Water Resilience for Human Prosperity

Human-driven biosphere changes demand new consideration of water resources as part of global sustainability. This book focuses on building socio-ecological resilience and sustaining ecosystem services in the face of emerging water challenges. A state-of-the-art resource for academic researchers, water resource professionals, and graduate students studying water resource governance and management.

The world's human population now constitutes the largest driving force of changes to the biosphere. Emerging water challenges require new ideas for governance and management of water resources in the context of rapid global change. This book presents a new approach to water resources, addressing global sustainability and focusing on socio-ecological resilience to changes. Topics covered include the risks of unexpected change, human impacts and dependence on global water, the prospects for feeding the world's population by 2050, and a pathway for the future. The book's innovative and integrated approach links green and blue freshwater with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem functions and use. It also links changes arising from land-use alteration with the impacts of those changes on social-ecological systems and ecosystem services. This is an important, state-of-the-art resource for academic researchers and water resource professionals, and a key reference for graduate students studying water resource governance and management.

List of contributors; Preface; Introduction to the book; Acknowledgements; Part I. A New Perspective: 1. The role played by water in the biosphere; Part II. Living in a Human-Dominated World: 2. Human modification of the Earth system; 3. Balancing on a threshold of alternate development paths: regime shifts, traps and transformations; 4. Crucial functioning of and human dependence on the global water system; Part III. Food Production Globally: In Hotspot Regions and in the Landscape: 5. Food production: a mega water challenge; 6. Closing the yield gap in the savannah zone; 7. Water resources and functions for agro-ecological systems at the landscape scale; Part IV. Governance and Pathways: 8. Governance for navigating the novel freshwater dynamics of the Anthropocene; 9. Pathways to the future; Glossary; Index.

Johan Rockström is the Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) and a leading scientist on global water resources and sustainable development. He has more than 15 years' experience of research on agriculture, water resources and ecosystem services, and over 100 research publications with more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles and several books in the fields of global environmental change, resilience and sustainability, agricultural water management, global water resources and food production. He has served as advisor to several international organizations and governments. Professor Rockström currently serves on many international committees and boards, including leading the ICSU task team on the future vision for global change research.
Claudia Pahl-Wostl is Professor for Resources Management and Director of the Institute for Environmental Systems Research at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. Her major research interests are adaptive governance and management of water resources, social and societal learning and their role in transformation processes towards sustainability, global water governance and multi-level governance systems and conceptual and methodological frameworks to analyse social-ecological systems. She is the co-author of numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals, chapters in edited books, policy briefs and popular reports, and has also edited three books and twelve special issues in peer-reviewed journals.
Malin Falkenmark is currently with the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). She is a future-oriented scientist and a pioneer of interdisciplinary environmental and water research. Her deepest interests lie in the linkages between land/water/ecosystems, particularly as they relate to water scarcity, regional similarities and differences, and their policy implications. She has introduced three broadly used concepts: the water scarcity indicator, the concepts of green and blue water, and hydrosolidarity. Professor Falkenmark has held several high level posts on international boards and committees, and has received several international awards, including the Rachel Carson Prize and the Volvo Environmental Prize.
Carl Folke is based at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC). He is a systems thinker and a pioneer in interdisciplinary and integrative science for sustainability, having contributed to the development of new concepts in science, policy and practice such as resilience and social-ecological systems. Dr Folke's work has focused on the essential role of life-support ecosystems as a prerequisite for societal development in over 240 scientific publications and 12 books, including contributions on freshwater management, biodiversity and ecosystem services. He is actively engaged with international research programmes and scientific advisory roles to leading research institutes, organizations, and other actors in science, policy and practice.
Mats Lannerstad is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) and a Scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). His research is focused on freshwater in relation to the global food system, including freshwater requirements for food security on multiple scales. A key focus is the dietary change towards more animal source foods following rising affluence and urbanization, and the linkages between livestock production and the use of different water sources. Dr Lannerstad has authored 11 peer-reviewed publications, 3 books/book chapters and several research reports.
Jennie Barron is a Senior Research Associate at the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) and a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC). Her research is applying systems approach on farm and landscape production for livelihood improvements, food security and ecosystems services to advice on opportunities in development and investments. Dr Barron has authored or co-authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications, and developed various outreach communications of research for development and policy at local, national and international levels.
Elin Enfors is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC). Her main interest concerns pathways to transformation in agro-ecosystems, with a special focus on how ecosystem services generated in these systems can contribute to poverty alleviation. She has a background in systems ecology, and as part of her postdoctoral work has investigated whether increased agro-ecological productivity in the West Africa Sahel would help smallholders there escape persistent poverty. She has extensive experience of field research from Africa, and a keen interest in participatory research.
Line Gordon is an Associate Professor and Deputy Science Director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) and leads the Landscape research theme. Her research centres on interactions among freshwater resour