Ana Iglesias

This article reviews the potential impacts of climate change on food security. It is found that of the four main elements of food security, i.e., availability, stability, utilization, and access, only the first is routinely addressed in simulation studies. To this end, published results indicate that the impacts of climate change are significant, however, with a wide projected range (between 5 million and 170 million additional people at risk of hunger by 2080) strongly depending on assumed socio-economic development. The likely impacts of climate change on the other important dimensions of food security are discussed qualitatively, indicating the potential for further negative impacts beyond those currently assessed with models. Finally, strengths and weaknesses of current assessment studies are discussed, suggesting improvements and proposing avenues for new analyses.

We evaluated different management alternatives to enhance potential water availability for agriculture under climate change scenarios. The management goal involved maximizing potential water availability, understood as the maximum volume of water supplied at a certain point of the river network that satisfies a defined demand, and taking into account specified reliability requirements. We focused on potential water availability for agriculture and assumed two types of demands: urban supply and irrigation. If potential water availability was not enough to satisfy all irrigation demands, management measures were applied aiming at achieving a compromise solution between resources and demands. The methodological approach consisted of estimation and comparison of runoff for current and future period under climate change effects, calculation of water availability changes due to changes in runoff, and evaluation of the adaptation choices that can modify the distribution of water availabili...

This study presents a regional assessment of future blue water availability in Europe under different assumptions. The baseline period (1960 to 1999) is compared to the near future (2020 to 2059) and the long-term future (2060 to 2099). Blue water availability is estimated as the maximum amount of water supplied at a certain point of the river network that satisfies a defined demand, taking into account specified reliability requirements. Water availability is computed with the geospatial high-resolution Water Availability and Adaptation Policy Assessment (WAAPA) model. The WAAPA model definition for this study extends over 6 million km2 in Europe and considers almost 4000 sub-basins in Europe. The model takes into account 2300 reservoirs larger than 5 hm3, and the dataset of Hydro 1k with 1700 sub-basins. Hydrological scenarios for this study were taken from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Inter-Comparison Project and included simulations of five global climate models under differe...

... 21 Esther Lopez-Barrero and Ana Iglesias 3 A Checklist for Drought Policy Development ... 175 Luis Garrote, Ana Iglesias and Francisco Flores 14 Characterizing Drought Risk in a Sicilian ... 221 Marıa Casado Saenz, Francisco Flores Montoya and Roberto Gil de Mingo 16 Drought ...

A portfolio of water management strategies now exists to contribute to reach water demand and supply targets. Among them, integrated water resource management has a large potential for reducing water disagreement in water scarcity regions. Many of the strategies are based on well tested choices and technical know-how, with proven benefits for users and environment. This paper considers water management practices that may contribute to reduce disagreement in water scarcity areas, evaluating the management alternatives in the Mediterranean basins of Europe, a region that exemplifies other water scarcity regions in the world. First, we use a model to compute water availability taking into account water management, temporal heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity and policy options, and then apply this model across 396 river basins. Second, we use a wedge approach to illustrate policy choices for selected river basins: Thrace (Greece), Guadalquivir, Ebro, Tagus and Duero (Spain), Po (Italy) and Rhone (France). At the wide geographical level, the results show the multi-determinant complexities of climate change impacts and adaptation measures and the geographic nature of water resources and vulnerability metrics. At the local level, the results show that optimisation of water management is the dominating strategy for defining adaptation pathways. Results also show great sensitivity to ecological flow provision, suggesting that better attention should be paid to defining methods to estimate minimum ecological flows in water scarcity regions. For all scales, average water resource vulnerability computed by traditional vulnerability indicators may not be the most appropriate measure to inform climate change adaptation policy. This has large implications to applied water resource studies aiming to derive policy choices, and it is especially interesting in basins facing water scarcity. Our research aims to contribute to shape realistic water management options at the regional level and therefore provide information to climate change, agricultural and water policies.

