Sudan’s internal hesitance over the GERD: policy, polarization, and national strategy

Facing Global Environmental Change

This chapter provides a brief overview background of the Nile River Basin and water security, scope of the chapter, geographical snapshot of the Blue Nile River, the Nile River Basin, puzzles and theoretical understandings, Ethiopian hegemony, and hydro-hegemony (Egypt and Sudan).

Numerous studies have examined the effects of climate change on many aspects of both human health and violence. Fewer studies have investigated the links between climate change and intimate partner violence (IPV). We expand on this literature by examining the association between climate variability and IPV, including physical, sexual, and psychological forms of violence. We examine both direct associations and potential mediation via water insecurity, in a sample of women from 15 sub-Saharan African countries. Our results suggest there is a direct effect of climate variability on IPV but also that this effect is mediated through water insecurity. These results contribute to the literature by highlighting pathways through which climate change may affect IPV, including water insecurity, and changes in soil moisture and precipitation. Our findings are important for policy makers and international development organizations as they indicate specific areas where improvements to water insecurity can help reduce the incidence of IPV globally.

Different countries face significant challenges in managing water-related natural hazards, such as floods and shortages, while ensuring adequate water quality and quantity to satisfy human needs and preserve ecosystems. Climate change projections exacerbate this situation by intensifying the hydrological cycle, resulting in substantial changes in precipitation patterns, evapotranspiration, and groundwater storage. This study reviews water security challenges across 43 countries, drawing on 128 articles obtained from databases including EBSCOHOST, Scopus and ResearchGate, as well as specific journals. Key search terms included “water security”, “water security and climate change”, “water scarcity”, “water risk index”, “water balance”, “water assessment”, and “land use and land cover change”. The analysis reveals the main water security issues present in 43 countries (flash floods, drought and water quality), and the response measures identified these challenges to water security. All the countries studied face one or more critical water-related effects. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Mexico were identified as the most severely affected, dealing with a combination of water scarcity, flooding, and water pollution. The most suggested strategies for improving water security include sustainable urban planning, improving consumption efficiency, strategic land-use planning, applying technologies to predict availability of water resources and planning according to variations in resource availability over time. In addition, other general actions include enhancing water storage infrastructure, improving consumption efficiency and adopting sustainable urban planning.

<p>In the semi-arid region of Ceará, northeast Brazil, differential experiences of household water insecurity emerge through intertwined sociopolitical, hydrological, and technological processes. Household water security is broadly defined as access water of sufficient quality and quantity to live a good life. This paper presents ongoing research that integrates hydrological and meteorological data with qualitative social science methods to examine the relationship among local hydrological characteristics, water management strategies, and the emergence of local experiences of water (in)security in rural communities in the Cearense semi-arid region.</p><p>The Cearense semi-arid region faces significant challenges related to socioeconomic inequality and reliable water access. It is characterized by highly politicized water management, irregular inter and intra-annual rainfall rates, crystalline soils, and high evapotranspiration rates. Poor, rural households rely primarily on rain-fed subsistence farming and livestock raising. Local access to land, water, and physical infrastructure depends on decisions and policies that span the microlevel (i.e., individual and household levels) and macrolevel (e.g., community, municipal, state, and federal levels).</p><p>To elucidate the emergence of local experiences of water (in)security in the region, semi-structured interviews were conducted with regional water professionals and members of rural communities with different water management operations (i.e., community-based, water company-based, or government-based). Participant observation (e.g., collecting drinking water from the household cistern) and observation of local and regional water management meetings were also carried out. These methods were complemented by analysis of climate patterns and community-level hydrological characteristics, including the impacts of the most recent extensive drought (from 2012 to the present in many areas). Households use a variety of strategies to obtain drinking water and water for other household activities (e.g., washing clothes, watering plants, or supplying animals with water), which depend on access to household technologies (e.g., cisterns and in-house piped water) and water management of water sources (e.g., reservoirs, deep-wells, or rivers). The research highlights the heterogeneity of experiences of water access and management by rural communities, which is influenced by socio-hydrological relations involving differential access to water technologies, water management and public policies, and hydrological conditions across temporal, geographic, and social scales.</p>

Nuclear weapons have played an important role in China's national strategy. China’s nuclear doctrine has a very strong continuity. Nevertheless, China has made readjustments in its nuclear doctrine according to the changes of its internal and external situation and its general strategic threat perception. China’s nuclear doctrine has experienced a process of evolution from anti-nuclear blackmail to minimum deterrence. There are five major parts in China's nuclear doctrine: policy of declaration, nuclear development, nuclear deployment, nuclear employment, and nuclear disarmament. Because China is faced with a different situation from other nuclear powers and has its own strategic culture, China has a nuclear doctrine with its own characteristics. China’s nuclear doctrine has been affiliated with and has served the national development strategy, national security strategy, national defense policy and military strategy of China.

