Climate change, extreme events, pandemics, political instability, competing demands, and other shocks and stresses are impacting water systems around the world. These impacts are increasing in intensity, likelihood, and frequency. These unpredictable changes in the system are severely impacting the ability of organizations and communities to thrive. These changes will not only impact water quantity and quality but also the access to and provision of other water-related goods and services. These drivers have exposed the vulnerabilities of the entire water system and laid bare our global connections and inter-reliance.
There is an urgent need to address the impact of these challenges through developing resilient socio-economic, institutional, and biophysical systems, as the provision of goods and services from water systems are interconnected and influence energy, agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing, and other key sectors. Decision-makers require practical actions and strategies with the means to measure and monitor progress towards these goals. The key to thriving water-based economies, ecosystems, and societies under such shocks and changes is to collectively aim for water resilience.
Creating water resilience at the system level will require coordination, transparency, and alignment of common goals among all stakeholders: public, private, and civil society. A resilient basin is a pre-requisite for the collective resilience for all the stakeholders; however, basin water resilience is a necessary but not sufficient condition for individual stakeholder resilience. Additionally, a stakeholder can contribute to or detract from the overall resilience of a basin.
The project Water Resilience Assessment Framework (WRAF), launched in 2019 with core funding from BHP, aims to develop a practical framework to support building and monitoring resilience at all levels. The framework is developed through engagement with key stakeholders, building on their existing resilience-building efforts where available and developing shared understanding where divergence occurs, so that it can be applied by all water users, water managers, and decision-makers, in all water contexts, and at all water scales.
The project is designed in three phases: Phase I Landscape study (2019-2020), Phase II Development of the generic Framework and guidance documents for key sectors (2020-2022), Phase III Pilot testing, implementation and outreach (2023-onwards).
The project team is looking for active collaboration opportunities to implement the framework within all three sectors from diverse contexts ranging from small to large organizations, operating in developed and developing nations, independently isolated business units and utilities to connected multi-level corporates and utilities (wastewater treatment to drinking water suppliers), and from regional water basin to national and transboundary basins. All are welcome to implement the WRAF!
Express your interest to join the implementing opportunities by contacting the project coordinator Ashok Chapagain at akchapagain@pacinst.org
Guidance documents
The WRAF is further elaborated in three sector-specific guidance documents that provide a standardized, stepwise approach to measuring, assessing, and enhancing resilience across socio-economic, institutional, and biophysical system components. These guidance help corporates, utilities, and basin managers and planning authorities in developing resilience strategies, focusing on the relevant water challenge it is experiencing, and developing or selecting appropriate resilience indicators (Resilience Scoring Tool) that can go beyond regulations and traditional performance mechanisms to tangibly define resilience in a way that can be both tracked and communicated to important stakeholders.
These guidance documents also provide a set of ‘Water Resilience Indicators’ and a ‘Resilience Scoring Tool’ for all three sectors. Practical examples are provided throughout the guidance document to showcase how each step could be implemented in practice.
Each sector-specific guidance document further aims to:
- identify and describe the existing institutional processes, frameworks and indicators, tools and models being used to monitor changes in water system conditions over time;
- support in identifying and monitoring drivers of change, develop scenarios, establish resiliency goals, use adaptive and scenario planning, make investment decisions, quantify and develop performance metrics, and incorporate stakeholder engagement into the adaptive planning process;
- highlight the value and limitations of trigger points and monitoring, and determine and provide examples of sector-specific best practices in resilience efforts.
The CEO Water Mandate, in partnership with the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), World Resources Institute (WRI), and Pacific Institute (PI), have embarked on a journey to develop a common framework to develop basin water resilience. Formally launched in 2019 with seed funding from BHP, the framework will be developed through engagement with key stakeholders, incorporating their common accounting practices where available and developing shared understanding where divergence occurs, so that it can be applied by all water users, water managers, and decision-makers, in all water contexts, and at all water scales. The project is designed in three phases: Phase I (Landscape study completed in early 2020), Phase II (Framework development and pilot testing, ongoing), and Phase III (Implementation and outreach), with stakeholder engagement continued in parallel throughout the life of the project.
The project aims the following key objectives:
- Develop a globally accepted, comprehensive generic framework (WRAF) to support building resilience and monitoring efforts at all levels for all stakeholders, including ecosystems and vulnerable communities;
- Develop sector-specific guidance documents to apply the WRAF for key sectors tailored to align and meet unique contexts e.g., corporates, utilities, and basin managers, planners, and authorities, etc.
- Develop supporting materials such as resilience indicators for the selected sectors, Resilience scoring tools, etc.
CEO Water Mandate, Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), World Resources Institute (WRI), and Pacific Institute (PI)
The lead sponsor for this project is BHP, supported by CEO Water Mandate endorsing companies and the Swiss Development Corporation.
