Adapting to climate change in transboundary water management

Water and climate change adaptation, 6:

This perspective document aims to support cooperation and decisionmaking in transboundary basins on a range of relevant or emerging issues related to climate change, and addresses adaptation to possible impacts of climate change on flood and drought occurrences, water quality and health related aspects as well as practical ways to cope with the transboundary impacts through, inter alia, integrated management of surface and groundwater for flood and drought mitigation and response. It aims at encourage mutual understanding between, and within, countries as well as between scientists and decision-makers.

It illustrates steps and adaptation measures that are needed in order to develop a climate-proof water strategy, starting from the transboundary context. It focuses on the additional new challenges for water management deriving from climate change: what are the impacts of climate change on water management planning and how should this planning be modified to adapt to climate change. It addresses the central elements of transboundary regimes; policy setting, legal setting, the institutional setting, information management, and financing systems and provides recommendations to incorporate and accommodate them. It also distinguishes 5 different types of measures to adapt water management to climate change that together form the so-called safety chain; prevention measures, measures to improve resilience, preparation measures, response measures, and recovery measures.