Incorporating Climate Risks into Decision Making Through CRIDA: Perspectives from Zambia and Chile

Water managers face mounting risks from climate change and other drivers of uncertainty. Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) is a collaborative framework meant to help decision makers, stakeholders, and water managers assess and address the risk and impacts of climate change on water resources. This webinar will introduce participants to real-life examples of case studies that were performed within CRIDA framework in vastly different contexts.

During the dry season, low levels of water in the Kafue Gorge reservoir affects both water availability and power availability, making Zambia’s capital of Lusaka especially vulnerable to climate-related risks. This CRIDA case study explores the approaches that would increase the Iolanda Water Treatment Plant's ability to deliver acceptable levels of water supply to the utility that serves Lusaka while incorporating plausible climate change risks into decision making.

In recent years, an unusually long drought in Chile’s Limarí Basin has led to increasing water security challenges, with a significant impact on the region’s booming agriculture sector. With input from local stakeholders, water managers have used CRIDA to identify specific climate-related risks and chart a path towards developing adaptation strategies at a watershed scale that ensure continued performance of key systems.