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Climate change and water security: challenges for adaptive water
management
Catherine Allan1, Jun Xia2 and Claudia Pahl-Wostl3
Water security is a key policy area for the Anthropocene; here
we consider recent discourses of adaptive management in
relation to water security. Definitions of water security
emphasise the dual productive/destructive potentials of water,
indicating its inherent economic, social and environmental
complexity. Adaptive management has potential to address
this social–ecological complexity because it supports a holistic
approach. Although adaptive management is sometimes
reduced to little more than conventional action under a new
name, the potential for integrative, holistic, learning centred
approaches remains within the concept of adaptation, and in
the complementary conceptualisations of Integrated Water
Resources Management, Social Learning and Resilience
Thinking. Linking across policy fields (the water–food–energy–
nexus) can only be achieved by these types of adaptive flexible
and reflective approaches, and there is some, albeit tentative,
moves in this direction in China’s National Water Policy, the
European Flood Directive and Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin
Plan. There is, however, much to do before water security,
under an adaptive paradigm, becomes a concept and
institutionalised practice that is continuously re-viewed and re-
constructed to meet the needs of an ever changing world.
Addresses
1
Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury,
Australia
2
The Research Institute for Water Security (RIWS), State Key Lab. of
Water Resources & Hydropower Engineering Sciences, Wuhan
University, 430072, China
3
Director Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of
Osnabrück, Germany
Corresponding author: Allan, Catherine (callan@csu.edu.au)
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2013, 5:625–632
This review comes from a themed issue on Aquatic and marine
systems
Edited by Charles J Vörösmarty, Claudia Pahl-Wostl and Anik
Bhaduri
For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial
Received 3 May 2013; Accepted 23 September 2013
Available online 1st November 2013
1877-3435/$ – see front matter, # 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights
reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2013.09.004
Introduction
There is immense anthropogenic pressure on global
freshwater [1]; human population growth and climate
change are key elements of this pressure. Climate change
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is likely to alter the availability and distribution of
freshwater (and alter the impacts of water related disas-
ters such as floods and droughts), while simultaneously
increasing the demand for water from rivers [2] and
impacting on groundwater availability [3]. ‘Water secur-
ity’, always of human concern, has thus become a key
policy area for the Anthropocene [4,5] Whether con-
sidered initially from a biophysical or social perspective,
‘water security’ as a concept is complex, contested and
dynamic, and requires complex and dynamic — that is,
adaptive — thinking to be able to define and achieve it.
Adaptive approaches to water management and govern-
ance have been promoted for at least three decades as part
of the shift from water government to water governance
[6,7]. This paper considers recent additions to discourses
of adaptive management as they relate to water security,
drawing on examples from China, Europe and Australia.
Water security
Water security has been described as ‘adequate protec-
tion from water-related disasters and diseases and access
to sufficient quantity and quality of water, at affordable
cost, to meet the basic food, energy and other needs
essential for leading a healthy and productive life without
compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems’ [8];
and ‘. . . an acceptable level of water-related risks to
humans and ecosystems, coupled with the availability
of water of sufficient quantity and quality to support
livelihoods, national security, human health, and ecosys-
tem services’ [9,10]. Both definitions reflect the dual
productive/destructive potentials of water, and point to
the economic, social and environmental negotiations
(sometimes ‘trade offs’) inherent in dealing with water
generally [11] and water security in particular.
The current importance of understanding and aiming
for water security is emphasised by the publication of
more than 200 peer-reviewed papers on the topic since
2002 [11], but note that many of these publications are
situated within the broader public discussion on how
humans could or should manage natural resources. In
the last quarter of the 20th century that public dis-
course has questioned the desirability of relying solely
on the scientific rationalist approach to managing and
using natural resources. Scientific rationalism was
initiated by the Enlightenment and necessarily com-
plemented and supported command and control gov-
ernment. Increasing recognition of biophysical and
social uncertainties, evidence of managed ecosystem
collapses, and policy complexities and ‘gridlocks’ (see,
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2013, 5:625–632
626 Aquatic and marine systems

Figure 1

Climate change Globalisation

Conventional,
Adaptive paradigm
Western paradigm

New ways of

Known ways of acting:

Social and institutional acting:
integrated and
command and control opportunities and informed
constraints

New ways of
Known ways of learning:
Research is separate
Water New ways understanding:
of working knowing
from doing
security together: through social
integrated learning New ways of
and
learning: is
inclusive
Known ways of part of doing
understanding: Biophysical opportunities and is
Knowing through reduction and constraints inclusive

