Development and Application of a Resilience Framework to Climate Change Adaptation

SEARCH Project – Briefing Paper

D Mark Smith Director – Global Water Programme, IUCN, Switzerland [email protected]

What is Resilience?

Resilience is defined formally in various ways, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2008) as:

“The ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organisation, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.”

The essential quality of resilience is the capacity to withstand shocks and rebuild when necessary.

The idea of ‘re-building when necessary’ is a vital aspect of resilience in the context of climate change. Under a changing climate, adaptation will sometimes mean, rather than adjusting to keep things the way they are, taking action to transform communities and economies into configurations that work better under the new and dynamic climate regime. This is especially important considering that the uncertainties and unknowns relating to climate change mean there will be impacts that are unexpected and not foreseen. There will be surprises, after which the old ways of managing, former livelihoods and prevailing institutional set ups will no longer be appropriate. Climate change may push us across thresholds. When this happens, climate resilient people, communities and nations will have the capacity for transformation that will help them re-build in ways that work under the new conditions. Climate resilience thus needs to equip people, communities and nations to be able to transform rapidly when such changes are necessary.

The idea that resilience always means that things go back to the way they were after a shock or stress – like a spring – is only part of the story. Folke et al (2010) call this ‘engineering resilience’. In the complex, inter-dependent social and ecological systems in which we live, resilience also includes the capacity for transformation when systems cross thresholds. This is ‘social-ecological resilience’ (Folke et al., 2010).

Poor people and less-developed countries need ‘social-ecological resilience’, encompassing ideas of both persistence and transformation. Resilience that simply lessens vulnerability to climate change – that only enables coping – is not sufficient. They require a capacity for transformation needed to move out of poverty towards prosperity that can be sustained under dynamic climate change and global change.

Resilience consistent with poverty reduction can thus be thought of as a “capacity to cope with shocks and stresses and to sustain transformations needed to reduce poverty under global change, including climate change.”

With this in mind, we can imagine that climate-resilient communities and nations – or indeed river or groundwater basins – will be able to cope with climate change effects, whether previously anticipated or unforeseen, avoiding collapse and renewing themselves according to needs created by the shifting climate. In a climate-changing world, the systems of people, economy and nature in which we live will have to have characteristics that make them highly adaptive systems. The reality of systems, where one thing is connected to another, means there are structural or engineered dimensions to climate resilience, but also social and ecological dimensions (Smith, 2011).

To build climate resilience, adaptation to climate change cannot be treated as just another planning problem. Adaptation based on discrete actions that are prioritised for example on infrastructure, institutions or ecosystems may lead to missed opportunities to build the resilience needed to sustain development in a dynamically changing climate where uncertainty and unknowns are expanding.

As most impacts of climate change occur primarily through water – in terms of drought, floods, storms, melting glaciers and sea-level rise – water management and water governance provide key entry points for building resilience to climate change (Smith and Barchiesi, 2009).

How is Resilience Relevant to Climate Change Adaptation?

Adaptation to climate change focuses on reducing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability to climate change combines exposure to hazards that result from the changing climate and sensitivity to their impacts when they occur. Vulnerability is thus high if changes in climate increase the exposure of populations to events such as drought, flood or coastal inundation, because of higher frequency or severity, where the ability of people to cope is limited (Yamin et al., 2005). Capacity to cope is most limited, and thus sensitivity highest, where livelihoods and the economy are based on a narrow range of assets that are easily damaged by climate hazards, with few alternate options or means of managing risk. Vulnerability is therefore especially high for the poor in those ‘hot spots’ where climate change exacerbates exposure to climatic hazards.

If vulnerability is a combination of exposure and sensitivity, then reducing vulnerability demands actions that will 1. reduce exposure to hazards, 2. reduce sensitivity to their effects, and 3. build capacity to adapt (see Figure 1). The latter component, building adaptive capacity, enables communities and nations to mobilise the decisions and resources needed to reduce vulnerability and adapt to climate change (Nelson et al., 2007). Building adaptive capacity means strengthening attributes including the availability of information and skills, access to technologies, access to economic resources and the effectiveness of institutions (Munasinghe and Swart, 2005).

Figure 1. Source: The contribution of exposure to climate hazards, sensitivity to impacts and adaptive capacity to climate change vulnerability (adapted from Schroter, 2004).

Established approaches to climate change adaptation are highly ‘impact specific’. They are designed to lower vulnerabilities to specific projected impacts of climate change. This begins with assessment of vulnerabilities, which are then prioritised according to risk, with those impacts rated as having the highest probabilities and most severe consequences given priority. Actions needed to improve the ability of people to avoid or cope with these impacts are then identified. A simple example is to think of a community faced with increased water scarcity under climate change that may cause groundwater levels to drop. An adaptation plan for the community might then identify drilling of deeper boreholes as a priority action for reducing vulnerability to water scarcity.

Such an ‘impact-specific’ approach to climate change adaptation is based on the logic of planning. Given a set of needs, what actions are needed, and which have highest priority? However, uncertainty in climate change projections is high – and they become higher as scale becomes more local. It is recognised that effective climate change adaptation will take place first and foremost locally – in villages, towns and cities – supported by coordinated decision making about how river basins and coastal zones are developed and managed. Yet, these are the very scales where the inherent uncertainties of climate change are highest. Because of this, calls for action on adaptation increasingly stress the need to build climate resilience. This begs the question: how is building resilience related to ‘impact-specific’ adaptation planning?

Working with resilience does not replace vulnerability assessment, or remove the need for taking specific actions to reduce the highest priority vulnerabilities. Building resilience and ‘impact-specific’ adaptation planning are, instead, complementary.

Building on the example of the community aiming to cope with water scarcity by deepening boreholes, the aim of building resilience would be to help the community to reduce the risks from, respond to and re-build following drought, but also other impacts thought of as having low probability, or impacts that – with all of the uncertainties around climate change – are currently unknown.

