Measures to Reflect the Climate Change Uncertainties in Water Resources Plans in South Korea

The climate change impact assessment of the water resources in Korea has been carried out in many research projects and researchers for a long time, but there are no cases in which climate change impacts are reflected in water resources plan due to a variety of reasons. According to Article 27 of the Framework Act on Water Management in Korea, it is required to formulate a Master Plan for National Water Management including measures to respond to the vulnerabilities of water management to climate change, but there is a limit to reflecting climate change effects. In addition, the Board of Audit and Inspection in Korea pointed it out and demanded improvement measures. Various barriers that make it difficult to reflect climate change in water resources plan are climate change uncertainties, insufficient evidence, and limited cost-benefit analysis and so on. For these reasons, this study aims to derive technical and institutional limitations for establishing a water resources plan in consideration of climate change, and to establish a system that can formulate plans to reflect the climate change uncertainties. This study proposes short- and long-term improved measures to establish a water use plan in consideration of climate change such as 1) production and standardization of climate change scenario with multi-model ensemble for water sector applications, 2) preparation of a framework for analyzing water supply and demand considering climate change, 3) publication of national report for climate change impact and risk assessment on water resources, and 4) development of standard guidelines for water resources planning considering climate change. The details of these parts will be shown at the presentation.

[Acknowledgements]

This study was supported by grants through the project (2022003570007) of developing environmental technologies responding to a new climate regime funded by the Ministry of Environment and the project (WO2023-11) funded by Korea Environement Institute.