<h3>Introduction</h3>
Climate resilience includes a region&rsquo;s ability to prepare for, endure, and recover from climate-related events (floods, droughts, etc.) that exceed historical magnitudes. Not all regions have the same levels of climate resilience. This essay focuses on how nations and multilateral organizations can help deploy water technology to improve climate resilience while achieving climate justice.&nbsp; Part 1 presents how the concepts of resilience, justice, and water technology are defined and interact with each other in a conceptual framework.&nbsp; Part 2 provides an example of how applying the conceptual framework could influence decision-making on how to prepare for and respond to climate change-related events.&nbsp; The example draws on the experience of the Salton Sea, California&rsquo;s largest lake, which is rapidly drying and increasing southern California&rsquo;s public health and environmental risks and problems.&nbsp; Part 3 draws conclusions about how to connect climate change, resilience, justice and water technology in preparation for future climate events.
<h3>Part 1 &ndash; Water Technology and Climate Change</h3>
Water technologies include the equipment, software, and human expertise that enable us to store, transport, treat, protect ourselves from, and beneficially use water.&nbsp; There is so much variation to the earth&rsquo;s surface, to plant and animal life, to meteorology, and to human experience that all regions have their own unique water needs. That makes their technological needs unique as well, although the categories of water treatment, storage, transportation, and quality testing are still valid.&nbsp; Each category calls for technological innovation to improve its efficiency and to deal with emerging water problems.
With climate change, floods are becoming larger than historical flood control systems can handle.&nbsp; Droughts are lasting longer than the amount of water saved in reservoirs.&nbsp; Bacteria and other threats to human and animal health are thriving where once they didn&rsquo;t exist. Hotter temperatures require more water for cities and to enable crops to grow.&nbsp; &nbsp;
Of course, the earth and human society are always changing in some way.&nbsp; But climate change is pushing us toward a warmer atmosphere with more extreme events (storms, droughts, heatwaves) than our water infrastructure is prepared for. This is a world-wide problem that is felt more severely where naturally-occurring high-quality water is already scarce.&nbsp; The combination of climate change and economic growth calls on us to have a reliable water supply which includes not just sufficient amounts of water, but sufficient water quality as well.&nbsp; Water treatment technologies are becoming more important as society turns to lower quality source water, such as saline groundwater, seawater, and urban and agricultural reclaimed water to make up for deficits.
Climate change therefore adds on to existing water challenges and calls for innovative yet reliable solutions. Resilience describes the ability of a social, ecological, or socio-ecological system and its components to anticipate, reduce, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event or trend in a timely and efficient manner. Climate resilience focuses on events arising from climate change. (Denton et al., 2014.&nbsp; For a general discussion of resilience see Gunderson, 2000)&nbsp; We need new technological approaches but we also can&rsquo;t jump ahead with untested technologies: the stakes are too high.
&nbsp;In light of climate change, an obvious question is which technologies should be adopted in which situations?&nbsp; The answer depends in part on who is deciding how the decision is made.&nbsp; This is a core aspect of water justice: the process of decision-making. To be just, all parties, including disadvantaged groups, should have meaningful and equivalent access to decision making processes (meetings, reports) and to decision makers compared to powerful groups. They should be able to review materials, get their questions answered, and have a real opportunity to contribute their own opinions and analyses before decisions are made.&nbsp; A just decision has been made when the decision maker has taken input from all parties, especially the most vulnerable, and truly considered it before making the decision.&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;A benefit of an inclusive process is that the decision maker has access to a wide range of information that was known to the people affected by the decision but may not have been known or prioritized by the expert advisors.
<h3>&nbsp;Part 2&ndash; Climate Change, Policy Justice, and the Restoration of California&rsquo;s Salton Sea</h3>
Located in the desert near the Mexican border, the Salton Sea is California&rsquo;s largest lake with 200,000 acres (194,000 feddans) surface area (USGS, 2022).&nbsp; It loses nearly two meters of water elevation per year to evaporation but has no other outflows (Cohen, 2013).&nbsp; Inflows come from a large agricultural region to the south supplemented by two small rivers that primarily carry industrial and agricultural wastewater.&nbsp; Due to greater water-use efficiency in the agricultural region, the Sea is losing inflows and becoming even saltier.&nbsp; It is currently twice the saltiness of the ocean and its declining surface elevation is exposing lake bed (called playa) and further separating lakeside towns from the Sea itself.&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;Roughly 370,000 people live in the region (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020), mostly to the north where one encounters tourism connected to golfing and desert spas.&nbsp; Most of the area&rsquo;s residents are Hispanic or Latino and many speak only Spanish. Few people live near the Sea, and as it shrinks, their homes get even further away.&nbsp; Some remember a time when visiting the Salton Sea was a popular tourist activity due to its warm weather, fishing, and boating.