Climate resilient communities and nations will thus take impact-specific action for adaptation, but they will also make sure they organise their institutions, infrastructure and economy in ways that are highly adaptive. As both expected and unexpected impacts of climate change unfold, it is these locations that development and poverty reduction will most likely continue to progress, as people will have higher capacities to cope with shocks and, when necessary, re-adjust and rebuild – or transform – according to new realities.

What is the Resilience Framework?

If an ‘impact-specific’ approach to climate change adaptation follows the logic of planning, what is the logic of building resilience?

We now better understand the characteristics of resilient, highly adaptive systems because of advances in the social and ecological sciences. This knowledge, combined with ‘learning-by-doing’ led by IUCN in demonstrations of river basin management in Latin America, Africa and Asia, points to practical components of resilience. Ecosystems, economics and social change are all important. Experience suggests then that resilience is built by integrating four components (Figure 2):

• Diversity – of the economy, livelihoods and nature. Diverse markets, industry or farming systems, for example, give people the alternatives they need to be adaptive. Biodiversity ensures the availability of ecosystem services needed to buffer climate impacts – such as storage of water in upper-watershed forests – and sustain life and productivity.

• Sustainable infrastructure and technology – portfolios that combine both engineered and ‘natural infrastructure’, as well as adaptable and sustainable technologies for their management that reduce vulnerabilities. This includes engineering responses (such as urban drainage or rainfall harvesting) as well as infrastructure management (for example, application of ‘environmental flows’ to allocate river flows within the limits of availability). Added to conventional infrastructure portfolios should be planning and investment in ‘natural infrastructure’ such as wetlands, floodplains and mangroves that store water, lower flood peaks or protect coastal communities.

• Self-organisation – a critical characteristic of resilient, highly adaptive systems that is implemented in practice through participatory governance and empowerment of people in adaptive institutions.

• Learning – ensuring that individuals and institutions can use new skills and technologies needed to adapt and make effective use of better climate information and adaptation strategies as they become available.

Figure 2. Summary of the Resilience Framework

These four components of a ‘Climate Resilience Framework’ combine what action is needed and how it should be implemented to build resilience. The test will be to use such resilience thinking to guide both practical action and the development of strategies and policies that are coherent across sectors.

Experience from demonstrating water management gives clues that combining these components in river basins replaces brittleness and fragility with resilience. In the Komadugu Yobe basin in Northern Nigeria, part of the wider Lake Chad basin, for example, there is environmental degradation combined with severe poverty and conflict. Reform of water governance is building self organisation and promoting shared learning about climate, ecosystem services and sustainable management of dams. Without these steps, climate change generates enormous fears for such regions, but new coping strengths are now emerging from implementing resilience in practice. Case examples of how interventions under the resilience framework have lead to shifts in resilience components are given in the Annex to this paper for the Pangani basin in Tanzania, the Komodugu Yobe and the Tacana watersheds in Guatemala and Mexico.

How Can the Resilience Framework be Applied in Practice?

The SEARCH project has been designed, in part to answer this very question. The intent is to work with stakeholders in demonstration projects to undertake joint learning on how building resilience works in practice, what the barriers are and how to best communicate concepts and ideas on resilience. However, we are not starting from zero. There are many well-known methods and tools that should be implemented in building resilience. The value of the Resilience Framework should be in guiding the assembly of packages of actions that integrate each of the components of resilience. This will ensure that social, economic and ecological dimensions of resilience (and reduction of vulnerability) are addressed in climate change adaptation.

When creating strategies for resilience, answers are needed for four key questions: • How can we strengthen diversity, in livelihoods, the economy and nature • What infrastructure portfolio is needed to strengthen resilience, and how should it be managed? • How can we strengthen self-organisation in ways that empower people to make needed decisions, with appropriate roles for different stakeholders and institutions? • How do we strengthen learning and adaptiveness?

An initial survey of practical actions for each component of resilience was made at the SEARCH Inception Workshop in April 2011. These are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Examples of practical action under the four components of the Resilience Framework identified by SEARCH project partners at the project inception meeting, April 2011.

Diversity Sustainable infrastructure & technologies 1. Creating Alternatives for sustainable livelihood 1. Encouraging the use of alternative power (2 cards) (traditional agriculture Practices +sustainability 2. Cutting infrastructure water losses tourism) 3. Stone terrains 2. Integrated approaches to water management : 4. Low cost water efficient irrigation technology • water for nature 5. Promote Drip irrigation to decrease H2O use in • water for sectors agriculture 3. Encourage the protection of bio-diversity through 6. Mainstreaming of environmental flows in water plans providing alternative economical resources at local i.e. how to manage infrastructure community such as Eco-tourism. 7. Best practice agriculture water management for water 4. Forestation efficiency 5. Rehabilitation of pastures and range lands in dry or • Sustainability, technology (2 cards) semi-dry lands • Irrigation scheduling 6. Encourage poly-culture (crop diversity). • Waste water treatment and reuse 7. Diversity of energy resources • Implement sewage network • Water harvesting

Self-organisation Learning 1. Self Organization: (Co op. for common objectives 1. Learning: (bringing people through involvement of 7 stakeholder groups) together/Dialogue/Environmental 2. Ownership and accountability Education)…extension service for farmers. (GO) + 3. In better governance Dialogue between officials + locals. 4. Strengthening empowerments 2. Indigenous knowledge for rainwater harvesting • Self Organization 3. Practical tools for water management and planning • Better water governance 4. Raising awareness in the local community 5. Participation 5. Benefit from the local knowledge in facing climate 6. Decentralization change effects 7. Establishing local committees to take part in decision 6. Video documentation of success stories and establish making process website for videos 8. Ensuring the participation of vulnerable group such as 7. Reviving traditional practices: e.g. movement of youth and women nomadic people 9. Networking, enforcement of environmental laws 8. Assessment of climate vulnerability 9. Transparent sharing of resource assessments 10. Access to and application of climate and hydrological information in planning and management

Implementing the Resilience Framework will mean integrating each of these four questions and then identifying appropriate response actions. For a community, basin or nation, the starting point is likely to be planning and reform of governance. As an appropriate planning and governance framework is put together, the decisions over key actions to address the diversity, sustainable infrastructure and technologies, and learning dimensions of resilience – as well as ‘impact-specific’ adaptation actions – can be made (Figure 3). Actions to address the components of resilience can be integrated across sectoral policies, strategies and plans.

