Water and Land Management for Climate Adaptation
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) essentially provides an integrated framework to manage land and water. The logic of IWRM is almost universally accepted, but contrasts sharply with the weak institutional and financial capacity for its implementation. Our work on integrated land and water management in Manitoba makes the case for such integration in light of the impacts of regional climate change. Climate change threatens to increase the magnitude and frequency of major weather events such as floods and droughts as well as the nutrient loads flowing into Lake Winnipeg.
The necessity of climate change adaptation creates an innovation opportunity—doing things differently and better. In Manitoba, that means integrating water and land management—investing in our watersheds to seize economic, social and environmental benefits such as flood and drought damage reduction and improving the health of Lake Winnipeg.
The Manitoba Challenge: Integrated Water and Land Management for Climate Adaptation (PDF - 3 MB) presents the case for technological and institutional innovation for effective ecological watershed management, which looks at both water and land issues. Key elements of this innovation agenda include governance reform at the water-land interface, re-purposing existing resources, and designing new economic instruments to support watershed management—including ecological goods and services programs in the agricultural sector.
A companion technical study from the Water Soft Paths project demonstrates that only a very small fraction of available water resources in Manitoba’s agricultural region is directly consumed by human activities (irrigation, livestock production and municipal demands). Water availability in southern Manitoba is heavily influenced by watershed management; most water is consumed by evapo-transpiration (92 per cent), with runoff accounting for the remaining 8 per cent.
