climate change on UAE - Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center

Table 6-1. Adaptation options for water supply and demand.
Supply-side
Prospecting and extraction of groundwater
Increasing storage capacity by building reservoirs and dams
Desalination of sea water
Expansion of rain-water storage
Removal of invasive non-native vegetation from riparian areas
Water transfer
feasible, but it is expensive from cost, energy,
and ecological perspectives. The process of
desalination is not environmentally friendly and
seawater desalination plants also contribute to
the wastewater discharges that affect coastal
water quality. This is mostly due to the highly
saline brine that is emitted into the sea, which
may have higher temperatures, contain residual
chemicals from the pretreatment process, heavy
metals from corrosion or intermittently used
cleaning agents. The effluent from desalination
plants is a multi-component waste, with
multiple effects on water, sediment and marine
organisms. It therefore affects the quality of the
resource it depends on. Table 6‐1 suggests some
general adaptation strategies that have been
identified by Working Group II of the IPCC in
the Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007).
The challenge, however, is that demandside
management options may lack practical
effectiveness because they rely on the cumulative
actions of individuals. On the M&I side, public
education of water seems paramount to achieve
the kinds of per-capita water use rates that are
comparable to other countries of the world.
Supply-side options generally involve increases
in storage capacity or abstraction from water
courses and therefore may have adverse
environmental consequences. Demand-side
options may lack practical effectiveness
because they rely on the cumulative actions of
individuals. Some options may be inconsistent
with mitigation measures because they involve
high energy consumption, e.g., desalination,
pumping, and have so far been implemented
Demand-side
Improvement of water-use efficiency by recycling water
Reduction in water demand for irrigation by changing the cropping calendar, crop mix, irrigation method,
and area planted
Reduction in water demand for irrigation by importing agricultural products, i.e., virtual water
Promotion of indigenous practices for sustainable water use
Expanded use of water markets to reallocate water to highly valued uses
Expanded use of economic incentives including metering and pricing to encourage
water conservation
infrequently. Climate <strong>change</strong> may be only one of
many drivers affecting strategies and investment
plans (and it may not be the most important
one over the short-term planning horizon),
and partly due to uncertainty in projections of
future hydrological <strong>change</strong>s. (IPCC SR Water,
June 2008)
Practices that increase the productivity of
irrigation water use – defined as crop output
per unit water use – may provide significant
adaptation potential for all land production
systems under future <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong> (as well
as in the instance of heightened agricultural
or domestic demand). At the same time,
improvements in irrigation efficiency are critical
to ensure the availability of water both for food
production and for competing human and
environmental needs (IPCC, 2007).
There is high confidence that adaptation can
reduce vulnerability, especially in the short
term. Water management in the face of <strong>climate</strong>
<strong>change</strong> therefore needs to adopt a scenariobased
approach (Beuhler, 2003; Simonovic
and Li, 2003) as we have in our study. This is
being used in practice in countries such as the
UK (Arnell and Delaney, 2006) and Australia
(Dessai et al., 2005). A second approach to
coping with uncertainty, referred to as ‘adaptive
management’ (Stakhiv, 1998), involves the
increased use of water management measures
that are relatively robust to uncertainty.
Integrated water resources management
should be an instrument to explore adaptation
measures to <strong>climate</strong> <strong>change</strong>, but so far it is in its
infancy (IPCC SR, 2008).
Impacts, Vulnerability & Adaptation for
Water Resources in Abu Dhabi
125