Guiding urban water management towards 1.5 ℃

Parkinson, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4753-5198 (2021). Guiding urban water management towards 1.5 ℃. npj Clean Water 4 e34. 10.1038/s41545-021-00126-1.

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Abstract

Reliable access to clean and affordable freshwater is prerequisite for human well-being, but its provision in cities generates environmental externalities including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As policy-makers target opportunities to mitigate GHGs in line with the Paris Agreement, it remains vague how urban water management can contribute to the goal of limiting climate warming to 1.5 ℃. This perspective guides policy-makers in the selection of innovative technologies and strategies for leveraging urban water management as a climate change mitigation solution. Recent literature, data and scenarios are reviewed to shine-a-light on the GHG mitigation potential and the key areas requiring future research. Increasing urban water demands in emerging economies and over-consumption in developed regions pose mitigation challenges due to energy and material requirements that can be partly offset through end-use water conservation and expansion of decentralized, nature-based solutions. Policies that integrate urban water and energy flows, or reconfigure urban water allocation at the river basin-level remain untapped mitigation solutions with large gaps in our understanding of potentials.

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