engleski

GLOBAL WATER RESOURCES BETWEEN RISK AND PROSPERITY

Water is a basic ingredient of life and a fundamental human right. It is a shared resource on which life, the environment and most human activities depends. Water is also a threat to life and livelihoods. Too much water produces disastrous flood, too little awful drought. Yet pressures on water resources are mounting. We are dealing with a hydro-climatic problem with the potential to destroy ecosystems and parts of economy, and exacerbate poverty as well as inequalities and tensions among and between nations. Planetary water resources are significantly affected by global change, which involves more than climate change. The major drivers of global change are: population growth, climate change and/or variability, uncontrolled and unsustainable urbanization and industrialization, expansion of infrastructure, land use change, massive pollution, unsustainable water resources management, massive deforestation, wetland drying up and many other reasons. Achieving global water security for all is an enormous challenge. The global change is the main reasons for necessity of interdisciplinary scientific co-operation in their management and protection. Protection and sustainable management of the water resources is of crucial importance. It is necessary to take the complex, interactive, technical, social, economic, environmental and cultural aspects of global water resources management into account in decision-making. Of special importance is the establishment of firm network of contacts with leading independent scientists, who promote new ideas and concepts independently of mainstream directions. Transfer of information across spatial and temporal scales is one of the most fundamental issues in the water hazard and risk management investigation. Science will give more certainty in water resources management, but will never be enough knowledge. In order to better solve or mitigate future water problems, there is an urgent need to improve strategies, approaches and solutions that will lead towards holistic, more effective and sustainable management. Water must be treated as a high political priority that is integrated into other policy areas. Universities must play a key role by helping governments how to manage and allocate water resources and provide water services. Cooperation around water, for water and through water, must happen everywhere and continuously. In the water sector, the approach is still too often based only on hydrological and climatological data, on modelling and engineering, all relying on the application on scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes and systems. A synthesis of the Newtonian and Darwinian approaches to science, development of interdisciplinary science ecohydrology, will offer opportunities for progress at the intersection of physics and ecology where many critical issues in earth system science reside.

water; global changes; climate changes; flood; drought

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