AGWA Annual Members Meeting
31 August 2013
Stockholm, Sweden
Present:Guy Pegram, Johnathan Kaladin, Neils Vlaanderen, Phillip Magiera, Luis Garcia, John Matthews, Mats Erickson, Alexis Serrat-Capdevilla , Colleen Vollberg, Kristin Walker Painamilla, Lina Barrera, Rolf Olsen (phone), *Cees van de Guchte, Katheleen Dominique, Eugene Brantly, *Joppe Cramwinkel, Julian Doczi, Sarah Davidson, Ian Harrison, Casey Brown, Michael Van der Valk, Sonia Koppel, Anil Mishra, Karin Lexen, Sofia Widforss
Defining AGWA’s Vision
-Initial vision was that there were lots of people focused on climate change adaptation from a water perspective and that they needed a platform for sharing.
-The focus has since shifted towards defining a clear operational framework on how we manage water in a climate resilient way.
-AGWA is unique from other institutions because of the “AGWA Approach.”
-Core elements include: skepticism on mainstream climate models and an emphasis on bottom-up as well as multi-level strategies. Decision scaling and an interdisciplinary/inter-institutional approach are also important.
Steering Committee
-Formed in the past year in addition to a revision of the charter and structure
-Members of SC are Karin Lexen, Casey Brown, Joppe Cramwinkel, Bob Pietrowsky, and Adam Freed. The non-voting members are Cees van de Guchte, Paul Fleming, and Christine Chan.
Functions of AGWA
-Must show that there is a need by addressing ongoing issues and gaps in the current practice
-Need for various sectors to come together and fill these gaps
-DSS
-Urban theme (existing concept note and plan – that cities are a critical unit for water adaptation)
-Green infrastructure (Deltares, CI – explicitly methodology for how we think about and use ecosystems – with a strong evidence base – concept note pending)
-Corporate Advisory Council (under development – interest from groups such as Arup)
-Policy team (because AGWA has been pulled into that arena – SIWI has been instrumental)
Scope of AGWA
-Mailing list of around 240 people and 45 institutions
-Core group of active individuals is roughly 50
-No central core budget
-Not a registered organization
-As of October 2012 in-kind investments (USACE, CI, WB, SIWI) ~$700k US --- to date, about $1.5 million
Recapping the Past Year
-Transition to more global “brand” for climate adaptation
-USACE was instrumental in AGWA being declared a Signature Initiative under the US Water Partnership
-AGWA has been engaged on climate models, limits, and appropriate use – “best practices” by the UNFCCC Adaptation Committee, asked to chair an Nairobi Work Programme workshop, and post-2015 SDG meetings in Geneva
-SYNSCC proposal for the support of the DSS – successful – came at the end of May
-The WB has proposed a WB-led version of the DSS – closely related to AGWA project
-Direct engagement with the private sector – Arup and Diageo
DSS Overview
The Decision Support System (DSS) will be a dynamic online tool that can be used by planners and water managers to inform and support their decision making on water projects, with a specific emphasis on the developing world. It will blend the best of the existing information, approaches, and tools on resilient water management, including evidence from published studies and cases and comprehensive decision and planning frameworks. The tool will comprise four complementary modules, addressing:
- Hydrology and Climate Change (led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
- Economics and Finance (led by the World Bank, European Investment Bank, the OECD, and SIWI)
- Engineering and Ecology (led by Conservation International and the Inter-American Development Bank
- Governance (led by Pegasys Strategy and Development and the Environmental Law Institute).
The DSS is being developed through technical workshops, while the end product will be provided in an open-source platform for public use. This “meta-tool” will source from existing materials and tools to help water planners as well as resource managers and infrastructure operators/designers identify optimal, practical options for incorporating the best thinking for this century for long-term water resources management.
-Started as a concept in November 2011
-“Paper” launch by SWWW2014
DSS Updates
-Econ and Finance- hope to have the work completed by the end of the year on finance, but the economics stream is coming slower (details to come in print)
-Governance- slow to start but now in a good position to gear up and have defined 3 key fronts
- Support other workstreams around process of stakeholder engagement and institutional and governance arrangements that enable decision making to be made
- How do they apply governance at the field level
- How does governance in AGWA add value? The conversation is ongoing. They are having a small group session on Tuesday (3 Sept. 2013) – around the stakeholder process for robust decision making, intuitional learning that allows adaptation, and how does one create the institutional and governance arrangements to make difficult choices
-Hydro-climate and engineering and ecology workstreams merged in April 2013. They have developed a decision-scaling framework in detail as the EE team created a framework for conceptual reconciliation using the decision-scaling framework. The support from SESYNC is to create the core decision tree for integration with the other 2 streams.
