Climate change impacts, such as water quality degradation, water shortage and scarcity can severely impact the ability of water utilities to supply their customers. Water utilities responsible for drinking-water safety need to understand how climate change is affecting water resources and the ways in which this could affect drinking-water supply systems to inform adjustments to policies, programmes and infrastructure. IWA in partnership with the WHO, hosted the second webinar of the Climate Smart Utilities Webinar Series on November 28, 2018. The webinar shared opportunities for water utilities to move towards climate resilience through water safety plans, a comprehensive risk assessment and management approach addressing each step in the water supply chain from catchment to tap.
The webinar recording, presentation slides and responses to the Q&A session can be accessed on IWA Connect (note: log in required to access the slides and Q&A responses). The recording of the first webinar in this series, “Interpreting climate information for water utilities” can be accessed here.
The final webinar of the series “From vision to action: how water utilities are building climate resilience”, will share practical cases of water utilities responding to climate change impacts to ensure safe and secure water supply. Resilience is more than implementing the right technology or practice to assess and address risks of extreme events. It is an approach that should be part of a coherent and holistic strategy to ensure sustainable water resources and safe and secure water supply. These utility case studies demonstrate a variety of approaches including risk management mechanisms (such as Water Safety Plans), which can direct utilities to strategies such as source protection, diversification of water supplies and use of early warning systems
The webinar will address the following learning objectives:
• Learn about best practices utilities are applying to build resilience to climate change hazards and risks.
• Apply a process to identify resilience strategies,
• Draw from the experiences presented to assist the development of plans to respond to their climate hazards and risks.
The webinar will take place on January 22, 2019. Register here!