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Trans-boundary Processes: Interfacing micro and the macro. Ajaya Dixit Institutional Social and Environmental Transition-Nepal River Waters: Perspectives and Challenges for Asia New Delhi 20 th September 2011.
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Trans-boundary Processes: Interfacing micro and the macro AjayaDixit Institutional Social and Environmental Transition-Nepal River Waters: Perspectives and Challenges for Asia New Delhi 20th September 2011
Combined basic properties of water (p, µ, v) with the physical factor (d, k) establishing an analytical tool to estimate friction factor and consequently head loss in pipe flows.
Technology guided; • Construction focused: Sectoral • Political scientists and legal professionals negotiate civil engineers design: • Bureaucratic arm of the nation-state can and will allocate and distribute benefits
But considered ecosystem, quality, social, political, institutional and human behaviour issues peripheral. lacked inter-disciplinarity
The context • No conclusive understanding of what is going on or will happen: • Practice of science • Technology has distributive impacts • Benefits but also risks • Emerging stresses lead to resilience depletion • Governance and power balance in society • Scale question • Fast paced changes
3,200 km2 3,250 Km2 in Nepal 850 km2 in India Tinau is tributary of the West Rapti, a tributary of Ghagra which is a tributary of the Ganga Source : Gyawali and Dixit 1999
Issues • Drinking water supply: municipal, rural: quality, quantity • Health, hygiene • Sanitation (latrines, pollution, wastewater and solid waste) • Irrigation: surface: farmers built, agency built: competition and conflict • Groundwater: deep shallow manual, mechanised; overdraft • Flood disaster: inundation, sand casting, and bank cutting and river shifting • Drought: Forest fires • Poverty, livelihoods, gender and other types of social differential
Local scale Source: District Profile DWSS/ADB Phase 3 (2000)
Climate Change Adaptation Lenses • High levels of uncertainty in both local and regional climate changes, complex and poorly understood (IPCC AR4 “white” spot) • Limited data stations (placement, lack of resources: finances and human) AR5? • Adaptation to climate change embedded in dynamic socio- economic contexts with multiple change drivers: demographic, land-use, informational, etc • People also respond, autonomously but differently • Political incentives and governance mechanism vary greatly, and with them the ability to develop and strategies (adaptation)
Re-thinking Responses • Systemic perspective; within and between systems issues • Constraint Analysis • Adaptive response • Adaptation is capacity to switch strategy as condition change (flexibility and incremental)
To the conceptual • If we define adaptation as planned responses to specific projected impacts, then specific climate-targeted responses are required. If we conceive adaptation as an ongoing, process within complex evolving systems, then approaches that address points of vulnerability within systems are needed
Responses to all water problems need to be founded on principles of democratic governance.