Figure 3: Implementation of the Resilience Framework, through governance arrangements that promote self organisation combined with action to strengthen diversity, learning and use of sustainable infrastructure and technologies. Resilience components can be reinforced across sector policies, strategies and plans. Vulnerability assessments and the resulting planning for adaptation are embedded within implementation of resilience and enable ‘impact-specific’ response to the highest priority vulnerabilities identified.

The demonstration projects in SEARCH will have the opportunity to test the practicalities of using the Resilience Framework to guide adaptation, and of integrating applications of vulnerability assessments to ensure that resilience and ‘impact-specific’ adaptation planning are complementary. Tools for practical application of the Resilience Framework will be based on lessons learned from the demonstration projects, for example including tools for measuring and mapping resilience and gaps in resilience, and strategic planning tools for resilience to complement vulnerability assessment.

References

IPCC. 2008. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/tssts-4-1-2-ecosystems.html#footnote15

Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Chapin, T., and Rockström, J. 2010. Resilient thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20 http://www-ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/

Munasinghe, M. and Swart, R. (2005) Primer on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. Facts, Policy Analysis, and Applications. Cambridge University Press.

Nelson, D.R., Adger, W.N, , and Brown, K. (2007) Adaptation to Environmental Change: Contribution of a Resilience Framework. Annual review of Environment and Resources, 32, 395-419.

Schroter, D. 2004 [find correct reference... and the ATEAM consortium 2004, Global change vulnerability — assessing the European human–environment system, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research]

Smith, M. 2011. Combining the what and how of building climate resilience: water ecosystems and infrastructure. pp. 201-203 in: Waughray D (editor), Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus. Island Press, Washington DC.

Smith, DM and Barchiesi, S. 2009. Environment as infrastructure – resilience to climate change impacts on water through investments in nature. Perspectives Paper prepared for the 5th World Water Forum, Istanbul, Turkey.

Yamin, F, Rahman, A., and Huq, S. (2005) Vulnerability, Adaptation and Climate Disasters: A Conceptual Overview. IDS Bulletin, 36(4) October, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.

Annex – Case Examples of Resilience Shifts

Case #1: Environmental water allocations and adaptive capacity to deal with future uncertainties in Tanzania Katharine Cross and Onesmo Zakaria, Water & Wetlands Programme East & Southern Africa

Case #2: Breaking the cycle of degradation and poverty in the Nigerian sector of the Sahel region Stefano Barchiesi and Mark Smith, IUCN Global Water Programme

Case #3: Managing land and water for food security and disaster risk reduction in Mesoamerica Simone Benz, IUCN Environment and Development Group

SEARCH Resilience Briefing – Case #1 Environmental water allocations and adaptive capacity to deal with future uncertainties in Tanzania

Prepared by Katharine Cross and Onesmo Zakaria, Water & Wetlands Programme East & Southern Africa

The vulnerability context

In the Pangani River Basin in Tanzania, the impacts of climatic hazards are affecting availability of water in time and space. The high level of uncertainty makes it difficult to allocate water equitably within the basin and manage resources among users. This uncertainty over climate combined with low community awareness and understanding of the changes has been amplifying the impacts to the livelihood systems. In 2008 alone, from a total of 446,083 livestock in the Same District, 6,241 died and 98,761 were moved to other areas as a result of drought (Same District Agricultural and Livestock Development Department, 2008). The lack of investment in engineered water infrastructure such as boreholes, cattle troughs, irrigation canals and water division boxes, as well as natural infrastructure including restoration of wetlands and protection of water source, had undermined community initiatives to improve their livelihood resources.

Furthermore, poor communication between water users across the basin – especially between upstream and downstream users – has been inhibiting the opportunity to collectively manage the declining water resources and causing unnecessary conflicts. Small-scale users in villages often compete against larger and more powerful claims by industries. Downstream users like cities and hydropower companies are negatively affected by upstream land uses like farming that influence the availability of water and its quality. These conflicts are expected to increase in the future as population grows and climate change is projected to complicate water management.

To address some of the issues around climate change and water management, the Pangani River Basin Management Project (PRBMP) is generating technical information and developing participatory forums to strengthen Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Pangani Basin. This includes mainstreaming climate change, to support the equitable provision and wise governance of freshwater for livelihoods and environment for current and future generations. The Pangani Basin Water Board (PBWB) is implementing the project with technical assistance from IUCN, the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) and the local NGO PAMOJA. The project is financially supported by the IUCN Water and Nature Initiative (WANI), the Government of Tanzania, the European Commission through a grant from the EU-ACP Water Facility, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through UNDP.

Additional partnerships are supporting some of the activities within the PRBMP. First, the vulnerability assessment and adaptation activities focusing on the Kikuletwa sub-catchment in component 3 are being implemented in partnership with the Climate Change and Development

Project (CCDP) - a Pan-African project funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland and implemented by IUCN. The project aims to ensure that Climate Change related policies and strategies lead to adaptation activities that emphasize the role of forests and water resources in supporting people’s livelihoods and associated farming systems.

Secondly, the Global Water Initiative (GWI) funded by the Howard G. Buffet Foundation is also supporting complementary activities to the PRBMP on building capacity and raising awareness on IWRM and training and implementation of climate change vulnerability assessments and adaptation activities, with a geographical focus on the Same district in the Pangani Mainstem sub-catchment. In Tanzania, IUCN, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and CARE, are implementing the GWI project with the aim to promote the provision of water supply, hygiene and sanitation as well as watershed management (within the framework of IWRM) among rural communities living in arid and semi arid areas of Same.