Known ways of working

together: fragmentation and
demarcation

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

Conceptualisation of moving water security from being conventional to adaptive.

e.g. [12]) prompted the widespread reconsideration of
management and governance that continues to this day
[13]. The increased recognition of impacts from climate
change has fuelled this ongoing discussion and has led
to a broadly supported claim for a shift towards adaptive
water management [6,7,14].
Adaptive water governance and management
‘Adaptive management’ developed as an alternative to
conventional, reductionist natural resource management
[15]. Although based in, and therefore reflecting the
needs of, many natural resource sectors and political
jurisdictions, adaptive management has a deceptively
simple idea at its core — that of learning more about
something from managing that something [16]. Providing
an alternative to the conventional operational paradigm
that separates knowledge creation (research) and knowl-
edge application (management), adaptive management is
considered suitable for addressing complexity and uncer-
tainty because it is holistic. This holism encourages
inclusion and integration of disciplinary knowledges,
and the participation of a range of people and organis-
ations with potentially different epistemological and
ontological viewpoints. For example, under an adaptive,
integrative paradigm the typically Western, reductionist
ideas of managing water by sector and product [17] would
be explored and augmented by, say, reflecting on the
Chinese philosophy of seeing water as the source of land
and energy and life.
Within an adaptive paradigm the concept of ‘water secur-
ity’ would be continuously re-viewed and re-constructed
to meet the needs of a continuously changing world,
rather than considered as a predetermined goal or end-
point (see Figure 1).
Despite some superficial enthusiasm for change, and
some minor blending of paradigms, the conversion from
conventional to adaptive management, that is manage-
ment that embraces uncertainty and complexity, has been
slow and problematic in all sectors including water [18].
Institutional inertia, due to deeply entrenched norms,
professional practices and behavioral routines, appears to
prevent wide-spread acceptance of adaptive management
[7,15]. There have been few fundamental structural
changes within managing institutions, and without these
changes the complexity and uncertainty that make adap-
tive management necessary, also make it almost imposs-
ible to achieve at scales other than the small and local
[19,20]. Attempting adaptive management without
appropriate institutional support can lead to disenchant-
ment with its more radical aspects. Thus, although the

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 Climate change and water security: challenges for adaptive water management Allan, Xia and Pahl-Wostl 627
term adaptive management has been applied to many
disparate activities [21] it is now most frequently associ-
ated with field experimentation (e.g. [22,23]); indeed
‘adaptive management’ is sometimes indistinguishable
from conventional management. To do justice to the
global challenges to be addressed, including the aim of
achieving water security, adaptive management must be
framed much more broadly than as field experimentation.
It needs to be reclaimed as a process for improving
management policies and practices by systemic learning
from the outcomes of implemented management strat-
egies, within a reflective framework that recognises con-
text, and expects and responds to changes in external
factors. The sorts of holistic, integrative, learning centred
approaches at the heart of adaptation are still to be found
in the complementary conceptions of Integrated Water
Resources Management (IWRM) [7,24–26], social learn-
ing [27,28–30,31] and resilience thinking [32]. In their
various ways these approaches address issues of power
and knowledge, and build on theories of participation, but
each, even at local and regional scales, has multiple
constraints on achieving adaptation. The challenges of
pursuing water security via adaptive management are
explored in some detail in the next section by considering
selected current water policies from China, Europe and
Australia. Figure 1 provides a framework for examining
these cases: if adaptive management is being embraced
and enacted within these policies there should be evi-
dence of integrated and informed acting; integrating and
inclusive means of working together, an emphasis on
social learning, and mechanisms in place to enable learn-
ing from implementing the policies.
China’s National Water Policy
China, as a large developing country, is facing a huge
challenge in managing water resources to support its
economic boom under the pressures of both climate
change and human activity [33–35,36]. Based on the
2nd China Comprehensive Water Resource Assessment
[37], the total amount of available water for China is about
814 billion cubic metres (BCM), accounting for 29% of
the total water resources. The total available water in
South China is about 560 BCM (1100 m3 per capita),
while North China has 204.5 BCM of available water
(only 359 m3 per capita). The population of China is
estimated to reach 1.6 billion by 2030, and the total actual
water use is estimated to be 710.1 BCM by then. Con-
sidering social and economic growth and the impact of
environmental change, available water resources will
become more vulnerable, that is less secure, over time.
Available water per capita in North China, particular in
Hai River, Huang River (also called the Yellow River) and
Huai River, will decrease from the current 359 m3 to
292 m3 by 2030, and water resources per capita in the
whole country will be reduced from the current 628 m3 to
508 m3. Under conditions of climate change and
increased human activity, the stresses and vulnerabilities
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associated with water supply and water demand will
increase significantly in China. These stresses will be
exacerbated by predicted increases in the number and
extreme of water related disasters. Adaptive water man-
agement will therefore be a priority issue as China seeks
to achieve sustainable water resources use in the next 20–
30 years [35,36,38]. Adaptation in this context operates at
different time scales — from several years, to decades and
multiple decades — and is implemented by various sec-
tors, including public, private, communities and individ-
uals. Each of these has their own objectives to cope with
real or perceived climate related stresses or risks, and each
will use different measures to achieve them. To maintain
sustainable water use while coping with the anticipated
impact of climate change, the Chinese Government has
produced a series of national water strategy actions. One
of the priority actions is the National Water Policy;
‘implementing a strict-as-possible water resources man-
agement’ through ‘three red line controls’ for the next 20–
30 years [39]. In brief this involves: first, establishing a
total volume control system on water consumption for
development and use of water resources, (2) establishing
a water use efficiency control system and creating a ‘red
line for water efficiency control’, and (3) establishing
pollution receiving restriction systems in water function
areas. Successful implementation of the plan will support
and guarantee the development of economic and ecosys-
tem rehabilitation, contribute the economic security of
China’s society, and promote modernisation of the
country.
Applying the framework from Figure 1 highlights the
influence of the conventional paradigm in China’s water
policy, but the necessity to adapt to climate change
impacts is also strong. To operate within the adaptive
paradigm stakeholders must have the capacity to act.
Adaptive water management in China involves several
actions from central government, local government, river
basin commissions, stakeholders and public. One of them
is adaptive capacity building through integrating ‘top
down’ and ‘bottom up’ approaches. The three red line
controls promote infrastructure building, water saving
policies and good water governance that also aim to
enhance adaptive capacity. Another adaptive action
involves managing the multiple risks and uncertainties
related to emission scenarios, climate-hydrologic models
and downscaling/bias correction, as well as managing
uncertainties arising from increased extreme water events
such as flooding. The management of multiple risks and
uncertainties such as these prioritise climate risk man-
agement, and ‘no regrets’, robust, and flexible adaptation
options. It is to be noted that the benefits and costs of
adaptation actions such as these need to be taken into
account. This includes the social, environmental and
economic costs and benefits, and both the monetary
and non-monetary implication of actions. Recent studies
suggest that the most urgent actions are to identify key
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2013, 5:625–632
628 Aquatic and marine systems
vulnerabilities and risks, and also to build up internal
linkages of water resources vulnerability and adaptation
in relation to China’s ‘Three Red Line Control’ policy
and countermeasures [40]. Social learning and governance
reframing may be the means to achieve this; despite a
historical context of top-down hierarchical water man-
agement, social learning as a water governance approach
has been demonstrated as possible within China [41].
Europe’s Water Framework Directive
Europe has encountered a major change in water policy.
