Inter-Basin Water Transfer Projects and Climate Change: The Role of Allocation Protocols in Economic Efficiency of the Project. Case Study: Dez to Qomrood Inter-Basin Water Transmission Project (Iran)

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a growing emphasis on Inter-basin water transfer projects as costly activities with ambiguous effects on environment, society and economy. Since the concept of climate change was in its embryonic phase before 1990's, the majority of these projects planned before that period have not considered the effect of long term variation of water resources. In all of these numerous operational and under-construction projects, an intelligent selection of the best water transmission protocol, can help the governments to optimize their expenditures on these projects ,and also can help water resources managers to face climate change effects wisely. In this paper as a case study, Dez to Qomrood inter-basin water transfer project is considered to evaluate the efficiency of three different protocols in long term. The effect of climate change has been forecasted via a wide range of GCMs (Global Circulation Model) in order to calculate the change of flow in the basin's area with different climate scenarios. After these calculation, a water allocation model has been used to evaluate which of these three water transmission protocols (Proportional Allocation (PA), Fix Upstream allocation (FU), and Fix Downstream allocation (FD)) is the most efficient logic switch economically in a framework including both upstream and downstream stakeholders. As the final result, it can be inferred that Fix Downstream allocation (FD) protocol can supply more population especially with urban water for a fix expense and also is the most adapted protocol with future global change, at least in the first round of sustainability assessment.

Water Transmission Protocols and Sustainable Development in Face of Climate Change. Case study: Urban water supply in Dez to Qomrood Water Transmission Project, Iran

“…Gardner utilized exponential factors to evaluate annual runoff with a various range of climatic conditions (Gardner, 2009). There are also other noticeable cases in current researches such as Maknoon et al, Graham, Chen, Benestad and Carter (Carter et al, 2001;Benestad, 2004;Chen et al, 2006;Graham et al, 2007;Maknoon et al, 2012).…”

“…Regarding these reasons, a lucrative research must contain an extensive range of climate scenarios and GCMs to cover the most possible space of uncertainty. Multi model projection and scenario making have been used by numerous water engineering researchers such as Andersson et al (2006), Serrat-Capdevila et al (2007), Kunstmann et al (2008), Maknoon et al (2012), Van Oldenborgh et al (2012), and Chikamoto et al (2013).…”

“…In the past century, 145 international treaties on trans-boundary Rivers were taken on; and about half of these agreements focused on water allocation (Wolf, 1998). Although long term fluctuation is an inevitable characteristic of river flow, (even without bearing climate change effects in mind), a large number of these water allocation agreements do not mention the long term trend of the river flow (Giordano & Wolf, 2003).In the case of Dez to Qomrood water transfer project, economic efficiency of each protocol has been analyzed by Maknoon et al and their findings show that Fix Downstream allocation (FD) protocol is the one with the most economic efficiency (Maknoon et al, 2012). The methodology of the stated research which is presented in this paper with some applied corrections is helpful for water sector governors to face climate change and population growth.…”

“…In the same period, Iran has experienced a higher growth proportion from 16.9 million to 71.2 million which most of them have decided to live in urban regions. Furthermore, the most growing industrial districts and expanding cities are located in the arid region around central desert of Iran and an overwhelming majority of Global Climate Models (GCM) predicts more severe droughts and longer periods of low precipitation seasons in this country (Sumner, 1989;Fahimi & Kent, 2007;Maknoon et al, 2012). By considering this exacerbating condition, it can be claimed that the region actually faces a serious water shortage crisis.…”

“…In the frame work of sustainable development, this project and its protocols should be applied in a series of researches to evaluate their efficiency for each particular aspect. However, there are few attempts reflecting practical results in this case (Maknoon et al, 2012). This research focuses on urban water supply in Dez to Qomrood Water Transmission Project.…”