Through the implementation of the PRBMP, CCDP and GWI Tanzania, IUCN and partners have carried out climate change vulnerability assessments in 5 villages in Kikuletwa Catchment and 3 villages in Pangani Mainstem Catchment. From the vulnerability assessments, a list of adaptation actions has been proposed and ranked by the communities. Some of these activities are being implemented by the Government of Tanzania through its local authorities (i.e. District Councils). Some of the other activities at the proposal stage are being communicated to development agencies for further consideration.

The intervention

Establishing the links between biodiversity, livelihoods and flow-related changes

As part of the PRBMP, an environmental flow assessment (EFA) was carried out for the Pangani River to generate baseline data on the condition of tributaries, wetlands and the estuary against which the impact of water-related decision-making can be monitored in future. A detailed 18-month planning phase engaged EFA experts to help design an EFA methodology suitable to the needs of the Pangani Basin. Initial use of simpler field-based methods to build capacity within Tanzania was preferred over deployment of the best science available that relies largely on international expertise. The choice was justified in that the assessment has also been used as the basis for informative decision-making tools. The ecological, social and economic knowledge of the basin is being organised to aid future planning and management of its water resources. A series of reports have been produced that have provided this information into the assessment including:

• a hydrological analysis with associated hydrology model; • a delineation of the study areas to select representative sampling areas; • a health assessment of the rivers and estuary; • a baseline socio-economic assessment to describe people’s relationship to water and aquatic resources in different stretches of the river; • State of the Basin report as a synthesis of the understanding of the river systems and its economies • Specialist Studies Input on hydraulics, hydropower operations, riparian vegetation, fisheries and invertebrates, macro-economic and climate change; • development of a flow assessment scenario-evaluation decision support system (DSS) tool.

Protecting freshwater ecosystems through livestock infrastructure rehabilitation

Among the adaptation actions identified by the climate change vulnerability assessments was the construction of a total of four cattle troughs in Ruvu and Pangani Mainstem Catchments to sustain water supply for livestock, maintain river and spring ecosystems, and minimize chances of conflicts between farmers and livestock especially during drought. The cattle troughs are expected to stop or reduce the number of livestock watering at the source, hence affecting the river bank and its ecosystem. In addition to constructing the cattle troughs, the PRBMP is also planning to use clean energy to supply water to the Ruvu Jiungeni one in the Pangani Mainstem Catchment. The plan is to install a wind mill as the driving energy source for water supply. Results of community-based climate change vulnerability assessment in this community ranked strong winds amongst the top three climatic hazards. If this is feasible, the project will aim to harness this hazard as a resource.

Moreover, two boreholes have been drilled in the Kikuletwa Catchment to sustain water supply for multiple uses besides livestock watering, namely agriculture and domestic consumption. To further build on the benefits of accessing the groundwater source, a proposal has been submitted to finance drip irrigation in cooperation with the Simanjiro District Council. A plan also exists to train communities on irrigation efficiency. Irrigation takes about 90% of the water used in the Pangani River Basin whilst efficiency of infrastructure is only between 15% and 20%. Selected communities have also been trained in poultry keeping as an alternative income generation activity that is not so dependent on water.

Negotiating water allocation to different uses among stakeholders

The PRBMP and GWI Tanzania are supporting the implementation of the 2002 National Water Policy (NAWAPO). The policy clearly stipulates that community participation forms the basis for sustainable governance of water resources. An activity was therefore needed at the community level to foster participatory management of the declining water resources. Throughout project implementation, communities have been consulted and led the process towards establishment of Water Users Associations (WUAs) in the Kikuletwa and Pangani Mainstem Catchment respectively. Facilitators from the projects pulled together a multi-disciplinary team involving staff from the basin office, local government authorities and NGOs in the catchment.

WUAs are the primary institution that connects users at the grassroots level and the PRBMP is facilitating their design in some of the most conflict-ridden catchments of the Basin. In turn, piloting the formation of WUAs was instrumental to new governance arrangements whereby stakeholders can further organize in sub-catchment forums and submit their concerns or recommendations over water decisions to the PBWB. Institutional strengthening has proven to be key, by means of enabling diverse stakeholders to participate in the discovery of options and in joint action. After three years of negotiated steps and social learning, the project has thus contributed to building resilience in the Basin through conflict resolution, capacity building and knowledge sharing.

Creating adaptive capacity from environmental flows science

Climate change modeling undertaken in the Pangani Basin has predicted that there will be a decrease in rainfall during the dry June – October period and adjoining months. The seasonality of

stream flows in the Pangani is also likely to change due to hotter and drier winters although its impact will depend on water extractions and the characteristics of each sub-catchment. For this reason, WUAs are being trained on conflict management, entrepreneurship and IWRM which has broadened community perception of water management following hydrologic units like sub- catchments. Based on the climate predictions and using the information from the EFA, scenarios looking to 2025 are being developed to determine how different water allocations under this climate future will impact economic development, environmental health and social well-being in the basin. Compared to the same scenarios without climate change, the climate change scenarios predict a reduction in the water available for urban demands, irrigation and HEP. They also predict reductions in flooding of the Kirua swamps, fish catches and river health.

Coupled with the inputs to the EFA (the list of reports above) was capacity building and training on environmental flow concepts, how to enter information into the DSS, and how to interpret the outputs from the scenarios developed and evaluated through the DSS. At the same time, communities and stakeholders have been involved to assess the impacts of climate change and best ways to adapt. As part of the work on understanding the water sector’s vulnerability to climate change and piloting adaption actions to generate lessons, training is being delivered through the PRBMP, CCDP and GWI Tanzania to District Councils staff (Meru and Simanjiro in Kikuletwa and Same and Mwanga in Pangani Mainstem) on climate change impacts and community-based risk screening.

The resilience shift

The experience from demonstrating water management in Pangani suggests that resilience is built by integrating four components:

The following is a synopsis of the actions implemented to better understand how they helped build resilience in relation to these four components.