-Policy team – AGWA received their own invitation to attend the 2015 post SDGs meeting as well as the UNFCCC event at the Bonn intercessional
DSS Concerns and Next Steps
-We are reaching a point with the DSS to being discussing how to shift to software implementation that will require financial resources. There is a need to invest in a wire-frame, discuss with donors, and the process for elaborating, launching and maintaining that resource.
-A conservative estimate is $200k to get up to that point.
-DSS is a protocol to guide a decision making process, helping people work through difficult questions with uncertainty. It is made of certain parts that require more than just thinking but would require analysis (equations, deeper technical exploration of issues) so there are aspects that would require a software tool.
-If the tool is part of a larger decision making framework then it can be very specific and it can also be part of existing tools like a plugin.
-Eugene pointed out that RTI has been working with Fernando to build Hydro-beam to be able to estimate availability of water at a location with various inputs about changes over time. This was built to be able to interact with other tools instead of being a stand-alone system – largely because that is difficult to support. This experience has reinforced that it does not make sense to create a stand-alone product because of financial resources and analysts want to tweak it.
-The next step is to form a core group. David Purkey is interested – Eugene Brantly and Cees van de Guchte, TNC, and Casey Brown
-Must make sure this is filling a gap and not replicating existing initiatives
-Need clarity as to the user of the tool. It is relatively technical.
Pilot Projects/ Case Studies
-UNECE has engaged AGWA in 2 different field sites – Dniester – other basins have expressed interest
-USACE–IWR has now started projects in Northern Mongolia, Thailand, and Vietnam to tie in the AGWA approach is connecting to other teams on the ground
This is showing ownership that we are a network and can be applied as a network.
Conagua and WWF want to schedule a consultation w/ AGWA to take environmental flows to a national level scale.
Conversation on AGWA’s Role in Policy
-A discussion started in Geneva about raising the profile of water. Is there a niche for AGWA to have another focus on informing NAPAs or the NAPs process at the national policy level?
-This would take a lot of resources, but perhaps with good contacts and linkages that could begin in certain countries or regions. There is a need to have some dirt of your fingers to understand but it would be useful to have a policy presence at the global and local policy level.
-One key element is the national frameworks that will help or hinder adaptation – coming from the bottom up and perhaps meeting in the middle at the national level.
-One of AGWA’s strength is that all of the members are involved in these projects that can be brought to the table but should be done carefully, and not act as a lobbying organization. To this point we have been engaged in a technical sense.
-We need to bring together the members to pick the areas AGWA would like to target to utilize the power of the network and choose the most strategic places for the test phase.
-With regards to the idea of piloting and testing, using AGWA as the convenor, there has been interest expressed already.
-In Geneva there was a conversation around the NASA Servir call. The request for AGWA was to put together something technical for NASA to express interest. The idea of regional nodes or clusters might be worth pursuing.
-What if we were able to define a series of AGWA data products – perhaps at a regional or thematic level? There has been some enthusiasm for that and we will be ready in the next 6 months to define that.
-Where does the real traction come from? The ideas are so powerful that you don’t need data, just others who are willing to think about this in that way. There need to be demonstrations and processes that show how that will work. 2-3 successful cases will take off like wildfire.
Future Meetings for AGWA
-We need another meeting to organize these nodes and put together concepts and leverage resources.
-The concept notes from that meeting could serve as a basis for grant writing or at least some prepared thinking for opportunities.
-Some groups may be interested in connecting data points synergies.
-Could potentially create a library of ongoing projects and a relational database, but both require resources
Financing
-How to make AGWA work as an ongoing and viable endeavor
-Pilot project funding has been successful
-Need to address the costs associated with core events, travel, etc. (this discussion has already been going on)
-Helpful to have a broader conversation about how to support the secretariat – website, organization, etc. It’s hard because CI is carrying a large load and there is a limit to how much John can do – someone has to manage the process and bevy of actors for the projects discussed. Plus there also needs to be a discussion about ownership, because it is not a formal institution, although it is presented that way and thought of in that construct.
-Need to write something with the business model and 2-3 options (1 with BAU scenarios and others looking at different levels of support)
-Drafting process should perhaps start with Steering Committee and then open up to the larger group
-Consider bringing in some IT possibilities to make AGWA more effective
-Consider interacting with the initiative/network of Anataray (sp?) that IAHS is starting