Line of action:

Drivers of biodiversity loss

Status:

Finalizado

Execution date:

2019

Total budget:

135.675 €

Amount of aid from the Biodiversity Foundation:

76.800 €

Climate change, economic development and population growth are projected to cause global water demand to exceed available supply by 40% by 2030, reducing GDP by up to 6% in southern European basins.
Mitigating the impacts of climate change and water scarcity on the environment and the economy will require Transformative Adaptation Policies (PAT) in water governance, particularly in irrigation, the largest user with 80%, and the one that concentrates the least productive uses of the resource, according to the entity.
In closed basins such as Spain’s, where water supply is insufficient to meet demand for part or all of the year, LAPs will be driven by water redistribution policies between uses (prices, insurance, markets).
In this context, obtaining the best available knowledge on the cost-effectiveness and robustness of TAP is necessary to achieve sustainable development.

The main objective of the project is the identification of cost-effective and robust Transformative Adaptation Policies (TAPs) that contribute to the good ecological status of water bodies and favour economic growth and social well-being, and also their adoption and eventual implementation through their integration into the third (2021-2027) and successive hydrological planning cycles.

It has the following specific goals:

• To analyse the environmental and economic impact through a modular mathematical model that allows combining these economic and hydrological parameters, in addition to globally accepted climate models.
• To generate multiple scenarios with which to analyse the cost-effectiveness of different Transformative Adaptation Policies to climate change in irrigation and related economic sectors.
• Apply model combination strategies to the cost-effectiveness model to measure the uncertainty of the results.
• Involve relevant actors in the development of research and in the interpretation of results and underpin robust decision-making.
• Transfer the results to academia and society.

• Develop a comprehensive framework for the cost-effectiveness analysis of climate change ATPs in irrigation and other sectors with the inclusion of information on physical and economic variables.
• Populate the comprehensive cost-effectiveness framework with multiple hydrological and economic models to measure uncertainty through a multi-model ensemble.
• Review the literature, including the Duero Hydrological Plan, the national National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC) and those of regions and countries facing scarcity problems similar to those of Spain, to identify relevant political and physical scenarios in the context of irrigation and adaptation to climate change.
• Organise bilateral meetings with stakeholders and workshops, to facilitate effective communication and interpretation of modelling results.
• Integrate the comments and suggestions of the relevant actors, through bilateral meetings and workshops that allow the collective learning of the actors and researchers.
• Dissemination and transfer of results through the publication of scientific articles, presentations at conferences, creation and maintenance of a website, organization of dissemination events and stays abroad.

• A multi-system (hydrology, micro and macroeconomic), multi-model and multi-scenario methodological framework has been developed to sample the cascading uncertainties between the relevant systems for decision-making in water management.
• The impact of seven LAPs has been analysed considering 10,000 scenarios, combining physical (hydrology, climate) and socio-economic aspects, and the cost-effectiveness of these LAPs has also been analysed together with more than 10 relevant actors in the Duero and its sub-basins
• The project methodology has been replicated and adopted in European basins (Italy, France, Spain) and the Southern Mediterranean (Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey).
• Nine scientific articles and nine individualized reports have been made available to the competent public bodies.
• 5 presentations have been made at international conferences.