Pangani Low resilience (before intervention) High resilience (after intervention)

Diversity • Population growth, deforestation, • Health assessment of the river and the expansion of cultivated ecosystems advancing knowledge land putting excessive pressures on on biota the basin’s natural resources • Recognition of aquatic resources • Increasing numbers of livestock as direct consumptive use value to watering at the river affecting the rural households bank and its ecosystem

Sustainable infrastructure • The lack of investment in • Construction of cattle troughs & technology engineered water infrastructure protecting river and spring such as boreholes, irrigation canals ecosystems from livestock and water division boxes, as well as natural infrastructure undermining • Allocation of water to sustain community initiatives to improve natural infrastructure for drought livelihood resources mitigation, such as wetlands and estuary habitats

Self-organisation • Over-allocation of water resources • Water users associations acting as and escalating demand leading to participatory forums that connect increased number of conflicts stakeholders and strengthen IWRM • Ineffective management impairing the equitable provision and wise • Adaptive governance providing governance of water resources capacity to deal with any scenario including uncertain future events

Learning • Limited knowledge of the basin's • Mentoring of water professionals ecosystems, livelihood assets and on environmental flows studies vulnerabilities to climate change • Exchange of experiences on • Poor communication between climate upstream and downstream users change and water governance between projects

References

PBWO/IUCN, 2011. Water Resources Management – an input to Climate Change Adaptation. Briefing Note for Climate Change Adaptation in Pangani River Basin – Tanzania.

PBWO/IUCN, 2011. The process of establishing the Kikuletwa Catchment Forum. Briefing Note for Community Participation in Water Resource Management: Description of the Kikuletwa Water Users Association Establishment Process in Pangani River Basin – Tanzania.

PBWO/IUCN, 2011. The process of establishing the Pangani Mainstem WUA. Briefing Note for Activities Conducted by IUCN through GWI Running Dry Program In Pangani River Basin – Tanzania. Same District Agricultural and Livestock Development Department, 2008

SEARCH Resilience Briefing – Case #2 Breaking the cycle of degradation and poverty in the Nigerian sector of the Sahel region

Prepared by Stefano Barchiesi and Mark Smith, Global Water Programme

The vulnerability context

The Komadugu-Yobe River is part of the Lake Chad basin and of the natural infrastructure of northern Nigeria. With a semi-arid climate, rainfall variability is high and severe drought a frequent hazard. Deep poverty characterises the basin, where population has doubled in three decades to more than 23 million and it keeps growing at 2.5%. The majority of this population is moreover comprised of women and children under the age of 15, who are vulnerable and deprived of their means of livelihood because of degraded environments and inadequate water resources development. Over this same time, flow in the Komadugu-Yobe Basin (KYB) has fallen by 35%, due to the combined effects of the construction of two dams since the 1970s, abstraction of water for large-scale irrigation and regional drying of the climate. A society already under social and economic crisis has thus been facing ever-increasing water stress.

The network of river systems and wetlands that constitute the KYB support a wide range of ecological processes and economic activities for drought fall-back security, including recession agriculture, pastoralism, forest regeneration, fish breeding and production, trading, etc. The livelihoods of the over 23 million people in the basin, both in Nigeria and Niger, depend almost exclusively on these activities. However, the river itself has been severely degraded, as the natural cycle of seasonal flows has been replaced by perennial low flows, causing loss of the services from riparian and wetland ecosystems that communities have historically relied on. Fishing, farming and herding livelihoods have been devastated as a result, because fish habitats are choked with invasive weeds, floods used by farmers to fill their soils with water are small or absent, and scarcity of water has led to conflict.

The natural infrastructure of the river has been damaged, and as a result communities living with drought hazards are less able to cope. The river systems now struggle to support the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands, which is Nigeria’s premier Ramsar site and of immense local, national and international economic and ecological importance. These wetlands used to harbour over 370 species of birds, 33% of which are migratory as well as about 100 species of fish. There are also some endemic plant species of agronomic importance such as a local variety of rice which are threatened with extinction and have attracted strong conservation interest.

With further climate change looming, the adaptive capacity of ecosystems and communities of the Komadugu Yobe have become brittle, just when resilience is most needed. The six federal Nigerian riparian states have been unable to coordinate development of water resources in the basin. With the number of cases of conflicts over land and water resources reaching court running into the hundreds each year, the dysfunctional state of institutional paralysis of the river had become a barrier to pursuing the Millennium Development Goals in the basin.

The intervention

Thanks to a joint basin-level intervention by IUCN and partner organizations at the beginning of 2006, the federal and state governments and stakeholders, including dam operators and farming, fishing and herding communities, came together to negotiate a plan for coordinating and investing in restoration and management of the basin. In addition to agreeing on a Catchment Management Plan, they drafted a ‘Water Charter’, spelling out the agreed principles for sustainable development of the basin and the roles and responsibilities of governments and stakeholders.

Under the agreed management plan for the basin, actions are underway to restore ecosystem services and rebuild the natural infrastructure used to cope with drought and sustain the livelihoods and enterprise development needed to reduce poverty. The new institutions and empowerment of stakeholders to participate in planning and management of water resources provide flexible capacity to respond to stresses and shocks that was missing in the past. Reform of water governance is enabling transparent coordination of water resources development, including remediation of degraded ecosystems and, eventually, restoration of the river’s flow regime. Dialogue has reduced the number of cases of conflict to just a handful per year and governments have pledged millions of dollars in new investment for basin restoration.

Incorporating knowledge of downstream needs into dam operations

Artificial constraints upon the river systems have further increased the complexity of the hydrology. The Hadejia River system is thought to be more than 80% controlled by both the Tiga Dam on the Kano River and the Challawa Gorge Dam on the Challawa River.

These dams feed two large, partly finished, formal irrigation schemes known as the Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP) and the Hadejia Valley Irrigation Project (HVIP). Both dams also contribute to the Kano City Water Supply (KCVS). The Jama’are River system is presently uncontrolled but further development plans exist to build a dam at Kafin Zaki as well as a split flow proportioning infrastructure at the upstream end of the Nguru Wetlands that would control the destination of this wetland’s flow.

