Approaching water security from a risk perspective
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Transcript of Approaching water security from a risk perspective
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