Editing IPCC:AR6/SR15/Chapter-4 (section)

== Box 4.2: Watershed Management in a 1.5˚C World ==

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Water management is necessary in order for the global community to adapt to 1.5°C-consistent pathways. Cohesive planning that includes numerous stakeholders would be required to improve access, utilization and efficiency of water use and to ensure hydrologic viability.

'''Response to drought and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in southern Guatemala'''

Hydro-meteorological events, including ENSO, have impacted Central America (Steinhoff et al., 2014; Chang et al., 2015; Maggioni et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r914|914]]</sup> and are projected to increase in frequency during a 1.5°C transition (Wang et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r915|915]]</sup> . The 2014–2016 ENSO damaged agriculture, seriously impacting rural communities.

In 2016, the Climate Change Institute, in conjunction with local governments, the private sector, communities and human rights organizations, established dialogue tables for different watersheds to discuss water usage amongst stakeholders and plans to mitigate the effects of drought, alleviate social tension, and map water use of watersheds at risk. The goal was to encourage better water resource management and to enhance ecological flow through improved communication, transparency, and coordination amongst users. These goals were achieved in 2017 when each previously affected river reached the Pacific Ocean with at least its minimum ecological flow (Guerra, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r916|916]]</sup> .

'''Drought management through the Limpopo Watercourse Commission'''

The governments sharing the Limpopo river basin (Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe) formed the Limpopo Watercourse Commission in 2003 (Nyagwambo et al., 2008; Mitchell, 2013) <sup>[[#fn:r917|917]]</sup> . It has an advisory body composed of working groups that assess water use and sustainability, decide national level distribution of water access, and support disaster and emergency planning. The Limpopo basin delta is highly vulnerable (Tessler et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r918|918]]</sup> , and is associated with a lack of infrastructure and investment capacity, requiring increased economic development together with plans for vulnerability reduction (Tessler et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r919|919]]</sup> and water rights (Swatuk, 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r920|920]]</sup> . The high vulnerability is influenced by gender inequality, limited stakeholder participation and limited institutional capacity to address unequal water access (Mehta et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r921|921]]</sup> . The implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM) would need to consider pre-existing social, economic, historical and cultural contexts (Merrey, 2009; Mehta et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r922|922]]</sup> . The Commission therefore could play a role in improving participation and in providing an adaptable and equitable strategy for cross-border water sharing (Ekblom et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r923|923]]</sup> .

'''Flood management in the Danube'''

The Danube River Protection Convention is the official instrument for cooperation on transboundary water governance between the countries that share the Danube Basin. The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) provides a strong science–policy link through expert working groups dealing with issues including governance, monitoring and assessment, and flood protection (Schmeier, 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r924|924]]</sup> . The Trans-National Monitoring Network (TNMN) was developed to undertake comprehensive monitoring of water quality (Schmeier, 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r925|925]]</sup> . Monitoring of water quality constitutes almost 50% of ICPDR’s scientific publications, although ICPDR also works on governance, basin planning, monitoring, and IWRM, indicating its importance. The ICPDR is an example of IWRM ‘coordinating groundwater, surface water abstractions, flood management, energy production, navigation, and water quality’ (Hering et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r926|926]]</sup> .

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