Seasonal flooding plays an essential role in maintaining the ecological system of the wetlands and enables both flood and recession farming to be conducted in the wetland region and along the lower reaches of the rivers. Records of exceptional floods in the basin were recurrent in the 1990s, with extremely large floods combined with uncoordinated reservoir operations often resulting in the displacement of tens of thousands of people. With few exceptions, the flooding of the floodplains along the Yobe River was instead very limited in the first years of the 2000s, the irregular and low flows affecting small and large irrigation schemes to the point that many of these had to be abandoned.

Contrary to what was expected after the completion of the two dams, the timing of the floods in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands had become less predictable and even resulted in dry-season floods. These flood events were often looked at as though water was intentionally released from the dams whereas responsibility could equally be sought in intense rainfall downstream of the dams creating localized flash floods. Apparently, the two dams are not equipped with floodgates per se but rather fixed spillways that only allow for releases after full capacity is reached. Trust among stakeholders is now stronger at all levels because of participation in basin monitoring and sharing of this kind of information.

Resolving conflict and increasing livelihoods prospects through river restoration

Two pilot ecosystem and livelihood interventions have been carried out around the Rantan community and Dabi village in the area of river restoration and weed control. River restoration is an approach used by water resources professionals to devise engineering measures that best maintain river health such as straightening or diversion of the river course, meander cut-offs, clearance and dredging of the river channel (excavation or de-silting), construction of dykes and embankments, or reservoir operations.

The invasion of aquatic weeds, notably Typha domingenis, was having a number of consequences for the ecosystem services of one of the sub-basins. Due to the weed and silt blockages the contribution from the Hadejia River to the Yobe River had been practically nil since at least the early 1990s. The use of surface water bodies for fishing and navigation had been hindered and biodiversity decreasing. Instead, the environment was favoring multiplication of vectors of waterborne diseases had been created.

Involving about 450 km of the length of the river course, the two interventions intended to demonstrate that best IWRM practices had been undertaken to sustain ecosystem services and enhance the livelihoods of the benefitting communities. Owing to this pilot restoration by the IUCN WANI project and other partners such as the Hadejia-Jama’are-Komadugu-Yobe Basin (HJKYB) Trust Fund, a reasonable measure of flow is now reaching Lake Chad as used to be the case in the recent past.

Setting up centralized data banks for information sharing

In response to the increasing evidence of deterioration of the drought-prone KYB’s precarious water resources situation and the growing concern of the basin’s communities, the HJKYB Coordinating Committee directed that a water audit for the entire basin be prepared. The Water Audit incorporated analysis and documentation of the impacts of dam construction, irrigation projects and water supply to the city of Kano on river flows, among others.

The Nigeria Federal Ministry of Water Resources – IUCN –Nigerian Conservation Foundation Project for Improving Land and Water Resources Management in the KYB was also responsible for setting up a database for the entire basin’s use in IUCN office. The largely computerized datasets comprise mainly data from previous studies by related line ministries and other governmental agencies as well as those gathered from stakeholders and from others studies undertaken by the project itself.

The data compiled by the water audit as well as the database created by the project are very important tools for making informed decisions on sustainable use of resources in the basin and are

highly welcomed by the federal and state ministries of water resources and the river basin authorities. With a centralized database, it is now becoming easier to access data and key information about the basin in terms of land and water resources management, which also helps dialogue among stakeholders.

Building financial mechanisms into participatory governance

A study of the KYB basin carried out in the late 1990s concluded that there was no clear understanding of the status of water availability and demand in the basin. A water audit was consequently recommended on the basis of which a Catchment Management Plan could be prepared. Also with 14 knowledge base studies as background information, the Catchment Management Plan was produced and subjected to a wider consultation for stakeholders’ inputs. After various comments had been incorporated, the final draft document of the Catchment Management Plan went through additional stakeholders’ scrutiny and adoption at a basin-wide workshop in May 2006. The final version of the document, after the adoption by the stakeholders, was approved of the State Governors through a Summit of Governors and Leaders of the basin in June 2006. The State Governors endorsed the plan at what is popularly known by the stakeholders as the Damaturu Summit of 2006.

At the Damaturu Summit, the State Governors also contributed an equivalent of USD 6.5 Million as a take-off amount towards the establishment of the HJKYB Trust Fund for the implementation of the Catchment Management Plan and other activities pertaining to the joint management of the land and water resources of the basin. The Federal Government of Nigeria matched the funds equally to bring the total amount to USD 13 Million. The parties involved in the establishment of the Trust Fund are aware that an amount of USD 125 Million is needed to address the IWRM problems of the basin as outlined in the CMP for the next four years. They are also aware that the Trust Fund is intended to provide a sustainable funding mechanism for addressing the most crucial inter-state water management issues of the basin. These have all been articulated in a MoU that was signed at the Damaturu Summit 2006.

The wetlands of the KYB are also source of internationally shared waters whose management in Nigeria has important bearings on diplomatic relationships between Nigeria and Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Central African Republic. As a result of sensitization and consultation meetings with stakeholders in each of the riparian States within Nigeria, a draft Water Charter was first produced and then consolidated. The Charter was finally adopted at a basin-wide validation workshop in February 2007, with attendance of representatives from all the six riparian States, delegations from the relevant Federal Government Ministries, experts from the Lake Chad Basin Commission, NGOs, Community-Based Organizations, academia, conservationists from within and outside the basin, professionals, administrators and political leaders.

The resilience shift

The experience from demonstrating water management in the KYB suggests that resilience is built by integrating four components:

• Diversity – of the economy, livelihoods and nature. Diverse markets, industry or farming systems, for example, give people the alternatives they need to be adaptive. Biodiversity

ensures the availability of ecosystem services needed to buffer climate impacts – such as storage of water in upper-watershed forests – and sustain life and productivity.

The following is a synopsis of the actions implemented to better understand how they helped build resilience in relation to these four components.