The European Water Framework Directive (WFD),
which came into force in 2000, promotes an integrated
approach to achieving ‘good status’ for all European
waters (surface waters and groundwater). The WFD
leaves considerable freedom to member states and fore-
sees several iterative cycles for the implementation.
While these mechanisms should encourage learning from
the policy, other aspects of the adaptive paradigm from
Figure 1 are less apparent. Despite the opportunities
offered by the WFD, implementation practice has not
adopted a more systemic way for dealing with uncertain-
ties and has not taken into account either resilience or
complexity [42,43]. As with China’s water policy, climate
change may be a driver for change to more adaptive
approaches. The guidance document for WFD imple-
mentation on climate change that was written in a more
advanced state of the implementation process is strongly
promoting adaptive management and robust decision
making under uncertainty [44]. Most likely its impact
will only become visible in the second implementation
cycle starting 2015.
Moving towards adaptive management is more advanced
in the realm of flood management. European and related
national flood policies are moving away from reducing the
probability of floods with structural measures towards
reducing vulnerability and building adaptive capacity.
The European Flood Directive (FD), which entered into
force in November 2007, requires EU Member States to
assess if water courses and coast lines are at risk from
flooding, to map flood risk, and to take adequate and
coordinated measures to reduce potential impacts. The
FD also reinforces the rights of the public to access this
information and to participate in the planning process. A
country much advanced in this respect is the
Netherlands. In this country, that owes its existence to
the success of drainage of the landscape and converting
sea to inhabitable terrain, technical control of water flows
has been the dominant paradigm for centuries. During
recent years, a more radical rethinking has taken place,
mainly triggered by prospects of climate change. New
policies embrace integrated approaches combining spatial
planning and flood management and are moving towards
an integrated landscape management approach. Time
and space are available within the program for innovative
structural and non-structural measures, and stakeholder
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2013, 5:625–632
participation. Nevertheless, the technocratic approach of
flood management still surfaced to impede timely public
involvement which proved to be a major problem during
planning of so-called calamity polders. Severe local pro-
tests led to an abandonment of initial plans to prepare for
flooding areas of low economic value to prevent flooding
of major assets in the rich delta-regions [45]. There was
poor appreciation that social justice issues cannot be dealt
with in a technocratic, expert mode. Similar experiences
were reported from the UK where the implementation of
a broader range of flood adaptation measures were ham-
pered by institutional cultures formed when structural,
engineered approaches were the norm [46].
Australia’s National Water Initiative and the Murray–
Darling Basin
Water policy in Australia has been undergoing rapid
change since 1994. The National Water Initiative
(NWI) of 2004 and the Water Act of 2007 reflect and
solidify a fundamental shift in how Australians under-
stand and manage water [47], effectively ending the era of
expansion and acknowledging over allocation and com-
petition among water users, including the ‘environment’
[48]. Against this backdrop of institutional change the
Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) — Australia’s ancient and
climatically fickle ‘food bowl’ — faces a bleak future
under climate change projections of increases in tempera-
tures and evaporation, and reductions in rainfall and
runoff to the rivers and wetlands [49]. The biophysical
nature of the Basin requires innovation as represented in
the adaptive paradigm of Figure 1; based on new knowl-
edge and new ways of thinking about knowledge [50].
However, the history of water policy in the MDB raises
questions about the adequacy of proposed responses and
processes, especially as they relate to situated and con-
textualized learning [51]. Adaptive management is
included as a foundation of the NWI [52], and of the
Murray–Darling Basin Plan, the most recent strategy for
managing water in the MDB [53]. Although rarely
phrased as such, the Basin Plan is about water security
in the sense described earlier as the ‘availability of water of
sufficient quantity and quality to support livelihoods. . .and
ecosystem services’. The intent to be adaptive is flagged:
for example, the Basin Plan focuses on property rights and
Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs), but the SDLs are
not intended to be fixed quantities. Adaptive manage-
ment is proposed to enable the level of the SDLs to
reflect new knowledge and changing context over time
[54]. How this can be achieved within existing institu-
tional arrangements, however, is as yet unclear. It is
currently possible to find examples of adaptive manage-
ment in the Murray–Darling Basin, but in the form of
river or catchment scale experiments that operate within,
and therefore only slightly challenge, existing conven-
tional institutional frameworks and understandings (e.g.
[55]). It is less easy to find evidence of the institutional
transformations needed to support broader, systemic and
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 Climate change and water security: challenges for adaptive water management Allan, Xia and Pahl-Wostl 629
adaptive water management. The policy space of the
MDB is crowded, complex and destructively competitive
[56]. Processes to encourage and support examination of
this complexity and its consequences for learning and
adaptation are proposed (e.g. [57]), but there is much
room for developing ways to enhance reflection both on
and in practice (i.e. aspects of social learning), and to
ultimately support the adaptive management that is
required.
Lessons from these three cases
The brief exploration of these three cases highlights the
widespread desire to manage water in more adaptive ways
than in the past, but also the tenacity of the conventional
paradigm. One challenge shared among the case policies is
to find the most appropriate balance between government
initiated and led (so called top down) and community,
citizen (bottom up) approaches for policy development and
implementation. Perhaps even more challenging is balan-
cing various technical and socially determined framings of
water, highlighting the contested role of learning and
knowledge in water policy development and implementa-
tion. These balancing acts are clearly made more difficult
by the reluctance of individuals and their governments to
