Protecting the world’s freshwater resources requires diagnosing threats over a broad range of scales, from global to local. Here we present the first worldwide synthesis to jointly consider human and biodiversity perspectives on water security using a spatial framework that quantifies multiple stressors and accounts for downstream impacts. We find that nearly 80% of the world’s population is exposed to high levels of threat to water security. Massive investment in water technology enables rich nations to offset high stressor levels without remedying their underlying causes, whereas less wealthy nations remain vulnerable. A similar lack of precautionary investment jeopardizes biodiversity, with habitats associated with 65% of continental discharge classified as moderately to highly threatened. The cumulative threat framework offers a tool for prioritizing policy and management responses to this crisis, and underscores the necessity of limiting threats at their source instead of through costly remediation of symptoms in order to assure global water security for both humans and freshwater biodiversity.

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Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity

United States Agency for International Development

where A represents the magnetic vector potential, is an integral of the hydromagnetic equations. This -integral made it possible to formulate a variational principle for the force-free magnetic fields. The integral expresses the fact that motions cannot transform a given field in an entirely arbitrary different field, if the conductivity of the medium isconsidered infinite. In this paper we shall show that the full set of hydromagnetic equations admit five more integrals, besides the energy integral, if dissipative processes are absent. These integrals, as we shall presently verify, are I2 =fbHvdV, (2)

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

http://cip.management.dal.ca/publications/Water%20security%20for%20growth%20and%20development.pdf

Sink or Swim? Water security for growth and development

The Greater Himalayas hold the largest mass of ice outside polar regions and are the source of the 10 largest rivers in Asia. Rapid reduction in the volume of Himalayan glaciers due to climate change is occurring. The cascading effects of rising temperatures and loss of ice and snow in the region are affecting, for example, water availability (amounts, seasonality), biodiversity (endemic species, predator-prey relations), ecosystem boundary shifts (tree-line movements, high-elevation ecosystem changes), and global feedbacks (monsoonal shifts, loss of soil carbon). Climate change will also have environmental and social impacts that will likely increase uncertainty in water supplies and agricultural production for human populations across Asia. A common understanding of climate change needs to be developed through regional and local-scale research so that mitigation and adaptation strategies can be identified and implemented. The challenges brought about by climate change in the Greater Himalayas can only be addressed through increased regional collaboration in scientific research and policy making.

The melting Himalayas: cascading effects of climate change on water, biodiversity, and livelihoods.

Beyond the river: the benefits of cooperation on international rivers

It is generally accepted that conflicting demands over international rivers will intensify. There is an active debate on whether this will lead to water wars or to unprecedented cooperation. Framing the debate in this manner, however, tends to cast the concept of cooperation as all or nothing, implying that cooperation is an extreme, in direct opposition to war. This conceptual construct obscures the many practical levels of cooperation that states can undertake to their mutual advantage. It is important to recognize that it is entirely rational that states will always have a national agenda for a river that they share with other states, and that they will cooperate if it serves that national agenda. In practice, there can be a continuum of levels of cooperation, from simple information sharing, to joint ownership and management of infrastructure investments. Furthermore, it may not necessarily be the case that more cooperation reaps more benefits in all river basins. There are many different types of benefits that can be secured through the cooperative management of international waters, with each individual basin offering different potential cooperative benefits with different associated costs. For each international basin, the optimal mode of cooperation will depend on a mix of factors including hydrologic characteristics, the economics of cooperative investments, numbers, the relationships of riparian's, and the costs of parties coming together.

/pdf/cooperation-on-international-rivers-a-continuum-for-securing-47aon7p7tq.pdf

Cooperation on International Rivers A Continuum for Securing and Sharing Benefits

Water-related risks threaten society at the local, national and global scales in our inter-connected and rapidly changing world. Most of the world's poor are deeply water insecure and face intolera...

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2012.0406

David Grey

Papers

Sink or Swim? Water security for growth and development

Beyond the river: the benefits of cooperation on international rivers

Cooperation on International Rivers A Continuum for Securing and Sharing Benefits

Water security in one blue planet: twenty-first century policy challenges for science.

Beyond the river: the benefits of cooperation on international rivers