Climate Scenarios; Chapter 4 Future Flood Hydrology; Chapter 5 Future Crop Performance; Chapter 6 Economy-wide Impacts of Climate Risks; Chapter 7 Adaptation Options in the Agriculture Sector; Chapter 8 The Way Forward Turning Ideas into Action; Annexes; References; Index; Colour plates.
eBook
Environmental politics and policy adaptation in China: the case of water sector reform
Much of the literature on China's successful adaptation to the policy challenges posed by economic development credits two principle approaches, gradualism and local experimentation. However, the extent to which these approaches aid policy adaptation to environmental policy challenges is less well explored. This article examines how these approaches have shaped policy adaptation in water resources management by presenting data on ambitious water policy reforms that are, to our knowledge, new to the English-language scholarly literature. While gradualism and local experimentation have aided in the adoption of economic mechanisms like water pricing reform and water rights trading to regulate water use, institutional reforms have been undermined by an over-reliance on central control and direction. This phenomenon, which we call hierarchy, constrains China's ability to address diffuse, inter-jurisdictional and multi-sectoral water management challenges like nonpoint source pollution, and may inhibit its ability to address similarly complex sustainable development challenges into the future.
Journal Article
