Area 1: Climate change, pollution and risks ( incl. water issues)

TEG 1.2: Adaptation and mitigation strategies for use of water resources to promote sustainable development (societal stability, economic development and ecosystem protection)

CALL LINE 1
Enhancement of effectiveness and efficiency of adaptation strategies and measures under uncertainty

Justification

The premises on which this document builds are the following: climate change impacts on terrestrial, aquatic, social and economic systems, modifying the interactions among them. Consequently, new equilibria will occur. Existing and in development climate change models allow anticipation of more vulnerable regional areas and systems. Based on such information, adaptation and mitigation measures can be proactively taken aiming to prepare ecosystems and society to ensure ecosystems uses and services. Such adaptation and mitigations processes require integrated strategies on all intervening systems. National regulations may also need to be adapted. The ability to successfully implement adaptation and mitigation measures and strategies depends on knowledge and technical capacity.
Based on these premises and the Research Area a Call line under the title "Enhancement of effectiveness and efficiency of adaptation strategies and measures under uncertainty" was proposed.

Specific objectives from perspective of the New Member States

The identified objectives were as follows:

• Enhancing nature-based and man-made infrastructure-based approaches to adaptation and mitigation.
• Aggregating and comparing adverse and positive impacts across different sectors for the development of adaptive capacities (i.e. regarding decision making, harmonizing data and policies for planning, and adaptive management).
• Inclusion of all temporal scales from short-term (e. g. flood forecasting and warning, temporary dikes, projection of water quality) to long-term (e.g. decades for forestry or reservoir planning).
• Adaptation for cross-boundary cases (international watersheds) in the spirit of the Water Framework Directive (River Basin District)
• Promoting robustness of adaptation and mitigation strategies by integration of stakeholder analysis and commercial viability to enable all-level stakeholders to benefit from the provision of water-related services
• Identification of adverse water-related impacts including changes in water surface, sub-surface and groundwater resources quantity and quality (low dilution at low flows, erosion and flushing chemicals by intense precipitation, overland flow, and snowmelt, preferential flow, temperature-induced eutrophication, changes in retention time and stratification in reservoirs, saltwater intrusion, and salinization of agricultural land)

Background / state-of-the-art

The participants agreed that within the suggested Call Line several specific research topics should be addressed based on the evaluation of the existing knowledge. The participants emphasized the existence of vulnerable systems: natural systems (semi-natural and managed aquatic, terrestrial ecosystems, in particular mountainous, lake, riparian, wetland, coastal systems); human systems (vulnerable regions, sectors, groups of people). Examples of vulnerable sectors were quoted: water management, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, industry, energy, health, tourism, transport. Current situation and projections for the future indicate decreasing precipitation, river flows, soil moisture, and groundwater levels in summer (in vegetation season) in large areas of Europe, changing means, seasonality and extremes, potential for higher intense precipitation, less snow cover, earlier and lower snowmelt – possibility of low flows and early spring droughts. Therefore, sectors have to adapt to the existing climate and every change induces a need for adaptation, involving costs.
In the state-of-the art assessment there was a general agreement among the participants that some adaptation to natural variability of water availability and changing demand has taken place. However, there are considerable differences in dealing with climate change and its possible impacts in various NMS/AC countries.
Instead of fixed boundary conditions to be considered, interactions with exogenous drivers and multiple stressors, also besides the climate change (e. g. land-use, land-cover and land property changes in the transition period) have to be taken into account.

Ongoing and completed projects on issues raised

In respect to past and on-going research, it was unequivocally concluded that projects have addressed mainly the climate change, while the adaptation and mitigation issues in NMS and AC countries have been poorly covered, leaving many important issues unsolved but many opportunities to apply novel approaches omitted. The following list of past and on-going projects/programs was put together:

• ADAM (Adaptation and mitigation strategies) – 6FP IP. It was noted that the project mostly addressed Pan-European research
• National Climate Programmes exist in some countries (e.g., Slovakia, Hungary – VAHAVA, Bulgaria) but they deal mostly with impacts. Adaptation is on general not taken into consideration.
• Stormwater master plan, Malta
• Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Malta is the only EU Member State to have non-annex 1 status. Benefit from sale of carbon credits.
• Sector-specific projects on adaptation (Slovakia)
• WMO/UNESCO Flood Initiative
• Assessment of climate change impact on the hydrological cycle elements in South-Eastern European countries (UNESCO, UVO ROSTE)

