Background/Objectives

The national security implications of changes in water, environment, and climate are well recognized by decisionmakers in the U.S. Federal Government. However, the links from water events to instability are complex and context-dependent, and conflict and instability are rare outcomes from droughts, floods, and increasing inter-annual variability. It is thus difficult to forecast water-driven instability and to identify intervention points which might alleviate water-driven instability. Yet water crises are becoming more common, making it imperative to understand and communicate the impacts of water and environmental change. The Global Water Security Center (GWSC) was commissioned to help translate water and environmental science for decisionmakers within the U.S. Department of Defense.

Approach/Activities

Incorporating water data into decision making requires both skillful quantitative interpretation of biophysical data and integration with qualitative contextual information. On the biophysical side, GWSC works to identify relevant data sets and to make them more accessible. Water and environmental data are frequently large and unwieldy, with dimensions of space, time, and multiple variables, requiring specialized software and computing power to extract relevant information. GWSC works with users to identify the most commonly required insights, making those immediately available, while offering access to internal analysts to provide bespoke analysis.

To move beyond water forecasting to identify when and where a water crisis might boil over into instability, GWSC has created a framework to interpret water data with qualitative contextual data. We organize insights from theoretical work in a wide range of disciplines, along with a range of case studies, in a operational framework, potentially illuminating 1) which water events are likely to affect instability, 2) what to monitor to anticipate when and where a water event could lead to instability, and 3) where interventions could stop a water event from leading to instability.

Results/Lessons Learned

We present a framework that simplifies and summarizes the complex pathways through which direct and indirect effects of water events lead to impacts like conflict and instability. This work shows that direct impacts on food, hydropower, and livelihood rarely cause instability. However, when these direct impacts lead to follow-on effects like migration or loss of trust in government, instability can arise.

GWSC communicates our findings in products designed to relay the most important information so it can be quickly consumed, understood, and applied. We present several products, including one connecting changing reservoir levels in on the Zambezi river to election unrest in Zimbabwe, focusing on principles for simplifying data presentation and messaging.