KYB Low resilience (before intervention) High resilience (after intervention)

Diversity • Alteration of the natural cycle of • Pilot restoration of flows and fish seasonal flows devastating fishing, habitats resolving conflict and farming and herding livelihoods increasing the diversity of livelihoods options • Rainfall variability and severe droughts due to regional climate • Establishment of a Trust Fund change aggravating poverty financing implementation of the Catchment Management Plan

Sustainable infrastructure • Lack of coordination for agricultural • Removal of weeds and silt & technology developments leading to failed blockages to restore natural irrigation projects and non-optimal infrastructure and demonstrating utilization of multi-purpose dams the value of improved flows

• Siltation and weed infestation • Understanding of built causing blockage of streams and infrastructure management flooding of channels for downstream flood control and environmental water releases

Self-organisation • Fragmented roles and • Participatory development of a responsibilities locking the basin in Water Charter building consensus institutional paralysis and enabling transparent cooperation from local to basin • Growing tensions and risk of levels conflicts among users and sectors

over access to water and land • Creation of country- and state- wide IWRM commissions curbing inequitable access to water

Learning • Misconception about the root • Catchment situation analysis causes of degradation by the informing the draft Management people most dependant on the Plan and implementation agencies basin’s resources • Setting up of centralized data • Lack of political will and leadership banks allowing for inter-state fuelling suspicion and mistrust information sharing about rival intendments

SEARCH Resilience Briefing – Case #3 Managing land and water for food security and disaster risk reduction in Mesoamerica

Based on interviews conducted by Simone Benz, IUCN Environment and Development Group

The vulnerability context

A region lies at the border between the department of San Marcos in Guatemala and the State of Chiapas in Mexico, which is rich in natural resources. In the high-altitude upper watersheds of the Suchiate River and the Coatán, which flows off the slopes of the Tacaná volcano in Guatemala into Mexican territory and then towards the Pacific Ocean, ecosystem services are especially important assets for development. Despite of this great potential, the area is also very vulnerable in terms of ecological and political factors. The climate is tropical humid and occurrence of hurricanes is naturally high, let alone exposure to volcanic activity.

Along with the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, the geology of the area is also unfavorable to preventing severe erosion of formerly deep soils that originate from volcanic sand rocks. Unregulated land use change is especially damaging in steep catchments and deforestation has reduced the capacity of the landscape to retain water. Leading to increases in the volume and rate of runoff, the lost water storage capacity of the eroded soils exacerbates the risk of flooding caused by intense rainfall. In addition, intensive animal farming and a relatively dense population associated with poor waste and waste water management is contaminating rivers and affecting fisheries along the Pacific coast.

Diversification of agricultural practices is hindered, particularly in the high altitude watersheds, and especially where catchments are degraded. Beans, corn and coffee are the major crops for small- scale farmers. Intensive production of plantain, soy, and banana is a growing sector on the coastal plain. But ecosystem fragmentation, hydro-geological risk and water availability are not the sole causes of vulnerability in the Tacaná watersheds. The area is also exposed to a number of sociopolitical shortcomings such as lack of technical support between institutions, indigenous people marginalization, high illiteracy and mortality rates, very high population growth, and a complex land tenure rights situation. Unlike other places in Guatemala, the land plots in San Marcos are too small to be effectively managed and often have no user.

Tenure rights in Guatemala are such that the government’s land has to be registered to the municipality before it can be transferred to the citizens, though the population has little trust in this process. As a result of severe poverty, especially at higher elevations, many young people migrate elsewhere in search of temporary employment as cheap manpower. A large number of households in Guatemala rely on money transfers from workers that occasionally move to Mexico for the harvesting of seasonal crops such as coffee. In Mexico farmers are entitled to have concessions because the traditional system is set up as to provide for communal land, although indigenous

people are still largely excluded. The land is administered collectively but managed and worked on by individuals or families.

As the population tends to be distributed unevenly on this territory, urbanization and infrastructure development used to suffer from poor planning. Building of roads by municipalities to connect rural areas and dispersed populations has been at the source of severe landslides in the past. In this respect, corn growers in the lower watersheds are extremely vulnerable as strong rains combined with erosion can cause destruction of entire crops. The population is not generally aware of why there are risks, why they are vulnerable, what the issue is and why is it an issue, what can be done about it and how. Furthermore, lack of organization at the institutional level causes people to have trouble integrating knowledge of risks into action.

The intervention

It was with the goal of inverting this context of environmental degradation that the “Integrated Management of Watersheds Associated with the Tacaná Volcano Guatemala-Mexico” Project started in 2003 within the framework of the IUCN Water And Nature Initiative (WANI). The watersheds are of great strategic importance for both countries since they supply water to a large number of residents in the cities located in the lower areas and the main source of irrigation for agricultural and livestock purposes. By restoring them the risk of devastating floods is also significantly reduced. In 2005 tropical storm Stan dropped torrential rains in the region, causing flooding and mudslides that led to an estimated 2,000 deaths and damages of up to US$ 40 million. Roads, bridges, water supply systems, crops and local economies were destroyed.

Ecosystem restoration and biodiversity

Management actions around Tacaná have always tended to focus more strongly on ecosystems in the upper watersheds and on people in the lower watersheds. It was therefore natural that new pilot activities in the area would target maintenance of ecosystem services alongside improving livelihoods. IUCN-led pilots combined rehabilitation of ecosystem services and more productive and efficient use of water with development of social capital and benefits such as income generation or reduced vulnerability. Activities included for example aquaculture (fish-farming), honey production and agro-ecology (community gardens), reforestation and mangrove conservation, solid waste recycling and septic tank initiatives. For bioenergy and agroforestry production purposes through reforestation, the project took advantage of existing government conservation programs such as the reserve created in 2002 by the Mexican Government in Chiapas and the area of the Tacaná volcano which is protected under federal law. About a dozen forest nurseries were set up, in which 45,000 plants were used to reforest 45 hectares of land with native tree species threatened with extinction (pinabete and white pine). Some of the nurseries located in the upper sections of the watersheds continue to function thanks to community input after initial project support in terms of funding and training.

