Cross-sectoral Approaches Help Build Water Resilience – Reflections

Future challenges for the planet include e.g. population growth, climate change and urbanization. The combined pressure from these and other processes on water, energy and ecosystem services calls for cross-sectoral approaches to increase the resilience of society, with the particular aim to reduce hydro-climatic hazards and secure the availability of water of sufficient quantity and quality.

In the global effort to achieve this water resilience, the authors identify four pivotal strategies.

1. They are: to ensure sustainable utilization of ecosystems and their services;
2.  to ensure that interventions for increased resilience are tailor-made to local conditions;
3. to broaden livelihood opportunities in order to make income-generating activities less dependent on only one sector or resource; and
4. to facilitate interactions between rural and urban areas and processes.

Although the challenges mentioned are largely human-induced, the power to address these is also within human reach. It is only if we properly facilitate work building on the linkages between humans and the environment that we can enhance water resilience.

Read the article (external link to open-access journal)