NEWS NOTES ON SUSTAINABLE WATER RESOURCES RNRF Articles on Climate Change https://www.rnrf.org/rrj/RRJV33N2.pdf ; This issue of the Renewable Natural Resources Journal has two papers that relate to climate change: “Adapting Infrastructure and Civil Engineering Practice to a ChangingClimate: Civil Engineering Sectors”American Society of Civil Engineers Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate “The Paris Agreement and Its Future”Todd Stern The first article defines potential impacts on engineering practices and civil engineering sectors. The needs, approaches and changes in practice presented in this article are applicable not only to civil engineering but also to many other engineering disciplines. A number of civil engineering sectors are covered in the article, but this text includes only a partial summary. The sectors are: • buildings and other structures (buildings of all types and structural aspects of other infrastructure) • transportation (highways, culverts, bridges, rail, airports, ports, navigation, pipelines) • water resources (dams, levees, irrigation, reservoir management, flood risk management, drought management) • urban water systems (stormwater, water supply and wastewater systems) • coastal management (erosion, seawalls, groins, dredging) • energy supply (power generation: hydropower, wind engineering, thermal plant cooling, fuel supply) • cold regions (freeze-thaw cycling, changes to permafrost environments, snow accumulation and distribution) In the water resources sector, the frequency of hydrologic events is called into question, and methods for coping are suggested. This uncertainty means that methods for incorporating change into the decision system will be important in the future. For urban water systems, the problem of predicting effects in small areas must be incorporated into infrastructure planning. The interaction between surface and ground water systems becomes more important. Coastal flooding and erosion can be affected by increases in water level increases. Deficiencies in analysis techniques for coastal flooding also will be reflected in institutional arrangements to cope with floods. In the energy supply sector, damage from flooding and storms caused by sea-level rise can cause impacts on infrastructure. Climate change could cause impacts on wildfire occurrence, as well as problems in extraction of hydrocarbon resources, their transportation and storage. Increased temperature would cause demand for greater energy for space cooling in human habitations. Energy demand also means increased water demand, which could affect the exploration and development of the resources needed. There can also be direct impacts of sea-level rise on coastal infrastructure like power plants, pipelines and transmission lines. Infrastructure changes also mean impacts on the decision process for financing projects that are both large and require a long time to complete. In the second article, the author describes how the Paris agreement was developed along the lines of requirements of individual nations. The compromises and shortcomings of earlier agreements formed impacts on what could be achieved. Mitigation by limiting emissions and aggregate emission goals were both included. Long range science-based goals and periodic review cycles were included as a way to achieve both top-down and bottom-up approaches. A delicate balance is set up to accommodate both the developed nations with more technology and the lesser developed nations which have lesser capacity. Implementation via legal systems continues to be a problem, both due to the differing capacities and the widely differing legal systems of the nations involved. There is at least a partial reliance on moral persuasion as a substitute for legal measures. The end result is a set of compromises that rely not only on well-known decision structures, but also on the psychological effect of actions by all nations. This reliance on group norms can have both a positive and negative effect, and the end result remains to be seen. This report will also be linked on the 2019 Reports Page 02 page of the Sustainable Water Resource Site at https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablewaterresources/ ;