Presented by IWMI's David Wiberg (Theme Leader – Water Futures) to a group of European Union (EU) delegations in Asia at a discussion on 'Using research on agriculture climate and water to support sustainable food systems', held at IWMI Headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on June 8, 2016.

1. Water Futures:
Building Capacities for Scenario-Based Planning
David A. Wiberg
8 June, 2016
Towards Sustainable Food Systems
Pelawatte, Sri Lanka

2. Half our planet’s population are water
insecure… uncertain futures
Absent or unreliable WSS Food security and Irrigation
The impacts of unmitigated variability
including floods & droughts Degraded water environments
Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam
(Flickr CC)
Photo: Felix Antonio / IWMI
Photos: Neil Palmer / IWMI
Photo: Hamish John Appelby / IWMI

3. Water: Global Challenges
Water Scarcity
• In many areas, withdrawals exceed local renewable
water resources, leading to groundwater mining, land
subsidence, saltwater intrusion, water transfers.

4. Population Explosion Continues
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
5000
1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
Population (millions)
SSP1 (Asia)
SSP2 (Asia)
SSP3 (Asia)
SSP4 (Asia)
SSP5 (Asia)
SSP1 (ROW)
SSP2
SSP3
SSP4
SSP5
• 25% more people by 2050
• Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population
increase in the last century (FAO & UN-Water)
Photo: Hamish John Appelby / IWMI

5. 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
Urban Population Share (%)
SSP1 (Asia)
SSP2 (Asia)
SSP3 (Asia)
SSP4 (Asia)
SSP5 (Asia)
SSP1
SSP2
SSP3
SSP4
SSP5
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
45000
50000
1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
Income (GDP/cap)
SSP1 (Asia)
SSP2 (Asia)
SSP3 (Asia)
SSP4 (Asia)
SSP5 (Asia)
SSP1 (ROW)
SSP2
SSP3
SSP4
SSP5
• Water use grows with income.
• GDP/capita rises everywhere,
while GDP in China could start to
decrease in the latter half of the
century.
Photo: Neil Palmer / IWMI

6. Increasing Demands, Increasing Challenges
• Domestic water withdrawals triple
• Industrial water withdrawals more
than double.
• Agricultural water withdrawals
increase.

7. Multi-model Assessment
Models Institution
HiGW-MAT IIASA, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES, Japan)
LISFLOOD IIASA, JRC
VIC IIASA, Wageningen University (The Netherlands), Norwegian
Water Resources and Energy Directorate (Norway); University
of Washington/Princeton University (USA)
WaterGAP Kassel University (Germany), Frankfurt University (Germany);
PCR-GLOBWB Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
LPJmL Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany) and
Wageningen University (The Netherlands)
WBM CUNY (USA); ISI-MIP
Schew et al. (2013)
Relative change in annual discharge at 2 °C
compared with present day, under RCP8.5.
Approach
Dry areas get drier, wet areas wetter, but little aggregate change.
• Most Asia-Pacific regions experience increasing water availability, except Central and Western
Asia.
However:
• Per capita water resources decline in much of Asia, severely in South Asia (up to -31%) and the
Pacific (up to -51%)
• Pakistan, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, and Timor-Leste are all projected to have less than 10 cubic
meters of water per person per day by the 2050s.

8. [yr]
2095
2031
2017
2046 2055
2066
2053 2081
2006
2028
2058
2044
2027
2056
2032 No
2036
2071
2024
2036 2026 2027
No
No
2095
2047
How long do we have time to prepare for the change?
When will drought shift into the unprecedented phase?
Historically
experienced range
Historical
period
Time series of regional mean of DDyr
RCP8.5
(5 GCMs)
2100
Never return!!
Satoh Y, et. al. (2015)

9. Water Security: Hydro-Economic Conditions
HE–2
Water Secure, Rich
HE–1
Water Secure, Poor
HE–3
Water Stress, Rich
HE–4
Water Stress, Poor
Economic-institutionalcapacity
Hydro-climatic complexity
(resources/cap, withdrawals/resources, variability, dependency)
low high
lowhigh
Currently in HE-4:
• 44% population, 20% of GDP
• 65% of Asia’s population
By 2050 in HE-3 and HE-4:
• 60% population, 60% GDP
• > 80% of Asia’s population and GDP
Source: Water Futures and Solutions Initiative

