La Jolla Declaration on Water Security as the Climate Changes

At last week's conference "Water in a Warming World", hosted by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, attendees signed the La Jolla Declaration to demonstrate their dedication to water security issues at the climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

La Jolla Declaration on Water Security as the Climate Changes

Human-induced climate change threatens the water security of communities, countries and continents. Droughts, floods and the unreliability of water resources will be exacerbated, impacting our ability to feed the world and sustain its ecosystems. Over the past few decades evidence has been accumulating that rising temperatures and other consequences of human activity are increasing atmospheric water, altering precipitation patterns – intensity and extremes, reducing snow cover, changing soil moisture and runoff, melting glaciers and ice sheets, and raising sea levels. As global warming and other human influences continue, we expect these changes to accelerate in the coming decades. Action is required now. Water security should be the centerpiece of mitigation and adaptation efforts, including fast-action strategies to reduce black carbon, HFCs, and other non-CO2 forcers, to complement aggressive cuts in CO2.