Priorities of FP7 and WSSTP SRA addressed by objectives:

Besides the specifics of the NMS and ACC, the proposed call line is in its objectives closely related to the priorities defined in preliminary FP7 (of June 2006), as well as to the WSSPT-SRA documents. In fact, adaptation and mitigation aspects are embedded in several places in the referred documents. The single most important linkage of the call line to the FP7 relates to the Theme 6, Environment (including Global Change), Activity I. Climate change, pollution, and risks, Priority Pressures on environment and climate, Subpriority 6 -Response strategies: Mitigation and adaptation. Moreover links also exist to Priority Natural hazards, Subpriority 4 - Risk management and mitigation.
The call line is also concerned with Activity II. Sustainable management of resources - Priority Conservation and sustainable management of natural and man-made resources and Activity III - Environmental technologies. The call line also drew on the WSSTP SRA, Pilot theme 6: Proactive and corrective management of extreme hydro-climatic events and on the Generic RTD, parts G.6.1 Forecasting. the hydro-meteorological aspects; G.6.2 Warning systems, monitoring network and crisis management; G.6.3 Long term flood mitigation; G.6.4 Short and long-term drought management. Other relevant linkages are with enabling RTD: E.6.1 Regional-scale flooding; E.6.2 Local scale multiple hazard management and E.6.3 Drought, and river flow management.

Suggestion for most appropriate type of project:

• Collaborative Projects of different size

Existing expertise

• Ecology and ecohydrology
• Hydrology
• Risk assessment
• Hydrological Modelling
• Biomonitoring
• Protection of water resources
• Water management in agriculture
• Soil ecology

Required expertise

• Sociology
• Economy
• Spatial planning and engineering
• Expertise covering sectoral issues

Gaps in knowledge

As an important result from the meeting an assemblage of the existing gaps in knowledge was compiled from the perspective of the New Member States and Candidate Countries:

1. Need for approaches for assessing levels of confidence and uncertainty of adaptation strategies and identifying ways of efficient communicating these to the decision-makers and stakeholders
2. Integrated models of total water consumption for incorporation into decision support tools and evaluation of uncertainty and confidence levels for the development of credible decision support systems in data sparse and low tech regions.
3. Adapting stochastic water cycle concepts, methodologies and models especially with respect to extreme events (e.g., hydro-climatological predictions, projections, design values and associated uncertainties) to non-stationary conditions and transferring them into the management, planning, and design of water decision systems and infrastructure.
4. Methods for managing conflicting demands on domestic and transboundary water resources for water consumption, ecological functions, industrial uses, and transport resulting from changes of water consumption patterns and trends in course of major climatic events, adaptation invoked technological innovation and economic conditions.
5. Inventory of data for regional and sectoral studies, especially for data for which regional and river basin district bases repositories do not exist (e.g., water demand, use and consumption).
6. Innovative ways to address sector-specific problems related to climate changes (e.g. rainwater capture and usage, adaptation of cooling water systems to climate change, organizational and legal solutions for implementation of adaptation and mitigation measures, regulatory function of natural (pristine) and close-to-nature ecosystems in the adaptation context, risk assessment and propagation mechanisms).

Societal, economic and European relevance

The call line is relevant for European society and economy, since understanding the vulnerability and adaptability of natural and managed eco- and water systems to climate change, evaluation and communication of uncertainty and levels of confidence of adaptation strategies is a crucial issue for the development of credible decision support resources. A basic requirement for achieving this goal is the development of frameworks for integrating the natural, technical and social science information necessary for multiple-objective decision making. Indeed, novel approaches for improvement of water management practices, economic benefits, health, food and water security, protection against extreme events are needed, as well as the expertise from climatology, hydrology, integrated modeling, water management, spatial planning, economy, social sciences (sociology, politology), sector expertise (water sector, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, energy, transport, health).