7th WWF day 6

7th World Water Forum in Daegu and Gyeongju, Korea - day 6

In the morning at 9:00 ICHARM organized the closing session of the Theme Water and Disasters. We had over 60 people turn up to the session, which launched the Implementation Roadmap with actions to be taken on this theme between now and the next WWF in Brazil, 2018. After our session, we checked up on the exhibition booth and placed the final documents online, which you can find here under 'documents'. The final closing ceremony was a massive event with over 700 people and many prizes awarded. 

Closing Session T.1.3.Con

The objective was broadly as follows:

How do we prepare for emerging risks and uncertainties and adjust to shifts in extremes while simultaneously building robust, resilient communities and countries and achieving sustainable development goals? To achieve this, our session incorporates the results of the Sixth World Water Forum as well as previous forums and is linked to efforts through relevant initiatives.

Participants will design the 7th World Water Forum’s overall implementation goals, a roadmap and detailed action plans. The action plans’ implementation will be evaluated at the next World Water Forum session, in Brazil in 2018. This commitment is not legally binding, but calls for voluntary participation of non-government organizations by setting up goals by overarching themes and concrete implementation measures. The Action Monitoring System was established to keep track of the IRs drawn from the 7th World Water Forum. Via an annual check-up meeting, the outcomes of the IRs will be discussed and the network among water organizations and governments will be further strengthened.

Participants included:
Moderator: William Logan (USACE)
Prof. Toshio Koike (Director of ICHARM)
1. Julien Eyrard, WASH adviser, Action Contre la Faim, Paris, France.
2. Mr. Wei Fuu Yang, Vice Minister, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan.
3. Chung-Soo Kim, Water Resources Research Division, KICT, Goyang, Korea.
4. Dr. J.G. Timmerman, Senior Researcher, Wageningen University.
5. Cees van de Guchte, Deltares, Director Climate Adaptation and Risk Management, Delft, The Netherlands.
6. Sonja Koeppel, UNECE.
7. Mohammed Karamouz, ASCE-EWRI-IPC, USA.
Discussion panel members including Jean-Francois Donzier
Prof. Yoshiyuki Imamura

Session parts (ICHARM members in bold):

First of all, we had a most excellent moderator, William Logan from the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

1. Prof. Koike opened the session and mentioned the Sendai Framework for Action where four points of action were highlighted, which we will use as key points during the Implementation Roadmap ICHARM has prepared.

