As the last decade has brought about a dramatic shift in approaches to addressing climate change, water is increasingly at the forefront of the conversations around adaptation and resilience. In part, this is because more countries now experience the damaging effects of climate change through water-related events including rising sea levels, intensification of natural disasters, droughts, and flooding.

In this week’s New Security Broadcast, John Matthews, Executive Director of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), observes that the heightened attention to water has placed his group at the center of discussions at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. 

“We have been going to COPs since 2009,” says Matthews, “and trying to talk about adaption and resilience from a water perspective for a really long time now. It’s changed a lot over the years….People were asking at a few of the earlier COPs: ‘Why are you here?’”

In this episode, Matthews and his colleague Ingrid Timboe, Policy Director of AGWA speak with ECSP Director Lauren Risi and ECSP Associate Amanda King about water’s rise “to the top of the agenda” at COP27 and beyond, as well as AGWA’s vital work to support global and national climate-water adaptation and resilience policy.

Egypt is one country among many coping with water insecurity, and Timboe says that its role as the host of COP27 will bring significant attention to the plight of water-scarce regions—as well as the challenges they face in implementing water adaptation plans. The “variability and sensitivity” of climate effects in these nations means that approaches to adaptation necessarily will be more complex. “It’s not just about water scarcity when speaking to countries like Egypt,” she observes. “They’re also experiencing flash floods.” 

AGWA’s new pilot project—The Water Tracker—is one way that the alliance is sorting through these complexities. Matthews says that one key role for the Tracker is to act as an early warning system tool that “patrols for elevated sea rise, super typhoons, and extended droughts.” 

Timboe adds that the initiative also plays a more systemic role by helping countries assess how they can “integrate climate resilient water management across their national climate plans.” The Water Tracker assists nations as they look across their climate plans—including National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—to understand how they can manage water resources in a way that will support their “goals for climate, disaster risk, sustainable, development, and biodiversity.”

One place where the Water Tracker is doing this vital work is Vietnam, where 80 percent of the country’s water is embedded in agricultural production. As Vietnam continues to develop its economy and transition to greater reliance on hydropower, AGWA is supporting that country’s efforts to ensure these new hydropower facilities are environmentally and economically sustainable, as well as climate resilient. 

The challenges and complexities of water-based adaptation and resilience are clear. But Matthews and Timboe emphasize that they are heartened by water’s growing role in transboundary cooperation, as momentum for regional cooperation around water adaptation builds in regions including Latin America and the Middle East. 

“The political process for thinking about peace in the Middle East is so broken and so stuck,” says Matthews. But a shared sense of risk in the region about climate change’s impact on water security is creating a gateway to peacebuilding and resilience through transnational cooperation. “The Middle East has been the quietest part of our map since our founding 12 years ago,” he observes, “and it is starting to get noisy. And it’s noisy in a really good way. People want to work together.”      

Contributions from the global water sector—including AGWA—will help drive new solutions and fundamental changes in overall approaches to adaptation. Yet Matthews and Timboe agree it is important that the sector move from reaction to anticipation in strengthening adaptive capacity and resilience through water resource management. 

“There’s a lot of work we need to do on the water community to make sure that the work we’re doing is something that’s going to last,” concludes Matthews.