The climate crisis, land use change and over consumption are altering the water cycle beyond a safe planetary boundary. The so-called conventional water, i.e. snowfall, rainfall, river runoff and easily accessible groundwater, is often insufficient to meet growing demands for water and food. Sustainably increasing water availability, allocating water in an equitable way, and adapting to a changing climate are challenges that need to be urgently addressed. A promising option is to use Non-Conventional Waters (NCW), which include ancestral and modern techniques to generate, harvest, store, treat, distribute and use water. The effectiveness of such solutions has already been proven in many parts of the world, but their potential is under-recognized, limiting their widespread adoption, mainly due to socio-economic and governance barriers. This session welcomes studies on non-conventional water resources spanning technical, socio-economic and political disciplines.
More specifically, we accept contributions including, but not limited to:
innovative methods to design, monitor and assess NCW;
social, economic, environmental and cultural sustainability of NCW water use;
good practice examples for NCW solutions implementation;
global and local drivers and barriers to NCW implementation
technical innovations in harvesting, storing, treating, and using NCW, and innovation valorization and transfer;
Stakeholder engagement and multi-actor platforms for NCW planning and implementation
Co-organized by the IAHS Working Group on “Non-Conventional Water Use for Integrated Water Resources Management” of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences: https://iahs.info/Initiatives/Scientific-Decades/helping-working-groups/non-conventional-water-ncw-use-for-integrated-water-resources-management/