change institutional arrangements and habits, at least
partly because of the investment of money and other
resources in them. Even when policy is said to promote
adaptive management, as in these three cases, known ways
of acting, learning, understanding and working together
dominate, while the adaptive paradigm claims only isolated
changes to practice, such as flexible diversion limits in
Australia, or integrated spatial planning and flood man-
agement in the Netherlands, or aspects of capacity building
in China. The necessity to respond to the impacts of
climate change is likely to overcome the reluctance to
fully embrace the adaptive paradigm, but currently most
moves towards adaptive, integrative water policy to
achieve water security are slow and contested, and require
concerted and sustained effort.
Global approaches for water security
A recent addition to the discourse of water security is that
of the ‘global’ imperative (e.g. [58–60,61]). Currently,
both the International Water Resources Association
(IWRA) and the World Water Congress (WWC) are
promoting a water strategy on global and regional water
security that encourages adaptive approaches and Inte-
grated Water Resources Management.
The issues identified above at regional, catchment and
country scales will necessarily be present at the global
scale — but global consideration of water security
suggests new types of issues will need to be addressed
as well. Thinking from a global perspective highlights
that water security is not only about ensuring a specific
amount of water to meet a specific need, but that it is also
a systemic issue with global dimensions; ‘scaling up’ is not
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only bigger, but potentially different. To address these
additional issues a global perspective on water security
needs both heightened scientific rigour and comprehen-
sive participation in planning for the future. A global
perspective also highlights the desirability of ensuring
policy and operational linkages between water security
and sustainable development. Global water security is a
concept that thus encourages consideration of a broad
social-ecological system that includes aspects of security
for water, food, energy, human health, and eco-environ-
mental function.
How to encourage the desire and capacity for adaptive
approaches within and across jurisdictions remains a work
in progress. Understandings of the requirements for
achieving water security will vary between different
regions and different countries, especially between ‘ma-
ture’ and developing water management regimes. Any
global water security framework must cater for different
regions having different water security issues; for
example regional flood control, reducing drought disaster,
water pollution control, and ecosystem conservation.
Although there are differing demands for/understandings
of water security in different regions, different countries,
and at different levels of ‘development’, regional water
security strategies could be developed under the frame-
work of global water security. This global framework
could emphasise the most important water security issues
in each region (such as regional flood control, reducing
drought disaster, water pollution control, and eco-system
conservation by linkage of hydrological cycle), while
maintaining the goal of global water security. Of import-
ance is to recognise the underlying systemic nature of
water security, so that the impacts or consequences of
water security activities are considered in the light of
human welfare and environmental responsibility (i.e.
sustainable development).
A global perspective increases the complexity of ‘water
security’ many times over. Can adaptive management be
a guiding principle here, as well as for more local situ-
ations? Systemic, holistic learning and adaptive manage-
ment have the potential to enable action despite the
complexity of global water management, but, judging
from experience at local scales, a sustained and well
supported effort would be required to address the many
constraints on it. Not least is the expectation of adaptive
management as another panacea, of which several have
already been (unsuccessfully) applied ignoring largely
the importance of context [62,63]. Also, scale issues will
impact on the efficacy and efficiency of adaptive, inte-
grative approaches. Social learning may become more
difficult to achieve as the social-ecological system in
consideration expands to global scale. In such a situation
how are evidence and scientific rigour understood and
used with vastly multiple perspectives? What institu-
tional arrangements can be developed to promote
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2013, 5:625–632
630 Aquatic and marine systems
discussion about what science, or knowledge, or even
wisdom, mean? And how is integrity maintained with
increased jurisdictional and political complexity?
The future of adaptive management for water security?
In this paper we suggest that linking across policy fields (the
water-food-energy-nexus) can be achieved by an adap-
tive — that is an integrating and reflective — approach.
Adaptive management, part of the suite of approaches that
includes Integrated Water Resources Management and
Social Learning, has the potential to be a guiding principle
that can be tailored to context and scale. However, we also
demonstrate that moving from the conventional manage-
ment paradigm to a paradigm of adaptive management is
constrained by many challenges at the regional and country
scale, challenges that are likely to increase in number and
complexity at a global scale. A commitment to adaptive
water policy and implementation will require continual
reflection on the idea of what water security is and how
it can be achieved in varying contexts. Processes will need
to be developed to enhance coordination of information
and knowledge creation. A range of possibilities were
presented at the 2013 Bonn conference on Water in the
Anthropocene, including a proposed’ Global Scenario net-
work and a framework for a global water security strategy,
encompassing knowledge management and global water
security assessment systems. These and other proposals
from the conference are complemented by an increasing
selection of global information sharing platforms, such as
the Future Earth Initiative of the International Council for
Science. Processes for learning together, including linking
across policy fields, also exist or are being developed (e.g.
[25,30,64,65,31]). These and other experiments in the
practice of governance and management must be con-
sidered, and the rate of research (traditional and action)
into such processes increased, to enable the continuous re-
viewing and re-constructing of the concept of water security
needed to meet the needs of an ever changing world.
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