ABSTRACT Water is scarce in Mediterranean countries: cities are crowded with increasing demand; food is produced with large amounts of water; ecosystems demand more water than is often available; drought affects all. As climate change impacts become more noticeable and costlier, some current water management strategies will not be useful. According to the findings of CIRCE, the areas with limited water resources will increase in the coming decades (Parts 1 and 2) with major consequences for the way we produce food and we protect ecosystems (Part 3). Based on these projections this chapter discusses water policy priorities for climate change adaptation in the Mediterranean. We first summarize the main challenges to water resources in Mediterranean countries and outline the risks and opportunities for water under climate change based on previous studies. Recognizing the difficulty to go from precipitation to water policy, we then present a framework to evaluate water availability in response to natural and management conditions, with an example of application in the Ebro basin that exemplifies other Mediterranean areas. Then we evaluate adaptive capacity to understand the ability of Mediterranean countries to face, respond and recover from climate change impacts on water resources. Social and economic factors are key drivers of inequality in the adaptive capacity across the region. Based on the assessment of impacts and adaptive capacity we suggest thresholds for water policy to respond to climate change and link water scarcity indicators to relevant potential adaptation strategies. Our results suggest the need to further prioritize socially and economically sensitive policies.

ABSTRACT Over recent decades, there has been increasing levels of research dedicated to assess drivers of farm-level uptake of adaptation strategies to climate change. The main purpose of this research being to determine how policy intervention can most effectively increase adoption. This paper aims to synthesise this past research in order to scale up uptake of farm-level adaptation strategies through a composite index of potential adoption in Africa. In doing so, we review the estimated coefficients of econometric regressions in 42 case studies published in peer-review journals to identify the factors that regularly explain adoption. We find that these common factors can be grouped into seven components, that is human capital, financial resources, infrastructure and technology, social interaction and governance, food security, dependence on agriculture and attitudes towards the environment. Using national-level indicators of these seven categories, we develop a composite index to inform potential adoption and test the robustness of the index in an in-depth sensitivity analysis. The results show that the highest likelihood of adoption of farm-level adaptation strategies is in Northern African countries namely Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco and in Southern African countries such as South Africa and Botswana. Conversely, they indicate that the lowest likelihood of adoption is situated in nations of the Sahel and Horn of Africa and in nations that have recently experienced conflict. We conclude that adoption is associated predominantly with governance, civil rights, financial resources and education. However, it is not necessarily driven by the magnitude of climate change impacts on agricultural production.

The Mediterranean region is undergoing rapid social and environmental changes and all indicators point to an increase in environmental and water scarcity problems, with negative implications towards current and future sustainability. Recent changes in agricultural land use and irrigation, tourism development, demography and lifestyle and trade stress water resources with recurrent and increased frequency. More open agricultural trade, rather than

ABSTRACT This paper provides and tests a methodology to compute surface water availability for irrigation on regulated systems at large scale, considering different alternatives of streamflow monthly time series derived from regional climate models. Surface water availability for consumptive use for a river basin is estimated through the concept of maximum potential water withdrawal (MPWW). MPWW is defined as the maximum demand that can be supplied at a given point in the river network under certain conditions: management restrictions (such as ecological flows), demand priorities, monthly distribution of demand and required reliability. Calculation was applied in 567 basins that cover the entirety of mainland Spain to evaluate adaptation needs for agriculture by comparing MPWW for irrigation in the current situation and under climate change projections. The results show that streamflow monthly time series obtained from the regional climate model simulations and bias corrected by UNH/GRDC dataset and Schreiber’s formula provide MPWW values similar to those obtained with the observed data under current situations. Under climate change projections the capability to satisfy water requirements for agricultural production is significantly reduced and adaptation measures are necessary to mitigate the expected long-term impact.

This chapter presents the process of development of drought management plans in Spain. The Law of the National Hydrologic Plan,in 2001, included the obligation for all Basin Authorities to develop Special Drought Management Plans. The process was finished in 2007, with the approval of the Plans for Basin Authorities depending on the central government. The methodology applied for the technical

... scale. At the global level, a similar methodology has been used in Parry et al. (2004). Major ... impacts. The insight about winners and losers at the global level is not new (Reilly et al., 2001; Parry et al., 2004; Lobell et al., 2008). The ...

