BACKGROUND

Main hypothesis: A variety of adaptations strategies can reduce the vulnerability of communities to increased climate variability through adaptation in agronomic management, and through integrated institutional and physical management of water and land resources.

The research questions

• What is the variability of global climate and how does it affect water resources and food security? How has climate variability changed over the period 1961-1990, and can predictions be made for the periods 2010-2039 and 2070-2099?
• How have food production and food requirements changed over these three time periods?
• What changes have taken place in water to enhance environmental quality over these three time periods?
• Is it possible to develop and analyze a set of scenarios to alleviate the negative impacts of increased climate variability? Can they account for likely changes in the number successive dry and wet years?

Objective

To study physical and policy issues at three different levels: global, basin and field scale and then to link these levels in order to finally arrive at adaptation measures for environmental and food security in 7 selected river basins.

Methods

• For each basin studied, a storyline was prepared addressing issues such as socio-economic developments, climate change and variability projections for that basin.
• Based on the specific issues in the basin, a set of models were selected at basin (SLURP and WEAP) and field scale (SWAT) capable of simulating hydrology and food production.
• Climate change/variability impacts on regional water management were also studied by comparing future simulations with baseline references with respect to environmental and food security, derived from Hadley and other GCM derived scenarios. Adaptation strategies to respond to climate change were defined and evaluated for water managers.

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Project Duration