10. Water: Management Challenges
• Water management must intensify.
• Managing the water sector alone is no longer enough
– Water integrates across scales and sectors, which all use and
influence increasingly scarce water resources.
• Water management is risk based, but how does risk
change?
– Large uncertainties
• Data
• Scenarios
• Models
– No stationarity
• More robust,
flexible solutions
required

11. Water: Management Challenges
Water a priority?
• There is no global organization for management and
standard-setting, like with the oceans, or the IPCC for climate.
• 35-80% of water-related projects are failing.
• We have very little knowledge or data in the areas where the
problems are greatest and do not know how to manage them.
• Water monitoring systems have been degrading globally, so
that we have less information than we did in the past
• Water management is done separately by many sectors, but
is not always coherent/compatible
• Funding for water projects is difficult to obtain.

12. Domestic water demand Industrial water demand
2050 2050
SSP2
[km3/yr]
[km3/yr]
[km3/yr][km3/yr]

13. Increasing uncertainty
Decreasing knowledge
Median rainfall and standard deviation USA - SSA
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
0 20 40 60 80 100
median rainfall %
standarddeviation
SSA
USA

14. 14/6
Yield gap ratios comparing actual crop production of year 2000 with potentials
achievable in current cultivated land with advanced farming. Source: GAEZ2012.
Yield Gaps

15. IWMI’s vision - A water-secure world
IWMI’s mission - To provide evidence-based solutions to
sustainably manage water and land resources for food security, people’s
livelihoods and the environment
Water Futures vision - An IWMI decision support toolkit that
helps planners, managers and stakeholders understand and assess possible
futures and sets of solutions.
Mission - To identify contextually-appropriate pathways to achieving
sustainable water security.

16.  There are more than 200 SDG indicators being discussed for countries to monitor.
 In areas where challenges are greatest, water data, information, and capacity are
usually weakest.
 Global data and models are not yet well enough resolved, or sufficient, to be used to
assess the impacts, tradeoffs, benefits, costs and synergies among local options
within a river basin.
 To be effective and sustainable, intervention options must fit both the local
biophysical and socio-economic context and development priorities. What works in
one area may not be effective in another.
 There are a multitude of options for development and enhancing resource security.
Decision makers can be confused by differing opinions and advice on possible
solution options, which can delay decisions.
 Multiple institutions manage water and related resources and must be brought
together to ensure that their projects work together synergistically.
 Uncertainty: The future is uncertain. Data and models are uncertain, and tradeoffs
among some options are not fully understood.
IWMI’s niche
Context specific futures and solution sets

17. Products
• Trends in water uses at basin/sub-basin scale
(locations and times of use, quality required, technology used, developments over time)
• Policy/Institutional/Legal mapping
(which organizations are responsible for which decisions, monitoring, enforcement, impacts of change)
• Options Analysis and Database
(benefits, costs, impacts, synergies, tradeoffs)
• Priorities/Values Mapping
(what are the priority options for stakeholders in the regions)
• Decision Support Tools
(preferably simplified online tools for rapid visualization of the impacts of various options with
stakeholders and decision makers. e.g. AQUADUCT Flood Analyzer, IIASA/FAO GAEZ, IIASA Energy Multi-
Criteria Analysis tool, etc.)
• Papers, reports, policy briefs on best practices, and training in
scenario based options analysis and planning.

18. Indicators, trends, and scenarios
• Full, spatial accounts of water supply and
demand (withdrawal and consumption)
by quantity and quality and source.
– groundwater data?, use, efficiencies and
technologies?
• Potentials and gaps
• Institutional mapping
• Trend analysis and scenario construction

19. http://wateraccounting.org/index.html

20. Open Source Weather Stations:
Innovative solutions to Water Management problems
Soumya Balasubramanya, Yann Chemin, Lahiru Wijesinghe, Farah
Ahmed, Mohamed Aheeyar, David Wiberg

21. Options Analysis
• Options Database
– Benefits, costs, potentials, constraints
• Impact Evaluations
• Best practices
Yield gap ratios. Source: GAEZ2012.
Boston Water Conservation