Sustainable infrastructure and technology

As a result of IUCN co-executed projects on organic farming, foliar agroforestry and sustainable agriculture, about 43 hectares of land were destined to planting of pasture grass, seed reproduction grounds, protection of water recharge zones through payments for environmental services and

construction of water infiltration ditches, and installation of composting beds and stables for sheep. The production of earthworm compost has enabled communities to have continual production of good quality organic fertilizer, eliminating the need to purchase fertilizer made from hen droppings. Besides sustainable organic technologies for soil conservation, physical assets had also to be provided in the form of water infrastructure. A drinking water systems reconstruction project was funded and carried out to rehabilitate and/or rebuild 72 medium and large drinking water systems and 4 small irrigation systems in urban and rural areas of the municipalities covered by the Tacaná Project in San Marcos that were severely damaged by tropical storm Stan. As a result of the solid and liquid waste management project, a treatment plant and sanitary landfill were constructed for demonstration purposes with joint funds from the community, a local NGO, the UNDP Small Grants Program and IUCN. Access to drinking water has also improved owing to projects on chlorine-based water purification and, in some cases, wastewater treatment from coffee pulp processing in partnership with the Ministry of Natural Resources and the National Coffee Association.

Diversity of livelihoods and economy

Households have now better access to food as a result of greenhouse production, mushroom growing and agroforestry as well as the recovery of the irrigation system. Food is grown within and by the community and the community members own the greenhouses thanks to micro-crediting. The greenhouses allow people to produce more and year-long e.g. tomatoes and flowers, partly for local consumption and partly for export. In essence, the project contributed to higher resilience of the watershed communities of Tacaná through diversification of agricultural practices (e.g. agroforestry, fruit growing, etc.) for improved nutrition and income generation (for at least subsistence) as well as promotion of a variety of economic activities, including ecotourism and employment in local medium-size estates. To help increase household income generation, women and the young received training on how to start a new business. Gender and age-dependent skills training was vital to curb unemployment and migration.

Empowerment enabling creation of participatory institutions

Capacity building and empowerment played a major role in improving natural resource management in the catchment and reducing risk and vulnerability. Empowerment of community-owned institutions is making watersheds more secure and livelihoods less vulnerable. With support from WANI, local communities have organized 2 microwatershed councils around the Coatán River and 2 around the Suchiate River. Built to lead watershed restoration and development that meet their priorities, the councils were recognized by local governments from the start and mayors participated in the organization process and all meetings from planning to execution to co-funding. Whilst participation in the upper watersheds was limited to municipal councils, the process has now begun to incorporate the private sector in the mid-section of the Suchiate River. For this end, plans have been made with small coffee producers to reduce water use at coffee-processing facilities and to improve organic plantations.

Learning and knowledge sharing at multiple levels of governance

After 3 years of project, the actors have become members of the formal process and are now taking charge and defining their own goals. The concerns about managing support and making decisions to avoid and reduce future environmental damages is moving from municipality to higher levels of

governance. As a result of strategic alliances of different government agencies and NGOs, a National Microwatershed Commission was set up that defined a methodology for integrated microwatershed management in the project area. This was prepared considering the legal framework of institutions, existing government agencies and NGOs in the area, and management units with similar characteristics. Use of the methodology helps processes move forward, and facilitates the participation of local actors and achievement of the proposed objectives. 32 different government and nongovernmental entities in Guatemala and Mexico have already adopted the microwatershed as the unit of planning for environmental management and conservation, including the newly established Inter-institutional Coordination Entity for Natural Resources and Environment (CORNASAM in Spanish) and the Inter-Institutional Microwatershed Committee of Chiapas respectively.

Capacity building and climate information

Steps have also been taken to move from response to disasters to prevention. Workshops were held on the basic notions of risks and on the main risks by local area or municipality. During these capacity building sessions, the interaction between how lower zones of the catchment are affected by the actions of people in the middle and upper zones were analyzed and the importance of conservation and management to reduce these damages understood. Knowledge around risks and vulnerability can thus be generated at community and sub-national levels. Commissions and committees in the municipalities are working together to be more prepared with GIS on the areas that are most prone to landslides, evacuation routes, etc. Disaster preparedness is now a high priority for authorities when managing climatic variability and climate change adaptation.

The resilience shift

The experience from demonstrating water management in the Tacaná watersheds suggests that resilience is built by integrating four components:

The following is a synopsis of the actions implemented to better understand how they helped build resilience in relation to these four components.

Tacaná Low resilience (before intervention) High resilience (after intervention)

Diversity • Intensive production of cash crops • Reforestation with native tree meant for the national market or species enabling agro-forestry on export exacerbating hindrance of farms, with fruit and mushroom agricultural diversity production

• Emigration of young people in • Diversification of agricultural pursue of seasonal jobs and practices improving nutrition and reliance of households on money generating income transfers from abroad • Greenhouse production and • Deforestation reducing the water mushroom growing along with retention capacity of the landscape rehabilitation of the irrigation system improving access to food and employment

Sustainable infrastructure • Intensive animal farming, dense • Sustainable organic technologies, & technology population and poor waste and livestock management, use of waste water management greenhouses and solid waste contaminating rivers and affecting recycling helping with soil coastal fisheries conservation and water pollution control • Poor planning for urbanization and infrastructure development along • Chlorine-based water purification with unregulated land use change and wastewater treatment such as damaging stability of slopes in steep from coffee pulp processing catchments improving access to drinking water

Self-organisation • Complex land tenure system • Adoption of micro-watershed causing delays in the transfer of council as managing units rights from municipality to private empowering communities with citizens and marginalization of participatory institutions indigenous people • Groundwater recharge zone • Lack of technical support between protection improving access to institutions leading to difficulties in drinking water and natural integrating knowledge of hydro- resources management in general geological risk into action

Learning • Limited exchange of knowledge of • Generation of local knowledge hydro-geological risk across leading to disaster preparedness

multiple levels of governance • Gender- and age-dependent training to help diversify • High illiteracy coupled with household income and curb mortality rates and population migration growth