Reducing vulnerability to water-related disasters
SAARC can play an important role
Occurrence of flood is likely to increase under climate change impact.
IN the recently concluded SAARC (the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Summit in Thimphu, the SAARC leaders called for focus to be laid upon water management and conservation and development of cooperative projects at regional level in terms of exchange of best practices and knowledge, capacity building and transfer of eco-friendly technologies. Also the Convention on Cooperation on Environment aims at promoting regional cooperation in preserving the environment and mitigating the impacts of the climate change (The Daily Star, April 30). This is a promising start and I am focusing my attention on how “SAARC can play an important role in reducing vulnerability to water-related disasters”. The SAARC can undoubtedly help reduce vulnerability to water-related disasters -- particularly those arising from basin-wide heavy rainfall, excessive run-off, and flooding. Several scientific findings have quantified that the stream flows of the three mighty rivers in Bangladesh are highly correlated to the rainfall in the upper catchments in India with typically a lag of about one to three months. The stream-flows in Bangladesh could be fairly estimated for one to three months in advance -- especially for the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers -- by employing simple correlation, if rainfall data from further upper catchments in India are available on a real time and continuous basis. Therefore, hydro-meteorological information exchange between the courtiers along the Indo-Gangetic basins is essential for developing a knowledge base for evaluating the potential implications of water resources management in the greater Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basins in South Asia. At present, unfortunately, with reference to the sharing of information among the riparian countries, the water experts in one country had surprisingly little access to information from the other co-basin countries. Thus, some operational mechanism is needed for wider sharing of meteorological and hydrological information between the countries concerned. The SAARC can play a proactive role to foster a closer regional cooperation by forming an instrumental regional climate outlook forum to enhance the capability of exchanging water-related information in the three river basin areas. One successful example of similar regional cooperation can be quoted as the “Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum” (SARCOF). This is an international initiative with stronger orientation to users. Some insights of SARCOF are presented in the following section: Consensus Forecast: An Example of the Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF)The SARCOF process first operated prior to the 1997/98 wet seasons in southern Africa. The process consists of an annual programme of three meetings, with the first meeting held in September prior to the onset of the wet season. The principal participants to the Forum are delegations from the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region, which have the ultimate responsibility to disseminate the forecast product to their user communities. Within a workshop format, technical and discussion sessions are held on global and regional climate dynamics, forecast methodologies and seasonal forecast presentations. Based on the predictions provided by each of the forecast groups for different homogeneous zones of the region, a consensus forecast is achieved through discussions among the participating climate communities. For each zone rainfall forecasts for the coming season are expressed as probabilities of occurrence of rainfall in three tercile classes, average, below average, and above average rainfall. This probabilistic product is then distributed to users. In December, a mid-season correction is held. Again, through a process of consensus an assessment of the early season forecast is made. This assists in the update of Forum forecasts for the remaining main wet season period. Finally a post-season meeting is held in April or May in which extensive validation of the Forum product is conducted and the process is debated within the context of user feedback. This allows the aims and methods of the process to be related directly to the requirements of a range of users. An important component of the process is the capacity building exercises in which training on climate science and seasonal forecasting methodologies is provided by international and national experts through technical sessions at the Forum meetings. Although initially experimental, the SARCOF process is continuing each year and has been adopted worldwide as a model for seasonal forecasting. Regional Climate Outlook Fora are currently operating for other regions including south and central America, small island countries in Pacific (Pacific Regional Integrated Science and Assessment), and other parts of Africa and South-east Asia. It is envisioned that the model structure of SARCOF is an applicable tool to bring the forecasters and users together in the greater GBM basin areas. Moreover, SARCOF model handles climate information (wet/dry), and flood is essentially a component of total climate system in the GBM basin systems (e.g., here in Bangladesh the focus is on the combined effect of rainfall and run-off). Additionally, the socio-economic setting in the SAARC countries is presumably agrarian; this also makes South Asia a potential candidate region that can benefit from the experience of SARCOF model.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments