Modeling principles, criteria and indicators to assess water sector governance for climate compatibility and sustainability

Abstract

The United Nations SDGs Report 2020 revealed that climatic variability victimized masses across the globe in 2018 and the global average temperature would rise to 3.2°C during this century. The GHG emission reduction targets for 2030 were prioritized under the Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) of 2015 to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C. Here, parallel action for climate adaptation is on top of it. However, targets for both adaptation and mitigation are lagging. Climatic variations will continue more likely with similar trends thus influencing the development needs vis-à-vis environmental security and sustainability of resources. It entails climate compatibility, particularly for the water security agenda for SDG-13 and Paris Climate Agreement (PCA), which requires an inclusive governance regime and ownership for national and sub-national scenarios. In this context, this paper aimed to assess existing water sector governance for climate compatible development (CCD) by taking the case of Pakistan which is among the top 10 countries vulnerable to climate change. Considering the limitations of available methodologies due to the involvement of various aspects and concepts of governance, an integrated multivariate mix-method model was formulated by combining rules and rights-oriented approaches. This MCDA-based model integrates six novel climate governance principles against six basic components of the basic institutional governance framework; Simple Multi-attribute Rating Technique (SMART) with a set of sectoral indicators of 09 criteria of climate compatible development (CCD). It proved well for this water sector case study with cross-sectional data from 340 key informant interviews (KIIs) and 17 focus group discussions (FGDs) in Pakistan, validated statistically. It can be used for periodic sectoral governance assessments for CCD.