Approaching Water Security from a Risk Governance

Perspective

18 April 2012

Dr Christina Cook, Prof Karen Bakker, Prof Diana Allen

Dr Emma Norman, Gemma Dunn

What is water security?

• At the opening plenary

– “water-related risk to society”

• In the various presentations and in the literature

– Tremendous variability

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Increasing use of the term

3 Cook and Bakker (2012) Global Environmental Change

Used across multiple disciplines

4 Cook and Bakker (2012) Global Environmental Change

Interpreting Water Security

• Multiple definitions – often incommensurate

1. Water availability

2. Human vulnerability to water hazards

3. Human needs, development-related

4. Sustainability

• Studies at multiple scales

• Consequences for risk assessment

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What is risk (to a social scientist)?

• A risk is present when something humans value is at risk

• Socially-constructed; culturally-determined (Douglas)

• Can be amplified by social processes (Kasperson, Slovic)

• All around us – risk society (Beck, Giddens)

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How are these social science perspectives helpful?

• Not all risks are equal

• Perceptions of risk are variable

• Top-down communication of risks has limited value

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Simple Risk = FACTS

• recurrent and well known

– probability/effect

– stressor/effect

– dose/response

– agent/consequence

= [vulnerability X loss]

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Complex Risk = FACTS + VALUES

• embedded in a larger societal context; interdependent

= [vulnerability X loss]

+ uncertainty

+ complexity

+ ambiguity Renn, Klinke, van Asselt (2011)

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Complex risk example - Human health water risk (QMRA)

Biological systems are unpredictable • Microbes ubiquitous, but unevenly distributed in

space and time

• How individuals and populations respond to pathogens differs - complexity

• Models predicting illness related to water are burdened with uncertainty – is dose-response accurate?

• Trade-offs of disinfection - ambiguity

Risk Governance

• Risk needs to be characterized first – using an interdisciplinary approach

• Klinke and Renn 2012

– Propose governance decision tree for complex risk, presence of HIGH uncertainty or complexity or ambiguity results in different governance and management scenarios

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The Future? Water Security and Risk Governance

• To work toward water security we need good governance

• The risk governance framework gives some guidance on how we might characterise, analyse, manage, and communicate about risks

• We need integrative approaches that work toward consensus or at least tolerated consensus on complex risks

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Acknowledgements