&nbsp;Until recently the Salton Sea has been an important stop for migratory birds traveling north-south along the Pacific flyway.&nbsp; But with the Sea nearly unable to support fish, brine shrimp, or other food, the numbers are in decline.
&nbsp;Overall, the sea presents a risk to its environmental role supporting local and migratory birds and native fish species, carries a threat to public health if the exposed playa harms air quality due to dust storms, might be partially responsible for increased rates of childhood asthma in the region (Maheshwari et al., 2021) and misses economic opportunities such as tourism.&nbsp; A possible economic path forward has to do with the large concentrations of the element lithium in the soils under the Salton Sea. In fact, some of the largest lithium deposits in North America can be found there, which could lead to a local lithium mining and battery production economy in the coming years (see <a href="https://cutt.ly/FCcYou6">https://cutt.ly/FCcYou6</a>).&nbsp;
&nbsp;Inefficient use of irrigation water and its runoff has allowed the Salton Sea to maintain its water level.&nbsp; Climate change, among other reasons, is pushing local farmers to be more efficient so the water can be shared with cities elsewhere in California.&nbsp; Another climate change link is the growing overall threat to the Pacific flyway, making the stopover on the Salton Sea all the more important for the migratory birds.&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;Here is an unusual link between technology and climate change in the region: the need to abandon fossil fuels and switch to a renewable energy/battery storage future has increased the value of the lithium deposits under the Salton Sea and offers the region an economic future distinct from agriculture and tourism. But that still leaves the important technology question of whether and how to improve the shrinking, evaporating Sea.&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;Turning to the issue of justice, the State of California has committed to help the region.&nbsp; Some local residents have called for major infrastructure projects that would import seawater northward from Mexico&rsquo;s Sea of Cortez, or eastward from California&rsquo;s Pacific coast. The additional water would refill the Sea to its historic high levels.&nbsp; These multi-billion-dollar ideas have been submitted to an Independent Review Panel.&nbsp; The Panel is managed by the University of California, Santa Cruz and I serve as the project&rsquo;s Principal Investigator. The review process began in June 2021 and will conclude in September 2022 (for details see <a href="https://cutt.ly/aCcYTpL">https://cutt.ly/aCcYTpL</a>).&nbsp;
&nbsp;As the Panel reviews concepts for importing water to the Salton Sea, it has encountered the following justice-related issues.&nbsp; Many people and groups in the region do not trust the state government to be a neutral decision maker about whether to invest the large sums of money (billions of US dollars) necessary to import water. The solution was to appoint a neutral, independent panel.&nbsp; The panel includes experts in engineering, economics, law, ecology, and social issues, and have no historical or current connection to the region.&nbsp; The lack of local connection improves neutrality, but at the cost of a lack of deep understanding of what the local people want for their region. What kind of economy?&nbsp; How much population? And what role for the Salton Sea?
&nbsp;Another challenge has been that the loudest public voices are wealthier English-speakers who have submitted ideas for projects to import water to the region, while the majority of the region&rsquo;s population are lower-income Spanish speakers.&nbsp; The Panel is interested in hearing from everyone, but the louder voices often take nearly all the discussion time at public meetings.&nbsp; It is therefore hard to hear the opinions of the majority of the region.&nbsp; Do they have different priorities?
