Water Sustainability Indicators for California Water Management

Shilling, Fraser; Khan, Abdul Hakeem; Juricich, Rich; Fong, Vance; Hodge, Don

doi:10.1061/9780784479162.230

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Our findings also revealed several barriers to transitioning toward the One Water paradigm, supporting prior studies [11,18,24,27,63,[67][68][69][70][71]. Although the OWC literature review revealed that institutional barriers and the issue of path dependence and lock-in are the greatest impediments (Arabi et al, 2021), the OWC interviews indicated that in addition to institutional barriers, regulatory and financial challenges are among the most frequent and problematic barriers.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

A Qualitative Approach to Understand Transitions toward One Water in Urban Areas across North America

Dezfooli

Bolson

Arabi

et al. 2023

Water

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Urban water systems across the world are grappled with growing social and environmental pressures. To address these pressures, a transition from traditional water management systems towards a more integrated and sustainable approach known as “One Water” is vital. Although cities are enthusiastic about a One Water paradigm, there is a limited scholarly understanding of how to enable this transition. This study, therefore, aimed to improve intellectual comprehension of the factors that influence One Water transitions based on a series of expert interviews that were conducted with a number of utilities across North America. It was found that achieving social–environmental justice is among the most prominent drivers for utilities to start their transition, followed by concerns about climate change, water quality impairments, groundwater depletion and subsidence, and population growth. Our findings revealed that several critical barriers including a lack of regulatory frameworks and existing institutional siloes impede the transition toward One Water. Additionally, our thematic framework revealed that technological, cultural, and institutional actions are required to enable One Water transitions. However, the frequency of actions in the thematic framework sheds light on the point that cultural, institutional, and regulatory solutions are needed more than technological innovations to support the paradigm shift. Finally, our efforts identified nine key elements of a “One Water City” that could be used to characterize progress towards implementation of One Water approaches. Insights from this paper not only provide water managers with an understanding of the perspectives and actions required for enabling the One Water paradigm shift, but also can be used to develop a framework for self-assessment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

A Qualitative Approach to Understand Transitions toward One Water in Urban Areas across North America

Dezfooli

Bolson

Arabi

et al. 2023

Water

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“…The criteria for the environmental dimension include climate parameters that directly determine specific local vulnerabilities and risks (Bertule and Forenede Nationers Miljøprogram, 2017). It also includes topographical criteria to determine the convenience of certain water management approaches and solutions (Tkach and Simonovic, 2002); ecological criteria to indicate biodiversity, protected areas, and disasters; water quantity to indicate the total amount of water available for human and ecosystem uses (Shilling et al, 2015) and water quality to describe the safety requirements for wastewater reuse and control, pollution sources and quality of waterbodies (European Commission, 2000).…”

Section: Literature Review and Selected Criteriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons learned from water-scarce cities: Proposed policies toward an integrated urban water management in Egypt

ElZein

Abdou²,

Säumel³

2022

Front. Water

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Water scarcity is one of the main challenges facing countries in arid or semi-arid zones. As an example, Egypt needs to deal with both insufficient quantity and quality of water for residents. Here, we propose actions and policies to promote an integrated water management approach to respond to water challenges in Egypt. Based on a literature review, we have selected a set of criteria concerning the environmental, economic, social, governmental, and physical dimensions of urban water management. We studied approaches from Peru, Namibia, and South Australia as these countries have similar climatic conditions and water issues and have made substantial advances toward sustainable water management. Key criteria are state or municipal ownership of water and related infrastructure, agreement on master plans for sustainable water management, improvement of water sanitation and overall infrastructure, and reduction of water demand. Participatory, and educational campaigns put water issues at the center of public debates. We evaluated which elements of water management approaches can be adapted and used in Egypt, which faces limited freshwater resources, and which faces a highly increasing population. Proposed actions included directing water fees to ecosystem projects, treatment of wastewater to be potable, participatory approaches that engage the community in water management, educational campaigns that lead to change of public perception and knowledge dissemination. We interviewed key stakeholders in the water sector in Egypt to validate our proposed approaches. The stakeholders supported knowledge dissemination, suggested using water fees in implementing environmental projects and criticized converting wastewater into drinking water. Finally, we drafted specific recommendations at the organizational and urban levels of water management. We recommended establishing a General Organization for Water Management to oversee water-related organizations and ministries. We also recommended prioritizing the economic conditions to support alleviation of water subsidy, increasing public awareness, and creating a public database for water knowledge. In addition, we recommended decentralized water management and water sensitive urban design. The value of these approaches is their applicability, with minor adaptations, to countries with similar or close climatic and socio-economic conditions to Egypt, such as the MENA region.

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“…The river basin authorities decided to incorporate sustainability indicators into the 2013 California Water Plan. They developed an indicator set called the Sustainability Indicators Framework to measure progress toward water sustainability [12,13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability of Duero Water Systems for Crop Production in Spain

Lama-Pedrosa,

Sordo-Ward,

Bianucci

et al. 2023

Sustainability

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In recent decades, increased water demand combined with the effects of climate change has endangered water availability in many regions. In this context, sustainable water management has become a priority, seeking to balance human needs with the conservation of aquatic ecosystems. In the Duero basin (Spain), the availability of water is especially relevant for agricultural purposes, representing 93% of the total water needs. This study focuses on identifying and assessing the short-term sustainability of irrigated crop production in the Duero River basin. The maximum potential availability of surface water for irrigation was estimated and compared with the short-term agricultural surface water demand. The analysis was based on the use of a high-spatial-resolution (500 × 500 m) GIS-based model named WAAPA, and three indexes were used to evaluate and analyze the results. The results show that by analyzing the river basin in an aggregate form, the demands for irrigation were met, in which the reservoirs played an important role. When the analysis was downscaled to tributaries or even small streams, non-sustainable situations were identified. This shows the importance of using high-spatial-resolution models to improve, maintain, and achieve sustainability in the production of irrigated crops.

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Water Sustainability Indicators for California Water Management

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

A Qualitative Approach to Understand Transitions toward One Water in Urban Areas across North America

A Qualitative Approach to Understand Transitions toward One Water in Urban Areas across North America

Lessons learned from water-scarce cities: Proposed policies toward an integrated urban water management in Egypt

Sustainability of Duero Water Systems for Crop Production in Spain

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