Integrating Resilient SWP into Decision-Making Processes

The U S -Canada International Joint Commission (IJC), an intergovernmental body to manage the North American Great Lakes, applied a bottom-up approach to climate adaptation concerns with Lake Superior with the support of Casey Brown at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2009 (Brown et al, 2012). The study provided quite positive and actionable results despite significant climate uncertainty and dozens of stakeholders. The approach can systematically deliver robust water management solutions through a methodology called decision scaling. With a broad array of partners including Casey Brown and Patrick Ray, both of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the World Bank undertook a significant revision of its approach to assessing climate risk to its water portfolio through what came to be known as the Decision Tree Framework (Ray and Brown, 2015). The application of decision scaling, while not referring to SWP, includes many of its basic approaches and assumptions, including understanding the resilience and hydrological context of resource management and infrastructure decision-making. An affiliated team recently published a companion approach that also uses decision scaling married to a flexibility methodology called adaptation pathways. The combined approach explicitly addresses ecological performance indicators. Called Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA; Mendoza et al, 2018), the approach has been applied to a number of resilient nature-based solutions, including a national-level partnership that used the method on adaptive environmental flows at a basin scale (Verbist et al, 2018).

Bottom-up approaches have been proliferating rapidly and globally throughout the water community, including a massive multi-basin project for the greater Mexico City region that includes both built and nature-based solutions with more than three dozen regional stakeholders and partners. Led by the World Bank, the approach promises to create a profound shift in long-term decision-making around water management Although less than a decade old, bottom-up approaches promise to create a long-term reorientation around water risk assessment, including the integration of ecosystems within traditional decision-making processes.