The concept of water security has progressed from a narrow emphasis on water supply infrastructure, primarily viewed through an engineering lens, to a comprehensive perspective encompassing technological, economic, environmental, and governance dimensions. The evolution of the water security concept, as evidenced in the relevant literature briefly reviewed in this paper, signifies a significant shift. This shift is toward a more comprehensive consideration of diverse values, stakeholders, and viewpoints by representing in an equitable manner as possible human-centric and ecosystem-based priorities. It also underscores the pressing need for transdisciplinary and more integrated approaches, as the challenges in representing the water security notion more effectively continue to mount. In response to these pressing challenges, the Global Climate Hub (GCH) initiative, operating under the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, employs interdisciplinary approaches comprising optimal dynamic combinations of technologies, economic analysis, and policies to devise national and regional water security strategies through inclusion approaches with relevant actors and stakeholders.

In the Arab Region, water and energy are recognized as indispensable inputs to modern economies and are driven by the three imperatives of security of supply, sustainability, and economic efficiency. In most Arab Countries, despite the links and the urgency for security of supply in both sectors, in existing policy frameworks, energy and water policies are developed largely in isolation from one another—a degree of policy fragmentation that is seeing erroneous development in both sectors. For the Arab Region, the absence of a comprehensive understanding of the links between energy, water, and food security is quite evident. Integrated policy and management strategies and solutions need to be better identified, as well as understanding where barriers exist to achieve that integration. Understanding and managing the energy-water-food security nexus means different things to different people. Nevertheless, as a challenge deeply embedded in our quest for sustainable development, a better understanding of the links between energy, water, and food security is essential in any attempt to formulate policies (Hoff 2011). This requires urgent attention to building relationships and linkages between policy making institutions of the three sectors. As far as water, energy, and food nexus security in the region is concerned, the critical new institutional challenge should be directed at developing policies, rules, and organization and management skills to enhance the ability to evaluate and address the crucial questions related to policy choices and modes of implementation among development options. This will result in having informed decisions that integrate the energy, water, and food production sectors based on the understanding of environmental potentials and limits, and on needs of the people in the country concerned. Capacity building is, and will continue to be an integral part and a fundamental supporting tool for water, energy, and food security nexus. To successfully meet the nexus challenge, effective capacity building is needed to find sustainable solutions to the increasing problems related to water scarcity, energy shortages, and the food production gap. The road map towards effective capacity building requires the active participation of a wide range of stakeholders and individuals with vastly different perceptions of the issues at stake. It is equally important for capacity building to enlarge its scope and go beyond education and training to encompass the wider issues of institutions and both formal and informal organizations. Those issues, in addition to others required to establish effective and successful capacity building development strategies, are the focus of this chapter.

Application of ecosystem service flows model in water security assessment: A case study in Weihe River Basin, China

Water security is a widely concerned issue in the world nowadays. A new method, water poverty index (WPI), was applied to evaluate the regional water security. Twelve state farms in Heilongjiang Province, Northeastern China were selected to evaluate water security status based on the data of 2006 using WPI and mean deviation grading method. The method of WPI includes five key indices: resources(R), access (A), capacity(C), utilization (U) and environment (E). Each key index further consists of several sub-indices. According to the results of WPI, the grade of each farm was calculated by using the method of mean deviation grading. Thus, the radar images can be protracted of each farm. From the radar images, the conclusions can be drawn that the WPI values of Farm 853 and Hongqiling are under very safe status, while that of Farm Raohe is under safe status, those of Farms Youyi, 597, 852, 291 and Jiangchuan are under moderate safe status, that of Farm Beixing is under low safe status and those of Farm Shuangyashan, Shuguang and Baoshan are under unsafe status. The results from this study can provide basic information for decision making on rational utilization of water resources and regulations for regional water safety guarantee system. Keywords: mean deviation grading method, water poverty index, water security evaluation, weighted average method DOI: 10.3965/j.issn.1934-6344.2008.02.008-014 Citation: Fu Qiang, Gary Kachanoski, Liu Dong, Wang Zilong. Evaluation of regional water security using water poverty index. Int J Agric & Biol Eng. 2008; 1(2): 8

Water security is increasingly threatened by rapid climate change, population growth, and inadequate water management. While machine learning (ML) offers promising solutions for water resource allocation, flood forecasting, and water quality monitoring, its long-term effectiveness is hindered by reproducibility challenges. This chapter emphasizes the urgent need to improve ML reproducibility in the water sector by addressing issues such as poor data documentation, lack of shared algorithms, inconsistent hyperparameter tuning, and absence of standardized evaluation frameworks. These issues are especially critical in complex, region-specific water systems where small variations can lead to major predictive discrepancies. Enhancing reproducibility requires transparent data practices, open-access model sharing, standardized performance metrics, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The integration of explainable AI (XAI) and the development of reproducibility as a core evaluation criterion are crucial. Strengthening ML reproducibility will ensure reliable, sustainable deployment of predictive tools to support long-term water security under escalating environmental and societal pressures.

