Water and Livelihoods
Climate change will have impacts on important societal sectors. These impacts affect human systems
also through impacts on their livelihoods. The livelihood index allows integrating and comparing
sectoral impacts and to assess their consequences for human livelihoods in a quantifiable
framework. Water availability as a critical livelihood need is not only determined by the resource
availability itself, but factors of access and quality play an important role. We extend the existing
livelihood framework by assessing the water sector in detail.
Different user groups require access to water in different quantities and access has to be granted in
a user specific way. We quantify the adequacy of water resources for different user groups in three
case study regions. Climatic and population pressures are taken into account, using climate scenarios
and population projection. The results give important information on how to best adapt and
improve water provision for different users to improve livelihood conditions, taking into account
climate change and sustainable development.
Figure 1: Important determinants of water adequacy for the main sectors of water use
The Figure 1 outlines the most important aspects of water adequacy for livelihoods. The municipal
(domestic) sector requires the least overall water resource, but adequate access to high quality
water infrastructure and water quality are absolutely essential. Most of the water goes into
agricultural production. Here, water resource availability and security of supply play the most
important role, while water quality is an additional aspect. Industrial /energy water access is mainly
determined by the water availability and quality. However, the concrete requirements differ strongly
depending on the type of production and are very site specific.
The results show that in the three case study countries water resources are not necessarily the
limiting factor for adequate water access, but infrastructure and water quality play an important
role. Water resources are a limiting factor mainly in densely populated areas and population growth
in these regions over the coming decades may lead to situations of scarcity there.
Method
Fuzzy logic was used to aggregate all input factors into an integrated indicator of water adequacy for
human livelihoods (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Outline of the fuzzy aggregation process to calculate the adequacy of water resources.
Data Sources:
Sector
Municipal
Indicator
Access
Water quality
Variable
Source of drinking
water
Phosphorus
loading
Nitrogen loading
Sediment loading
Organic loading
Mercury
Resolution
Subnational
values (Regions)
0.5° Grid
Source
MEASURE DHS
Vörösmarty et al
(2010)
Industrial
Water quality
Agricultural
Water quality
Security of supply
Water availability
Population data
deposition
Pesticide loading
Sediment loading
Thermal
alteration
Soil salinization
Dam density
Area equipped for
irrigation
Runoff
0.5° Grid
Vörösmarty et al
(2010)
0.5° Grid
Vörösmarty et al
(2010)
Vörösmarty et al
(2010)
AquaSTAT
LPJmL
0.5° Grid
0.083° Grid
0.5° Grid
Subnational data
Results were calculated using water data from LPJmL, a Dynamic Global Vegetation and Water
Balance Model. We calculated results for a baseline period (1981-2010) and a short-term future
scenario (2011-2040) using two climate models (HadGEM2-ES and GFDL-ESM2M) and two RCPs (2.6
and 8.5).