Earthsky Interviews
Kathy Jacobs warns climate extremes will change water access
09-28-2009 - Water
Kathy Jacobs, water researcher at the University of Arizona, said that climate change will have a major impact on water systems in the U.S. and around the world.
Kathy Jacobs: We are expecting to see significantly more extremes, more floods and more droughts.
Jacobs is a member of America’s Climate Choices, a National Academy of Sciences panel on the effects of climate change. She told EarthSky that we’ll all have to adapt to those climate extremes by using water more sustainably. But, she added, sustainable water use will mean different things, in different places.
Kathy Jacobs: There are many cities in developing countries where the water is only turned on for several hours a day, or several hours a week, and it’s held in tanks. And in those cases, people’s water use is actually very low.
She added that, in the U.S., where water isn’t viewed as a luxury, getting people to curb their use of the resource will require more effort.
Kathy Jacobs: Part of the solution involves thinking over a longer time frame than the next two to ten years, thinking about the next generations. This is a paradigm shift for Americans – to reframe their relationship with the environment – and that’s not an easy thing to ask.
Kathy Jacobs explained what she sees as part of the difficulty in dealing with sustainability issues across all resources – not just water.
Kathy Jacobs: Trying to understand what the basic right to access water should be, and whether we can protect that right at the same that we provide for business and industry in a fair way.
She said that sustainable use of water is not just about the availability of water,
Kathy Jacobs: Part of this has to do with a quality of life and a lifestyle issue. We have a lot of wealth and we have a lot of choices, and a lot of parts of the world don’t have those choices.
Jacobs said poor countries will likely expect to increase their water use, as they get richer. She also said that, when it comes to dealing with climate change, there are a lot of options available.
Kathy Jacobs: They range from behavioral options such as conservation which always comes first and is clearly the most efficient and effective to the use of technology.
She also thinks we must act now on climate change, rather than wait:
Kathy Jacobs: Many people have really focused on the uncertainties associated with climate change and concluded that it’s too soon to act. We will never have perfect knowledge, we will never have the ability to project specific conditions in specific places tens or hundreds of years in the future.
Written by Beth Lebwohl
4 Responses to “Kathy Jacobs warns climate extremes will change water access”
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Kathy Jacobs
Kathy Jacobs has more than twenty years of experience as a water manager for the state of Arizona. She is also executive director of the Arizona Water Institute, and deputy director of the NSF Sustainability of Arid Region Hydrology and Riparian Areas. Jacobs testified before the U.S. Senate in March of 2009 on the nation’s ... >>
I think that last statement deserves more emphasis. Those thinkers among us who are shy of action need to remember that inaction itself has its consequences.
There is a few things that can happen. We don\’t act and we run out of water and every country experiances droughts or we act and we don\’t run out of water (We lose Money for no reason). We act and everything is fine and we live happily or we don\’t acted and nothing happens and live happily.
This piece reminds me of a situation we studied in a hydrogeology class. It seems, when the Colorado river was being divied up in the early 1900\’s there was about (don\’t quote me on the umber, been a long time) 21 million acre feed of water to sell and/or give away. Our government did so. It turned out that was a period of historic high flow. reality sat in and it was determined that the erstwhile regulators have goven away more water than actually existed. There is no extreme climate happening now. Climate is always, and always has been variable. We do not have enough years of data to determine a trend and there is no \”normal\”. Whatever is determined now will be wrong in a few years. Hubris is dangerous. Relax and roll with the punches and realize that governemnt cannot act in anone\’s best interests. Long or short term.
Ben, I think ‘roll with the punches’ is exactly what Kathy Jacobs is advocating here … she just wants to roll with it in an intelligent way.
In Texas, where you and I both live, there are also water issues. This summer in Austin we had water rationing. On the outskirts of town, people were told not to water their yards at all. Recently it has been raining, but the creeks aren’t flowing yet … I’d say we’re not out of the woods yet with respect to the central Texas drought. I think of cities in India and other parts of the world, where water only runs in the pipes for a few hours each day, or arrives via truck. That could happen here, you know. Water is a finite resource, and we have to understand its use, and use it wisely.
Human activity has created changes in the flow of rivers across the world. Growing population has used more water. Even if you don’t believe in climate change, you surely believe that human population is growing. Scientists are just trying to study the situation – to make sure we all have enough water to drink and use for agriculture.