22. Climate, Land, Energy, Water Tradeoffs
Transforming Mauritius sugar-
processing plants to produce
second-generation ethanol is a
positive, improving trade
balances, energy security and
reducing emissions, while
maintaining land productivity.
But, if rainfall is
reduced as under the
worst climate
scenario, energy costs
and emissions would
increase to deliver the
required water to all
uses.
Integrated systems analysis across scales and sectors is needed to assess these synergies
and tradeoffs and develop innovative solutions that are effective and consistent
Source: Howells et al (2013), Nature Climate Change

23. • Web-based information systems and
options analysis
– GW solutions
– Rural-urban linkages
– Sustainable irrigation
• Hydro-economic modeling and Decision
Support
– Systematic, network analysis
– Modular
– Multi-objective optimization
– Water valuation, pricing, subsidies
Decision Support Systems

24. Fulfilling IWMI’s Roles
A think tank
by improving IWMI’s flexibility to rapidly respond with science-based analysis
of current issues, and take advantage of planning insights gained from options
analysis
A provider of science based products and tools
examining options, tradeoffs and synergies among options and developing
systems frameworks across them.
A facilitator of learning, strengthening capacity and
achieving uptake of research findings.
by enhancing communication, information and knowledge
sharing, and providing tools, frameworks and training.

25. Areas of EC/IWMI Cooperation
Methods for implementing EU commitments
• Climate change policy (mitigation and adaptation)
• Better understanding of Climate Change impacts/loss/damage at local
levels
• Capacity-building around intervention options (what works where)
SDGs
• How to we achieve SDGs at the local/river-basin scale taking into account
local priorities and values
• What indicators are most important to monitor and provide the greatest
coverage of the SDGs
Transparency
• Information and knowledge transfer across scales.
• Options databases and typology
• Capacity-building and training

26. Soumya Balasubramanya
Aditya Sood Maksud Bekchanov
Yann Chemin
Madar Samad
IWMI-HQ
Luna Bharati
IWMI-Nepal
Lisa-Maria Rebelo
IWMI-Laos
Touleelor Sotoukee
Krishna Kakumanu
Archisman MitraMarie-Charlotte Buisson
IWMI-India
Pamela Katic
Bedru Balana
Yoro Sidibe
IWMI-Ghana
Jonathan Lautze Greenwell MatchayaSibusiso Nhlengethwa Charles Nhemachena
IWMI-South Africa
Water Futures Team
Robyn Johnston
Myanmar
Ted Horbulyk
Ambika Khadka

27. Sub-themes
• Indicators, trends, and scenarios
(locations and times of use, quality required, technology used, developments over time)
– Policy/Institutional/Legal mapping
(which organizations are responsible for which decisions, monitoring, enforcement, impacts of change)
• Options Analysis
(benefits, costs, impacts, context-specific best practices, potential)
• Decision Support Tools
(simplified online tools for rapid visualization of the impacts of various options with
stakeholders and decision makers. e.g. AQUADUCT Flood Analyzer, IIASA/FAO GAEZ, IIASA
Energy Multi-Criteria Analysis tool, etc. and a more sophisticated node-link hydro economic
model. e.g. WEAP, RiverWare, MIKE)

28. increase (°C)
mean water temperature
van Vliet M, Kabat P, et al (2013), Global Environ. Change
B1 (2071-2100) A2 (2071-2100)
maskedchange (%)
low (10-percentile) flow
masked
Climate change impacts on Q & Tw

29. 1850 1900 1950 2000 2050
Gm3
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Baseline
Geothermal
Solar
Wind
Hydro
Nuclear
Gas wCCS
Gas woCCS
Oil
Coal wCCS
Coal woCCS
Biomass wCCS
Biomass woCCS
Preliminary results
Climate policy may be insufficient to
significantly reduce water demand
2˚C Mitigation Scenario
Co-benefit of climate
mitigation
Source: Fricko et.al.2016

30. Storage-Yield Curves With and Without Evaporation
0
20
40
60
80
0 50 100
0
500
1000
0 200 400 600
0
50
100
150
200
0 100 200 300
0
10
20
30
0 50 100
y
0
20
40
60
80
0 50 100 150
0
200
400
600
0 200 400 600
0
100
200
300
0 200 400
0
200
400
600
800
0 200 400 600
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 50 100