Additive Manufacturing in Finland: Recommendations for a Renewed Innovation Policy

Africas largest hydropower facility is currently under construction on the main stem of the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. Construction of the estimated $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) began in 2011 and is slated to be fully operational in late 2017. The GERD is poised to facilitate regional development with a 63 billion cubic meter reservoir and 6,000 MW of power generating capacity. Of keen interest to the water managers within the Nile River Basin is the transient filling stage of the massive reservoir. To date, however no reservoir filling rate policy has been established. This policy will have clear implications on the GERDs ability to generate hydropower in the near-term and coincidentally impact people and livelihoods in the downstream nations of Sudan and Egypt through reduced streamflow availability. Implications of climate variability and emerging climate change within Ethiopia cast further uncertainty on potential filling policies and system operations. To address this challenge, numerous filling policies are evaluated through a climate-sensitivity approach to estimate impacts on reservoir filling time, hydropower production, and downstream flows. This provides viable and timely points of comparison for regional water managers and politicians negotiating system operations in the midst of ongoing project construction.

Rainwater harvesting (RWH), which was previously undertaken more out of necessity than any commitment to autonomy, is now being heralded as a sustainable alternative for domestic water supply and flood control, and in disaster relief. In Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean region, RWH is included in water security and sustainability strategies. Despite the plethora of domestic RWH projects, estimates of water consumption in RWH-dependent households are unavailable, and project designers are left to assume values that are based on conventional water-supply systems. In the present study the per capita consumption (PCC) of domestic water in three RWH-dependent communities was quantified. For this purpose, households’ perceived and actual water consumption was investigated in three rural communities in Trinidad. It was found that perceived and actual consumption are 105–164 l per person per day (lpd) and 95–240 lpd, respectively. Householders’ perception of how much water is consumed was generally significantly different from the measured amount. While the sample of measured PCC was small, the results provide more realistic values for the design of RWH systems, which are being promoted in the region.

Su, canlılar için vazgeçilmez bir kaynaktır ve doğada sınırlı miktarda bulunmaktadır. Son yıllardaki hızlı nüfus artışına paralel olarak gelişen sanayi ve tarımsal faaliyetlerle birlikte su kaynaklarının aşırı kullanımı da artmıştır. Buna ek olarak, küresel iklim değişikliğinin, kuraklığın artmasına ve yüzey suları ile yeraltısularının beslenmesinde azalmaya yol açtığı gözlemlenmektedir. Tatlı suyun sınırlı olması, gerektiğinde yeterli miktarda tahsis edilememesi ya da taşkın ve sel gibi durumlarda fazla suyla karşılaşılması, su kaynaklarının doğru yönetiminin ne kadar önemli olduğunu açıkça ortaya koymaktadır. Bir ülkedeki su güvenliği, su kaynaklarının verimli kullanımı ve sürdürülebilirliğiyle doğrudan ilişkilidir. Bu araştırmada, su kaynakları yönetiminde önemli olan üç inceleme başlığı belirlenmiştir: yağış-akış ilişkisi analizleri, taşkın analizleri ve hidrojeolojik analizler. Araştırmanın amacı, bu analizlerde yaygın olarak kullanılan yöntemlerin belirlenmesi, temel coğrafi verilerin beklenen zamansal çözünürlüklerinin tespit edilmesi, ayrıca bu verilerin Türkiye Ulusal Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemi (TUCBS) veri standartlarına uygunluğunun araştırılmasıdır. Çalışma sonucunda, TUCBS veri standartlarının su kaynakları yönetiminde kullanılan birçok temel veri standardını karşıladığı, ancak zamansal çözünürlük bilgisinin standartlar içerisinde yer almadığı tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışma, su kaynakları yönetiminde veri standartlarının geliştirilmesi ve yaygınlaştırılması için önemli bir adım atmayı hedefleyerek, sürdürülebilir su kaynakları yönetimi alanında önemli bir katkı sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır.
 Bir ülkedeki su güvenliği, su kaynaklarının verimli kullanımı ve sürdürülebilirliğiyle doğrudan ilişkilidir. Bu araştırmada, su kaynakları yönetiminde önemli olan üç inceleme başlığı belirlenmiştir: yağış-akış ilişkisi analizleri, taşkın analizleri ve hidrojeolojik analizler. Araştırmanın amacı, bu analizlerde yaygın olarak kullanılan yöntemlerin belirlenmesi, temel coğrafi verilerin beklenen zamansal çözünürlüklerinin tespit edilmesi, ayrıca bu verilerin Türkiye Ulusal Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemi (TUCBS) veri standartlarına uygunluğunun araştırılmasıdır. 
 
 Çalışma sonucunda, TUCBS veri standartlarının su kaynakları yönetiminde kullanılan birçok temel veri standardını karşıladığı, ancak zamansal çözünürlük bilgisinin standartlar içerisinde yer almadığı tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışma, su kaynakları yönetiminde veri standartlarının geliştirilmesi ve yaygınlaştırılması için önemli bir adım atmayı hedefleyerek, sürdürülebilir su kaynakları yönetimi alanında önemli bir katkı sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır.