introduction

This manual provides orientation for systematic climate proofing of infrastructure investments. Countries in the Nile Basin invest billions of dollars in durable water infrastructure such as dams, irrigation canals, wells, and others to provide services to people. Often, planners and policy makers do not take future climate change sufficiently into account when planning a new infrastructure project. This leads to high risks of insecure and volatile service provision and physical damage to costly investments, with potentially serious economic, political, and social consequences such as loss of livelihood and loss of lives.

The main objective of this manual is therefore to provide guidance on a process that enables the integration of climate change in planning, designing and operating water infrastructure in the Nile Basin – in other words, to climate-proof new and existing infrastructure investment processes and projects.

Overall, this manual provides an in-depth understanding of:

• Why climate proofing of infrastructure is essential and how water infrastructure is affected by climate change.
• What is climate risk, encompassing hazard, exposure and vulnerability.
• How the process of climate risk management evolves in the sequential successive steps of scoping, risk assessment and evaluation, risk treatment, and monitoring and evaluation.
• How this process of climate risk management is mainstreamed into NBI’s ideal path of water infrastructure decision making and therefore carried out at the different stages of infrastructure investment decision making, from policy and planning to project identification, preparation, construction and operation.
• How the role of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) is conceptualized and can be integrated into the resilience framing and climate risk management of grey infrastructure

Ecosystem Based Adaptation considerations

In climate-proofing water infrastructure, an important sub-objective is to consider, where possible, implementing ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). The guideline will also explicitly provide guidance how to integrate EbA into the climate proofing approach presented.

Climate proofing of infrastructure investments can be described as a process of assessing climate risks, developing, and implementing risk treatment solutions built-in-to pathways of infrastructure investment decisions. Climate proofing aims at establishing ecological, technical, economic, and social systems that can maintain the structural integrity and services of such infrastructures during the intended lifespan. For water related infrastructure this means addressing challenges related to:

• Changes in water supply (either increases, reductions and changes in timing of available water resources)
• Changes in water demand (for example crop water demand related to increased need for irrigation, changing settlement patterns, energy demand, etc)
• Climatic changes that could affect structural integrity of infrastructure and safety of the society (for example floods that alter dam safety aspects)
• Changes that could affect operation (e.g., floods, sediments, design thresholds related to temperature, etc)

Through climate proofing, it is analysed how climate change may affect average future conditions (precipitation, air temperatures, hydrology) as well as future extremes (e.g., droughts and floods); and how these changes affect the challenges and opportunities posed to infrastructure investments. Hence, integrating the process of climate proofing into infrastructure investment decisions is crucial to avoid wrong investment decision that can occur due to uncertainty about the future, for example when a drier future is expected, when in fact, it turns out to be wetter. Moreover, climate proofing results in the identification of investment options that balance the risk of inaction with the risk of wrong action. One such preference is to avoid the worst outcome. In this case, the robust climate resilience strategy is to minimize, over all possible future climates, the maximum regret (where “regrets” are the damages—loss of revenue or missed opportunity to increase it—caused by not selecting the best response to any climate). Climate proofing will lead to cost increases when it entails investment in additional capacity or enhancements in water use efficiency; but it could also result in savings when facilities are downsized to avoid their underutilization in dry climates.

Climate Proofing aims at incorporating climate change throughout the entire project investment stream. This means incorporating climate risk considerations into every aspect of the policy and project development process and decisions by government, communities, and the private sector (Bockel, 2009; Amuzu et al., 2018). Hence, climate proofing starts with building-in climate resilience considerations already at the early stages of the project, similarly to social and environmental impact assessments. At each step of the project investment cycle, different adaptation alternatives must be evaluated, and preference must be given to alternative(s) with the lowest potential for regrets.

Figure 1 Conceptual approach towards climate proofing

Climate resilient water infrastructure can ensure and maintain reliable service provision. For instance, it can help design enough storage capacity in reservoirs and adapting reservoir operation rules to deal with changing runoff patterns. This can help prevent water scarcity as water is used more efficiently. Consequently, climate resilient water infrastructure as a critical infrastructure contributes to overall development. Climate resilient infrastructure also avoids lost revenues from underperforming hydropower or irrigation infrastructure in drier climate futures. It also avoids the opportunity cost of not taking advantage of an abundance of exploitable water resources in wetter climate futures. In wet climate futures, hydroelectric facilities generate larger amounts of electric power without any additional investment which in turn allows hydro to replace fossil fuel–based energy generation and reduces overall prices (Groves et al., 2015). Knowing in advance that a wet future will materialize, it makes sense to expand generation capacity to produce more hydropower; in a dry future, it is preferable to reduce generation capacity to avoid sinking capital in equipment that will end up being underutilized.

Thereby, climate proofing can also foster and sustain the success of transboundary cooperation -, as well as benefit sharing mechanisms of a river basin. The idea of benefit-sharing in the management and development of water resources in a transboundary basin may allow for optimization of resource use and increase overall benefits[1]. Particularly, when it comes to shifting from a necessarily competitive zero-sum game (where one country’s water allocations come at the expense of the other’s) into an at least partly cooperative positive-sum game[2]. Here, climate change can threaten such a cooperative positive-sum game. Though, climate proofing can lead to the use of technological adaptations that uses water more efficiently, hence minimizing the use of water such as for irrigation, designing enough storage capacity in reservoirs and adapting reservoir operation rules to deal with changing runoff patterns. Hence, climate proofing plays an important role for avoiding or delaying the generation of conflict over water and allows benefits to be better shared equitably among states.

Ecosystem Based Adaptation considerations

Many strategies are available to climate-proof water infrastructure so that it is less susceptible to climate hazards. Some of these strategies exist along a “green-to-grey” continuum. That is, to varying degrees, they harness the benefits of biodiversity and ecosystem services to reduce climate change related impacts to water infrastructure and related services. These strategies are referred to as nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation, or simply ecosystem-based adaptation.

[1] For instance, water might be used more efficiently for food production in certain parts of the basin than in others or coordinated dam operation across a basin can increase overall efficiency in hydropower generation. Moreover, one country’s resource use for a certain purpose can create benefits for other riparian countries. One example for such win-win constellations would be that the construction of dams for hydropower production can simultaneously result in improved potential for downstream flood management, improved downstream navigation, greater downstream hydropower potential due to more stable flows (Kramer and Pohl, 2016)

[2] For example, where one country’s water uses and management produces co-benefits for other riparian countries, or the optimization of water across the basin creates a ‘benefit surplus’ that can be shared among riparian’s.

From the river basin scale all the way down to the household scale in the Nile Basin, many different types of infrastructure are required to provide the water-related services upon which economic sectors, communities, and people rely. Examples include dams, irrigation canals, wells, pumps and pump stations, cisterns, mine tailings ponds, water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, culverts, embankments, water pipes, hydropower generating facilities, and more. These assets provide critical services like domestic water supply, irrigation for crops, hydropower production, water quality treatment, navigable waterways, flood and erosion management, as well as recreation opportunities.

Figure 2 Illustration of an standard multipurpose project including facilities for irrigation, M&I, flood control and hydropower

Though the Nile Basin currently remains the only region of Africa without a functional regional power grid, and very little power is traded among countries, all Nile riparian countries have ambitious national hydropower infrastructure development plans, to fuel economic growth and support poverty alleviation. Similarly, agricultural productivity targets across Nile riparian countries will require huge investments in irrigation infrastructure. These systems will fundamentally rely on water supplied by the Nile River and its tributaries. Already, agriculture is the biggest user of water in the Nile River Basin.

The manual is intended primarily for owners, developers, and operators of water infrastructure (public and private). Others who might use the guide include professionals hired to work on these projects, financial institutions, and governments. The guide should be used by project teams that include representation from across the following types of participants. These roles are explored in the following. Stakeholders comprise:

Policymakers from government agencies responsible for planning and regulating water infrastructure and energy systems

• Governmental and institutional bodies have a key role to play in the consistency and efficiency of climate resilience strategies and actions across socioeconomic sectors and geographic regions within their jurisdiction. Establishing contact and engaging with governmental and institutional bodies may facilitate the collection of data and studies which form the basis for screening the potential climate risks of projects.
• Policy makers, agencies and regulators that have statutory responsibility in the energy or water resources sectors must deliver advice and a legal framework that considers the risks associated with climate change.
• Supranational institutions from the energy or water sectors, river basin management organisations (such as NBI), national and local governments, investors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), local or regional water resources agencies, meteorological and hydrological services and scientific institutes can also contribute to the resilience of a water resources project by setting regulations, delivering institutional capacity building and training, creating dialogue platforms and producing and sharing knowledge that can foster the knowledge and experience of climate resilience.
• Financial institutions who may request a climate risk assessment as a requirement for financing.

