Business, Environment and Government Leaders Recognize Value of Water to Reduce Carbon Emissions and Address Climate Change

The California Environmental Dialogue has released a document that outlines the importance of water in the context of climate change, while encouraging improved data collection on water-related greenhouse gas emissions and increased integration of resource management policies and programs.

The California Environmental Dialogue (CED) fosters an on-going dialogue between California business leaders, environmentalists, and government officials. The group was spawned in the mid 1990’s and has grown to 30 members, including: Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy, Bank of America, Cisco, NBC Universal, Walt Disney Company, Union of Concerned Scientists, Chevron, Southern California Edison, Sierra Club and a variety of California state agencies. I first heard about the CED from Dr. Robert Wilkinson, a professor at UC Santa Barbara who happens to be one the founders of the CED and perhaps the world’s leading expert integrating water and energy policies and programs.

In September 2009, the CED released Climate Change and Water Management, a six page policy brief describing the CED’s perspective on interface between water management, energy and climate change. Here’s the summary:

California’s climate change commitments compel our state’s public and private entities to manage water resources more efficiently and to fully integrate water considerations into all resource management policies and plans, including those that address climate change mitigation and adaptation. With this in mind, all Californians should begin taking cost-effective and technologically-feasible steps to accelerate the statewide deployment of more efficient water resource management strategies. The California Environmental Dialogue encourages continued collaboration between all relevant agencies and stakeholders during the development and implementation of programs related to the water/climate nexus. To help to achieve this, the CED believes that water/climate programs should be developed and implemented in accordance with the recommendations contained herein.

Before I get to CED’s recommendations, I’d like to note that the above statement could be applied to just about any state that has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and tackling climate change. If federal climate legislation ever gets passed, I’d go so far as to recommend replacing “California” with “United States” in the text excerpted above, since integrated resource management, water efficiency and collaboration across agencies is just as applicable at the federal level as it is at the state level.

A fair share of the Climate Change and Water Management document is devoted to explaining the need for improved data collection on water use and the energy it requires:

The CED understands that data collection and performance metrics will play critical roles in validating GHG emissions reductions and promoting cost-effective water resource management strategies. The CED believes that data collection and performance metrics are essential in establishing credible performance thresholds for those water projects that produce quantifiable, verifiable, and enforceable additional GHG emissions reductions, as well as infrastructure benefits.

The Climate Change and Water Management document outlines 12 “Essential Water/Climate Metrics” that should be tracked (you can find this list in the documents appendix). Again, the need for better data collection and consistent metrics and protocols applies as much in any other state or at the federal level as it does in California.

The CED recommends developing and implementing water/climate programs in accordance to 9 key principles (for more in depth descriptions of each principle, download Climate Change and Water Management):

1) Establish GHG Reduction Protocols for Water Projects
*2) Increase Water Use Efficiency
3) Manage Urban Runoff
4) Increase Water Recycling
5) Improve Groundwater Management
6) Utilize Natural Resource Systems and Holistic Landscape Design
7) Improve Water System Energy Efficiency
8) Increase Renewable Energy Production
8) Utilize Adaptive Management