Downloadable! The PESETA research project integrates a set of high-resolution climate change projections and physical models into an economic modelling framework to quantify the impacts of climate change on vulnerable aspects of Europe. Four market impact categories are ...

ABSTRACT In many countries around the world, water demand for agricultural production already exceeds water availability. Such situation imposes a challenge for food production under future climate change conditions and indicates the need for a policy assessment in order to identify adaptation strategies in the water sector. This contribution provides a methodology to compute water availability for irrigation using a GIS-based model, called "Water Availability and Adaptation Policy Assessment" (WAAPA). The model computes the net water availability for consumptive use for a river basin taking into account the regulation capacity of its water supply system and a set of management standards defined through water policy. The model was applied in 567 basins that cover the entire continental territory of Spain to estimate water availability under different climate change projections. The outputs of the PRUDENCE European project provide the information of the climate change scenarios. Two alternatives of management are proposed based on: reducing water allocation for agriculture, in order to obtain satisfactory water supply reliability or maintaining current water allocation for agriculture, but with the probability of reducing supply reliability. The results show equilibrium between water availability and agricultural demand in current conditions in the great majority of the River Basin Districts of Spain, nonetheless under climate change scenarios, the capability to satisfy the water requirements for agricultural production is significantly reduced, so as the management needs are necessary to mitigate the expected impacts to long term.

ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of water resources management under climate change in Southern European River Basin Districts. The analysis is based on the Water Availability and Adaptation Policy Analysis (WAAPA) model, which focuses on the quantitative evaluation of maximum potential water withdrawal for different types of demands. The Water Availability and Adaptation Policy Analysis model performs the simulation of water resources systems at the monthly time scale and allows the estimation of the demand-reliability curve in every subbasin of the river network. Over sixty River Basin Districts of Southern Europe have been analyzed, taking basic information from publicly available databases: basin topology from the Hydro1K database, average runoff from the University of New Hampshire Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) composite runoff field, population from the Global Rural-urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) and irrigation area from the Global Map of Irrigated Area dataset. Streamflow monthly time series were obtained from the results of the ENSEMBLES project in four climate scenarios for time horizon 2070-2100. Climate change vulnerability of irrigation demands is estimated from changes in maximum potential water withdrawals for irrigation in current and future scenarios. Maximum potential water withdrawal for irrigation was computed as the largest value of irrigation demand that could be supplied with a given reliability requirement once the existing urban demand is adequately satisfied. The results show significant regional disparities in vulnerability to climate change in the irrigation sector across Europe. The greatest vulnerabilities have been obtained for Southwest Europe (Iberian Peninsula) and some basins in Italy and Greece.

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 505–518, 2011 www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/15/505/2011/ doi:10.5194/hess-15-505-2011 © Author(s) 2011. CC Attribution 3.0 License. ... Crop yields response to water pressures in the Ebro basin in Spain: ... S. Quiroga1, Z. Fernández-...

– This Chapter focuses on risk analysis methods aiming to develop a methodological base to understand drought risks in agriculture and formulate conceptual basis that allows rigorous drought impacts attribution. The method integrates both climate and agricultural system's characteristics to measure the rainfed agriculture risk to drought in a way that allows making comparisons between different places with different potential yields. Monte Carlo simulations are used to obtain the probability distributions allowing the characterization of risk. Finally, risk premium has been estimated by using statistical and risk evaluation models for some selected sites in Spain. Risk concept Unfavourable weather conditions are the main source of risk in subsistence farming systems, especially in marginal land and social conditions. In this case, drought has a direct relationship with farmers' income and risk is relatively simple to analyse evaluating simple variables, such as crop yield. I...

... de Alcalá 2 Departamento de Economía y Ciencias Sociales Agrarias, Universidad Politécnica sonia.quiroga@uah.es, z.fernandez@alu.uah ... also have proven useful to evaluate the effects of extreme contingencies and other socioeconomic variables (Al-Jamal, 2000; Griliches ...

Response to the comments provided by Luis Pereira Title: " Risk of water scarcity and water policy implications for crop production in the Ebro Basin in Spain" Authors: Sonia Quiroga; Zaira Fernández-Haddad; Ana Iglesias ... two pages later, El Jamal – should be El Jamal et al. ...