Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
Introduction
While many previous studies have looked at the worldwide changes and impacts of climate change and related variability on water resources, few have focused on an assessment of the specific effects and needed adaptation and mitigation for water systems in cities across the globe. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the water sector (IPCC, 2008) summarizes links between climate change and water through all of the physical elements of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle, ocean components, linkages to water supply, and global effects, but does not focus specifically on urban water systems. Similarly, the ADAPT Project (Aerts and Droogers, 2004) looked at adaptation for regional water management in seven typical watersheds across the world. However, most of this study was focused on surface water resources and their impacts on agriculture, food supply, energy production, and flood hazards, or on other impacts including groundwater resources, but did not focus on cities. There is thus an urgent need for a focused overview of the water supply and wastewater treatment sector in urban areas.
The range of challenges related to climate change and cities in regard to the water supply and wastewater treatment sector is very great, depending on geography, economics, administrative capacity, and demography. Many of the challenges are general, and some are more specific to particular cities. Accordingly, this chapter includes capsule descriptions of water supply and wastewater treatment in four cities that illustrate a variety of situations in which adaptation to climate change will be needed.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.