&nbsp;The Panel has created opportunities for all residents of the Salton Sea region to share their opinions.&nbsp; It holds public meetings at different times, advertises the meetings in Spanish, and emphasizes the Spanish language at the bilingual public meetings. These have been sincere efforts guided by a support team member who lives in the region. They have been partially successful.&nbsp; On the positive side, they have alerted the region to the activities and decisions of the Panel.&nbsp; However, they have not enabled the Panel to hear the interests and perspectives of the disadvantaged communities as much as would be desirable.&nbsp; The reason is that since meetings are open to everyone, a small number of highly engaged and loud English-speaking participants dominate the Q-and-A periods. Culturally, as well as in terms of their relative job security and their concern about interacting with public authority figures, disadvantaged community members are less likely to speak up in the public meetings, especially when others are aggressively taking the time themselves.&nbsp; As a response to this dynamic, the project&rsquo;s Principal Investigator is planning to attend a public meeting organized by the disadvantaged community.&nbsp; It will still be open to the public, but attendance might be more limited, giving the community a greater opportunity to have a dialogue.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3>&nbsp;Part 3 &ndash; Climate Resilience, Water Technology, and Justice: Arriving at a Well-Informed and Valid Technology Investment Decision.</h3>
The Salton Sea Panel is operating in a tense political environment where there is little trust between the government and the local people, but thus far a lot of trust in the Panel. The local people themselves have divisions, with the smaller numbers far better organized and financially able to participate.&nbsp; The Panel understands that their combination of neutrality, independence, and expertise gives them credibility.&nbsp; But it also keeps them separated from the community. Extra effort has been needed to understand what the community wants for itself.
&nbsp;Thus, we can connect climate resilience as a driver of regional water dynamics (in this case the Salton Sea losing water inflows so other parts of California can build their climate resilience); water technology choices to restore the Salton, including desalination; and justice concerns in creating a Panel that seeks to understand the wishes of the community and incorporate that into their decision-making processes.
&nbsp;A neutral, independent, outside expert, whether individual or panel, may be the right approach to arrive at a technology recommendation when the stakes are as high as water and climate change resilience and adaptation.
An outside expert makes sense if there is funding for the expert.&nbsp; In some cases, including this one, funding is needed to provide research and administrative support for the expert. The funding source should not impose opinions or preferences on the independent expert.&nbsp; The kind of issue and context that makes sense involves a complex problem involving natural systems, technology, economics, and multiple community groups with their own interests.&nbsp; If the local, usual authorities lack the scope of authority, or simply can&rsquo;t arrive at a solution that is accepted and implementable, an outside expert could be appointed.
The outside expert will need to establish ways of communicating so that all participants can become informed, are then heard, and have their input considered before a decision is made.&nbsp; Also, as with the Salton Sea Panel, the expert may only be making a recommendation to the government and not be the actual final decision maker.&nbsp; The remaining government decision process must also take justice into consideration in order to arrive at a fully informed and procedurally fair final result.
<hr>
Citations
<ul>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">Cohen, M.J., 2013. Water Brief 2, Past and Future of the Salton Sea, p.127-138, in (eds). Gleick, P.H. and Cohen, M.J. The World&rsquo;s Water 2008-2009: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources, Island Press, 5 March 2013, pp.432. ISBN: 1597269662, 9781597269667&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">Denton, F., T.J. Wilbanks, A.C. Abeysinghe, I. Burton, Q. Gao, M.C. Lemos, T. Masui, K.L. O&rsquo;Brien, and K. Warner, 2014: Climate-resilient pathways: adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1101-1131.</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">Gunderson, L.H. 2000. Ecological resilience&mdash;in theory and application. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 31: 425-49. &nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">Maheshwari, S., Castillo, D. D., &amp; Lo, D. D. (2021). Chapter 6: Health Disparities and Respiratory Illness in Salton Sea Communities. Crisis at the Salton Sea: The Vital Role of Science. University of California Riverside Salton Sea Task Force, EDGE Institute and Center for Science to Policy. <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5149222">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5149222</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Imperial County, California. Quick Facts, United Stated Census Bureau. Available online at: <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/imperialcountycalifornia">https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/imperialcountycalifornia</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-size: 10pt;">USGS (2022). Lake or reservoir water surface elevation above NGVD 1929, feet. USGS 10254005 Salton Sea Nr Westmorland CA, National Water Information System: Web Interface, Operated in cooperation with Imperial Irrigation District and USGS, USGS. Most recent instantaneous value published 12 Jan 2022 at 9:45 PST. Available online at: <a href="https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/uv?site_no=10254005">https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/uv?site_no=10254005</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
</ul>

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