2. The second part of the session consisted of synopses of the individual thematic sessions. For T.1.3.1 Julien Eyrard, WASH adviser, Action Contre la Faim presented on “Water and disasters: From the humanitarian assistance to the protection of livelihoods and economics”. We believe the SFA should be more people centered and aligned with the Post 2015 MDGs and CC agenda. It should link to humanitarian response planning. Everyone agreed we need to protect the most vulnerable people more. Sanitation is often ignored in emergency response, and funding needs to be more predictable. Multi-sectoral partnership would allow for funding, equipment, technical expertise, so we should focus on developing more partnerships. Secondly, Wei Fuu Yang, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs from Taiwan presented on “Assessing, mitigating, and monitoring risk with use of innovative methodologies and technologies” and building city resilience to disasters. Different cities around the world suffer from similar water issues. In France there is a need for ICT improvement, and to put resilience into urban design planning. In Turkey there are limited water resources, which influences the future climate. Many indices are developed. In Japan the damages in the developing world are analyzed and support is provided. The need for data for assessments was stressed. From Taiwan the engineering methods and non-engineering methods like outflow control, disaster prevention strategies, ICT application and re-evaluation of risks of extreme rainfall were introduced. Public participation and Q-water technologies for recovery were also shown. As conclusions there is the need for creative measures and cross national cooperation. Next, Chung-Soo Kim from the Water Resources Research Division of KICT presented “Preparedness, Response and Adaptation against Extreme Flood under Climate Change”. He said there were many presenters from different countries related to the typhoon committee. Examples from the 2011 Thailand flood showed the duration of the flood was a big problem. The Philippines has established so many countermeasures, but the 2013 typhoon was too much. Extreme floods are defined as floods that haven’t been frequent in the past, in amount and duration. Urban flood risks are increasing, and flash floods have the highest mortality risks. How can we prevent these trends? Three strategies were developed in Korea and explored in our session. Dr. Jos Timmerman, Senior Researcher from the Wageningen University followed with “Adapting to climate change, focus on Disaster Risk Prevention in a long term perspective”. He argued for DRR in the following way: The production of solid state drives was located in the flooded areas in Thailand, delaying worldwide distribution and development. The Netherlands is expecting to have a shortage of water in the near future. We need to develop a plan for the coming 50 years, which is flexible to changes over time, taking tipping points into account. A risk based approach focusing on potential hazards to physical or social life is needed, with a differentiation in protection levels. The private sector and citizen participation with local knowledge should be involved in these plans to increase adaptive capacity. Disaster risk prevention benefit includes reduction of social inequity and it provides investment opportunities. It promotes a social and economic sustainable development. Cees van de Guchte from Deltares presented “Enhancing Resilience? Approaches towards robust decision making”. He argued that the new methodology being applied includes better local decision making frameworks, which has led to better evaluation of approaches. It should be a combination of top-down downscaling with decision trees and stress testing to ensure your investment is climate based. Global policy does not reflect the lower levels’ expertise developing. \ Sonja Koeppel from UNECE showed “Climate change adaptation in basins: examples and good practices”. In this she pointed out that the challenges of climate change include the uncertainty, different assessment methodologies, lack of awareness of population, legal agreements based on stationary assumptions rather than incorporating changes in climate, and lack of trust between basins/countries. Key messages include basin level approach, joint activities promote cooperation in other areas as well, stakeholder involvement in vulnerability assessments is crucial, legal frameworks need to be flexible (e.g. USA-Mexico has become flexible), and we need inter- and intra-basin solidarity. Basins should be supported in developing transboundary strategies, we need to move from assessments to implementation, more information exchange, and mainstream basin adaptation into the UNFCCC document. Last in this summary was Mohammed Karamouz from the university of Teheran, with the title “Urban flood resiliency through adaptation to climate uncertainties”. He summarized the 8 presentations of case studies during his thematic session, and the five questions that were discussed afterwards, e.g. how do we quantify resiliency and mitigate vulnerability in urban systems, how do we get adapted to climate change. Critical conditions included zoning laws and land use planning, vulnerability maps, holistic systems for sustainable risk reduction, and capacity building/knowledge transfer. As solutions, one was to invest in infrastructure from a holistic approach to consider potential hazards and the weakest links.   3. For the Implementation Roadmap discussion part, there first was a video from the WWF secretariat of how to organize the IR. Next, Tokunaga explained the IR process and what was asked from the audience. The IR contains 4 goals, 7 objectives and several actions. He asked for the comments of all members of the design group and the audience to this document. First all the session representatives responded and there was an active discussion. Eyrard said that humanitarian assistance should be added to the document. It is impossible to separate this from DRR. Yang added that risk assessment and resilience are expressed in terms of indices, and we want to push for quantitative assessment of risk. Data and tools are available, this probability based assessment should be promoted to be used in different areas, to move from indices to the probability based assessment. Countries need specific tools that should be developed. ICHARM would be very helpful in this. Kim asked why the Sendai Framework targets are the IR goals. Prof. Koike replied that this theme is consistent to the main topics of the Sendai framework, which is why we identified our structure consistent to the SFA, so we can work together at the UN level, which is our intention. Kim added that we have to decide the leading members for the actions. Prof. Koike said these are voluntary actions and not legally binding. We would like to monitor your progress according to the WWF, and review your progress at the next WWF. Timmerman commented that droughts will become more important and these should also be mentioned in the IR. System based adaptation, green adaptation/ecosystem based approaches are not mentioned so much, but these have more resilience and additional benefits, and therefore should be explored. We should mention the links between climate change and disasters more. Van de Guchte stressed that defining DRR is necessary. The issues under DRR for several levels global/cities concern a wide area. The SDGs place DRR under the city level. Action proposers should identify at which level their actions are implemented. Koeppel said that we should strengthen the importance of cooperation at the basin level. Stress the importance to move to implementation, which requires financing, which is missing in the document. We know there are some funds available, in order to implement the measures on the ground these links should be made with the finance/climate community. Mohammed commented on the physical aspects of meeting, by saying he wants to be more practical in the approach we take. Many things allow us to work together and stay together. How can we keep the synergy after this? I am a little confused as to what is next. Let’s be consistent and decide today how we can make the next step. We all had a different form of presenting, we got many emails but we never interacted with each other, we had no platform for this. Panel member Jean-Francois Donzier added that his first recommendation is to improve the link between processes of climate change and DRR. We are at risk but we exist. Floods and drought exist, climate change will increase the risks in the next decade. We have to react as soon as possible. The new EU directive imposes to the 28 member states to make in 2015 a new basin management plan taking into account flood and scarcity strategies. We have an obligation to introduce new methods. Innovation is not occurring enough, we need more assessment, more monitoring. We should not wait too much, but act immediately with the toolboxes and measures for implementation. This requires political will and advertising to all different levels of government, and a message to pass to the next UNFCCC meeting. The effect of reducing greenhouse gases will be low, we need to do more. We also need adaptation measure proposals created with the financing sector; without money it will be complicated to run. Logan added that it is indeed difficult to get people together and discuss a document, and comment on drafts. In the last few days we got together and tried to reduce the objectives, so people are now finding a new document. After he emphasized the necessity for follow-up that be addressed by the handout, and to please leave suggestions and email on the handout, over 10 people responded in great detail.

4. 

As conclusion, former ICHARM member Prof. Imamura introduced the 6th WWF priorities, the Sendai Framework for Action, and the Post 2015 development goals related to water hazards. He also showed the objectives and outputs from each of the five sessions of this science and technology topic. Finally he explained about the Implementation Roadmap future developments.

 

Closing Ceremony

During the closing ceremony many awards were presented. Next, Prof. Imamura was one of the two organizers of closing sessions of the 16 organizers in total to be invited to give a short speech on the Implementation Roadmaps. After this, the IR document was signed and presented on stage as evidence of our intended goals and the monitoring of their implementation. The next venue in Bazil was introduced by video and the organizing committee. 

The WWF7 newsletter reflected Imamura's speech as follows: 

Yoshiyuki Imamura, the chief researcher at the International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management, committed himself to guide the implementation of the results of the discussions on “Adapting to Change: Managing Risk and Uncertainty for Resilience and Disaster Preparedness,” a part of the Water Security for All theme. 

He pledged “to respond to the dynamic, evolving nature of the water cycle and highlight sustainable approaches to water resources management, disaster management, climate adaptation and economic development.” The commitment reflects the discussions in sessions such as “Adapting to climate change: disaster risk prevention in a long term perspective.” Attendees there agreed that water issues must be in the forefront of discussions on both disasters and climate change. Without that prominence, they said, no real progress can be made in solving those problems.