Project owners and managers

• These are project owners, developers, and operators responsible for planning, development, design, construction, and operation of the projects to consider climate risks in new and existing hydropower projects. Climate proofing for a water infrastructure project requires resources and actions. Therefore, those involved in managing the project should ensure climate resilience is appropriately assessed and should provide the necessary resources to undertake the preparation and implementation of a climate resilience strategy.
• Responsibilities must be assigned to experienced or trained specialists. For major projects, climate resilience teams/experts must be fully coordinated with the engineering and ESIA teams. Climate Risk Assessment may be considered an integral part of the overall development of assessment of a project.

Technical officers

These include climate change practitioners and project engineering and ESIA teams. They are expected to

• Use the approaches defined in the guideline to assess climate change risks
• Identify climate resilience/proofing measures
• Report the results to the decision makers and stakeholders.

They should share the findings from their respective early assessments when undertaking a climate risk assessment or securing senior-level support for the process through information on key business risks, to ensure that support is gained in terms of resourcing and budgets.

1.1.1NBI’s core functions

The Nile Basin is one of the most critical trans-boundary hydrological basins in Africa with the River Nile playing a crucial role and resource for most of the economic and social activities for the countries in Eastern and North-Eastern Africa. For the management of its common resources, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) as an all-inclusive basin-wide institution was established in 1999. It is an intergovernmental partnership of 10 Nile Basin countries, namely: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, The Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Eritrea participates as an observer.

The objectives of the NBI are to

• Develop the Nile Basin water resources in a sustainable and equitable way to ensure prosperity, security, and peace for all its peoples.
• Ensure efficient water management and the optimal use of the resources.
• Ensure cooperation and joint action between the riparian countries, seeking win-win gains.
• Target poverty eradication and promote economic integration.
• Ensure that the program results in a move from planning to action.

The NBI institutional framework consists of three key institutions

• The Nile Council of Ministers (Nile-COM), which is comprised of Ministers in charge of Water Affairs in each NBI Member State, provides policy guidance and makes decisions. The council holds regular annual meetings as well as extraordinary meetings.
• The NBI Technical Advisory Committee is made up of senior civil servants and provides technical advice and assistance to the Council of Ministers. The committee is made up of one representative from each riparian country and one alternate. It meets two to three times a year.
• The NBI Secretariat (Nile-SEC) provides administrative support to the Council of Ministers and the Technical Advisory Committee. The Nile-SEC is responsible for the overall corporate direction.  It is based in Entebbe, Uganda and is headed by an Executive Director.
• Two subsidiary programs are managed by the Eastern Nile Regional Technical Office (ENTRO), which is based in Addis Ababa, and the NELSAP Coordinating Unit (NELSAP-CU), which is based in Kigali, Rwanda. In addition, various projects have regional project management units located in different countries of the Nile Basin.

1.1.2 NBI’s programmes, frameworks and strategies

Climate change affects the whole region of the Nile Basin. Due to its transborder character, the challenges of climate change and water supply are best addressed by the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). Being the only forum that brings together the Nile riparian states, NBO is mandated to initiate and implement measures that complement national efforts to address transboundary challenges including climate change.

Strategy, policy and planning mechanisms that affect infrastructure investments in the Nile Basin include:

• The “Shared Vision Program” (SVP) was designed to build trust and capacity, as well as an enabling environment for investments as well as ensuring consideration of transboundary considerations in national policies. While the Subsidiary Action Programs (SAPs), such as the Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program (NELSAP), or the Eastern Nile Technical Program (ENTRO) were designed to support identification, negotiation, and implementation of cooperative investment projects, with a focus on mutual and sustainable benefits for the countries involved.
• The Nile Basin Sustainability Framework (NBSF) comprises a suite of policies, strategies, and guidance documents. It functions as a guide to national policy and planning process development and seeks to build consensus. The NBSF is intended to contribute to the gradual alignment of the Basin’s body of (national) water policies to meet international good practice, and to help demonstrate to national governments and international financiers of water infrastructure that the NBI has a systematic approach for dealing with issues of sustainable development within the Basin. Without the NBSF, there would be no consistent guidance for the sustainable development of new investments and no coherent guidance for the achievement of cooperation in sustainable water management and development. Addressing climate change is one of the sustainability pillars within the Nile Basin Sustainability Framework (NBSF).
• The NBI Strategy translates the shared vision objective “to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through equitable utilization of, and benefit from the shared Nile Basin water resources” into basin development goals that NBI will work towards; and further expounds on what contributions NBI will make over the ten-year period. The 10 Year Strategy will be implemented through 5 Year Programs prepared by the three NBI Centres and will be funded by the Nile Riparian countries with support from Development Partners.

The overall goal of The NBI Climate Change Strategy which was published in June 2013 is to strengthen basin-wide resilience to climate change and ensure climate compatible water resource management and development. The NBI Climate Change Strategy sets out the NBI’s approach for a joint transboundary river basin level response to support climate compatible water resource development in the Nile basin (NBI, 2013).

The development of the climate proofing guideline can be considered a specific component of outcome 3 of the Climate Change Strategy which is aimed at ensuring that climate change is embedded in relevant NBI strategies and programs, and capacities are enhanced to address climate risks at transboundary and national levels:

Outcome 3 of the Climate Change Strategy:

“Relevant NBI policies, strategies and guidelines will consider the key climate risks, impacts and vulnerabilities facing the Nile Basin and ensure that the strategic objectives, outcomes and actions contained in policies, strategies   and guidelines reflect the challenges posed by climate change. NBI will strengthen its own as well as national capacities to consider the transboundary environmental and social implications of their climate change and water resource management and development responses.”

The climate proofing guideline will contribute to the realisation of the following five strategic objectives that govern NBI’s Climate Change Strategy:

• Objective 1: Strengthen the knowledge base to enhance common understanding of climate change risks and its impacts on water resources, ecosystems, and the socio-economic system of the Nile Basin
• Objective 2: Strengthen the long-term capacities for addressing climate risks and uncertainty in the Nile Basin at national and transboundary levels
• Objective 3: Support climate resilient planning and implementation addressing climate risks and uncertainty in NBI’s programs.
• Objective 4: Promote scalable low carbon development through enhanced transboundary cooperation in areas such as protection of wetlands as well as clean energy use and development
• Objective 5: Strengthen basin-wide climate finance access and the capacity for development of feasible projects in the Nile Basin

1.1.3United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015 the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development in New York established the global agenda for sustainable development until 2030 and defined a list of 17 objectives, i.e., the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on which to focus commitments for the next fifteen years. The 17 SDGs (Figure 3) replace, and broaden, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expiring in 2015 (UN, 2015; Ferranti, 2019).

Figure 3 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)[1]

Sustainable management of water resources and, by extension, development of climate-proof water infrastructure is central to the achievement of all 17 SDGs. Most directly related to climate-proofing infrastructure is

• SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, which includes a clause to “build resilient infrastructure” that is “environmentally sound”, and
• SDG 13 - Climate Action, or “taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”
• SDGs 1 & 2: The services provided by water infrastructure underpin many other SDGs such as 1 – End Poverty, 2 – End Hunger, both of which require domestic and agricultural water security that can be enhanced by infrastructure like irrigation canals, dams, and reservoirs.
• SDGs 6, 7, 8 and 10 are closely related to SDG 1: Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Reduced Inequalities.
• SDGs 16 and 17 - The joint development of water infrastructure in shared river basins has long promoted cooperation between nations, which contributes to SDGs 16 and 17 – Partnerships for the Goals, and Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
• Ecosystem Based Adaptation

[1] Image adapted from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs and https://www.merckgroup.com/en/cr-report/2018/pics/files/sdg_en.svg