TY - JOUR
T1 - Outdoor Water Use as an Adaptation Problem
T2 - Insights from North American Cities
AU - Gober, Patricia
AU - Quay, Ray
AU - Larson, Kelli
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant SES-0951366, Decision Center for a Desert City II: Urban Climate Adaptation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
PY - 2016/2/1
Y1 - 2016/2/1
N2 - Recent efforts to influence the efficiency and timing of urban indoor water use through education, technology, conservation, reuse, economic incentives, and regulatory mechanisms have enabled many North American cities to accommodate population growth and buffer impacts of drought. It is unlikely that this approach will be equally successful into the future because the source of conservation will shift from indoor to outdoor use. Outdoor water is climate sensitive, difficult to measure, hard to predict, linked to other components of complex and dynamic urban resource systems, imbued with behavioral and cultural dimensions, and implicated in societal conflicts about climate risk, modern lifestyles, social justice, and future growth. Outdoor water conservation is not a traditional management problem focused on the water sector, assuming a stationary climate, and set aside from public debate. Instead, outdoor water is an adaptation problem, involving complex and uncertain system dynamics, the need for cross-sector coordination, strategies for dealing with climatic uncertainty, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholders with differing goals. This paper makes the case for treating outdoor water as an adaptation problem and offers a six-point strategy for how cities can better prepare their water systems for the uncertainties of climate and societal change.
AB - Recent efforts to influence the efficiency and timing of urban indoor water use through education, technology, conservation, reuse, economic incentives, and regulatory mechanisms have enabled many North American cities to accommodate population growth and buffer impacts of drought. It is unlikely that this approach will be equally successful into the future because the source of conservation will shift from indoor to outdoor use. Outdoor water is climate sensitive, difficult to measure, hard to predict, linked to other components of complex and dynamic urban resource systems, imbued with behavioral and cultural dimensions, and implicated in societal conflicts about climate risk, modern lifestyles, social justice, and future growth. Outdoor water conservation is not a traditional management problem focused on the water sector, assuming a stationary climate, and set aside from public debate. Instead, outdoor water is an adaptation problem, involving complex and uncertain system dynamics, the need for cross-sector coordination, strategies for dealing with climatic uncertainty, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholders with differing goals. This paper makes the case for treating outdoor water as an adaptation problem and offers a six-point strategy for how cities can better prepare their water systems for the uncertainties of climate and societal change.
KW - Climate adaptation
KW - Complex systems
KW - Outdoor water
KW - Public engagement
KW - Resilience
KW - Vulnerability
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U2 - 10.1007/s11269-015-1205-6
DO - 10.1007/s11269-015-1205-6
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84957433894
SN - 0920-4741
VL - 30
SP - 899
EP - 912
JO - Water Resources Management
JF - Water Resources Management
IS - 3
ER -