Description: The recognition of the limits of resources is almost as old as the realization that our planet is a sphere leading to concerns about sustainable resources management. Water resources in particular receive growing attention given its uneven distribution in many parts of the world. Engineering solutions to address water management challenges played significant roles in the past in areas such as access to clean water and sanitation, providing water for irrigation, offering protection against floods, allowing power generation, etc. Despite their proven benefits, engineering solutions are receiving increasing criticism due to their negative environmental and societal impacts and the high cost of their implementation and operation. More reliance on ecosystem services as an alternative is often advocated as a means to achieve more sustainable water management solutions. This paper examines key water services that human societies rely on and the feasible roles that ecosystems can play in lieu of engineering solutions. The paper applies the “balanced triangle” of the planetary (abiotic), ecosystems (biotic) and human societal (anthropic) resources and assets as a basis for evaluating different water management strategies. The ultimate goal of the paper is to offer guidance for finding a better balance in deploying ecosystem-based and engineering solutions together with satisfying the needs of human societies while minimizing the impacts on the ecosystems.

Description: In the face of changing environmental and socio-economic drivers, access to, understanding of, and the use of probabilistic climate forecasts and other sources of scientific hydro-climate information are impor...

Description: Tourism climate indices (TCI) are commonly used to describe the climate conditions suitable for tourism activities, from the planning, investment or daily operations perspectives. A substantial amount of resea...

Description: The recent shift towards the interdisciplinary study of the human-environment relationship is largely driven by environmental justice debates. This article will distinguish four types of environmental justice and link them to questions of neoliberalism and altruism. First, environmental justice seeks to redress inequitable distribution of environmental burdens to vulnerable groups and economically disadvantaged populations. Second, environmental justice highlights the developed and developing countries’ unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits. Third, temporal environmental justice refers to the issues associated with intergenerational justice or concern for future generations of humans. In all three cases, environmental justice entails equitable distribution of burdens and benefits to different nations or social groups. By contrast, ecological justice involves biospheric egalitarianism or justice between species. This article will focus on ecological justice since the rights of non-human species lags behind social justice debates and discuss the implications of including biospheric egalitarianism in environmental justice debates.

Description: Background: This article develop analyses water security in Mexico, a country where global environmental change requires social, political and economic actors to protect natural resources and ecosystem services in order to reduce the tension between anthropogenic demands and natural availability. The paper asks: How can overexploitation and inequality in the access and control of water be assessed using an integrated model of water management and how could the existing water resources in each river basin and aquifer be sustainably distributed by a new National Water Law that would encourage participation in order to overcome the conflicts over access to and control of water? Methods: With a model of integrated water management the article reviews the current use of water among different social and production sectors. Results: Agriculture still consumes 77 per cent of the water, especially in the arid north, an area greatly affected by climate change (CC). Industry uses ten per cent and domestic users thirteen per cent of water. The growing megacities are also overexploiting their aquifers, producing subsidence and water pollution together with changes in land use, thus reducing water infiltration into the aquifers during the monsoon. Regional and temporal water stress is further aggravated by unsustainable production processes, where mining and agribusiness hog the water needed by indigenous people and small farmers, forcing them to migrate to the urban centres or illegally to the US. Conclusions: Within this arena of conflict in the field of water management, the article offers several guidelines for a sustainable and participative National Water Law. Food security, including dignified life conditions for the small-scale farmers in rain-fed regions affected by CC, could be achieved with small scale irrigation system in the Southeast of Mexico, where water is available for a second crop. Their sustainable agriculture and preventive management of water pollution by organic agriculture are central activity for conserving and restoring the natural condition of water infiltration. Without an integrated water management, reduction of soil erosion, early warning and resilience-building among the exposed people, Mexico will not reduce the existing and future threats related to global environmental change and particularly to CC.

Description: This study develops an objective rainfall pattern assessment through Markov chain analysis using daily rainfall data from 1980 to 2010, a period of 30 years, for five cities or towns along the south eastern co...

Description: It has been ten years since the 2006 work of Abel and Trevors wherein the cybernetic path of life’s origin was proposed as an alternative to the widely held views of such origin being self-ordering and self-or...

Description: Six reference evapotranspiration (ETo) methods including: Papadakis (1966), Turc (1961), Blaney and Criddle (1950), Blaney and Criddle modified by Shih et al. (1977), Penman modified by Frere and Popov (1979) ...

Description: Climate variability and change have long posed substantial challenges for social, economic and natural systems throughout the world. Incorporating information about climate fluctuations and their impacts is an increasingly important component of risk management and planning in key socio-economic sectors. Understanding and meeting these challenges through effective risk management strategies that foster preparedness, impact mitigation, and adaptation requires a long-term investment in and commitment to sound science, transition, and translation of information among communities, and the application and evaluation of climate services and decision support resources. This science should be developed, implemented and applied in the context of the practical needs and capabilities of communities, stakeholders, and socio-economic sectors if it is to inform resource management challenges, and contribute to the field of study of climate, climate information services, preparedness and adaptation.During the early 1990s, the United States expressed a desire to capitalize on emerging developments in atmospheric and oceanic research and early climate impact studies, in order to develop the institutional capacity to meet these needs on global and regional scales. As a member of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and working in partnership with the international scientific and governmental community, NOAA led the development of an international research institute, which is known today as the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). Over several decades - from the initial conceptual and demonstration phases, to today’s mature institution – IRI had a substantial influence in linking science and action to risk management. This essay briefly reflects upon the initial vision for and evolution of the IRI; the importance of investments in endeavors of this nature to the US climate research and services communities, including model development, climate prediction and integrated research and assessments; and the value of such an institution to a Federal entity concerned with development and risk management in developing countries - the US Agency for International Development (USAID). We conclude with some thoughts about future directions.

Description: The production of seasonal forecasts on a routine basis in South Africa started in the early 1990s. Most of the modelling then was based on linear statistical approaches. The subsequent evolution of the seasonal forecasting enterprise in South Africa included the development of seasonal forecasting expertise and the enhancement of complex modelling systems which include the implementation and administration of atmospheric global and regional circulation models, empirical downscaling, multi-model ensembles, ocean-atmosphere coupled model development, and applications of forecasts. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society has made telling contributions to this evolution over the past 20 years and these will be highlighted here.