World Leaders: Link Water and Climate Change

All the talk around climate change usually revolves around energy. Specifically, how can we reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our energy production. While this is a great discussion to have, more and more people are beginning to realize that while carbon emissions are causing climate change, water will be the medium in which those changes are expressed. In other words, as the climate changes, droughts, flooding, water scarcity and a whole host of other water-related issues will likely be the most direct ways that we experience global warming.

At the Fifth World Water Forum hosted in Istanbul, a number of water experts, businesses and governments from around the world argued that water should play a more central role in climate change discussions. With the big climate talk coming up this December in Copenhagen approaches, time is running out to squeeze water into the agenda. At the World Water Forum it was reported:

Calls to make water an essential issue in the UN-led climate negations were echoed by conservationists. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) urged politicians at the World Water Forum to do more to protect the natural environment, arguing that rivers and wetlands offer vital services like clean drinking water and energy.

The organization said climate change would be felt first via water, amid droughts, floods and rising sea levels. River basins and coasts in good condition could help people fend off impacts of climate change, it argued, stressing that investment in nature should therefore be included in all policies aimed at adapting to climate change.
...
However, discussions on climate change are only now starting to begin. Maude Barlow, special advisor on water issues to the president of the UN General Assembly, recently told EurActiv that the chances of getting water high up the Copenhagen agenda are "slim."

"The water crisis is where climate change was five years ago. It is just starting to get into the media and people's heads, and in five years it will be what people talk about," she said.