| Climate resilience


impacting projects in East Africa, Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Although it has shown promising progress, Hirji and Duba say overall progress in the uptake and application of ILBM has been too slow. “Complacency within the global water and


environmental communities has contributed to outright neglect in using and mainstreaming best practices or hindered resource mobilisation for ILBM initiatives,” the authors claim. It’s essential, they add, to intensify efforts and promote reforms to realise ILBM’s full potential. Emphasising the urgent need to protect lakes and


reservoirs for water security and climate resilience, Hirji and Duba give six recommendations for accelerating global ILBM implementation which underscore essential international, national, basin, and sub-basin- level reforms. These are: 1. Mainstreaming ILBM which will require collaboration among international and national water, environment, and land communities for an effective result.


2. The international community must take urgent action by utilising best practices and knowledge for sustainable management of lake and reservoir basins, acknowledging that dam-created reservoirs are lakes needing integrated basin-level solutions, upstream, and downstream.


3. Encouraging collaboration among water, environment, and land management agencies. UN- Water, regional banks, and the World Bank should prioritise cooperation across these sectors at all levels of governance. The Global Water Partnership should also focus on developing and promoting ILBM training to support global water and environmental policy reforms.


4. Promoting collaborative reforms at the national level. Environmental ministries should work with water and land ministries through inter-ministerial forums to improve the sustainable management of lakes and reservoir basins. The international community should also support partnerships that promote top–down policy reforms and bottom–up capacity building in local governance.


5. Supporting the implementation of ILBM at both policy and operational levels.


6. Advancing climate resilience at the basin level. Utilise structured climate adaptation frameworks from best practices in international, regional, and national water resource planning and management.


Lake drought More than half the largest lakes worldwide have


experienced considerable declines in water storage over the past three decades. This has far-reaching consequences, affecting an estimated 25% of the global population and garnering substantial international attention. Driven by increasing temperatures due to climate change, lake drought is a growing concern. Lake droughts are a critical issue for global water security. It may take a long time to recover from them as the damage can be extensive and long-lasting. They can result in serious water shortages, threaten biodiversity, create environmental challenges, and even provoke conflicts. Despite the profound implications of lake droughts, very few studies have focused on this type of extreme event. However, providing a global assessment of over 160,000 lakes using monthly area data from 1985 to 2018, recent research by Cheng et al in Communications


Earth And Environment has focused on lake drought. Their findings show that 15.7% of lakes have experienced statistically significant increasing trends in drought frequency, with hot spots in the Southern US at 52.7% and Southeast Australia at 70.4%. Regions with higher percentages of lakes showing


increasing drought trends include West Asia (47.1%), South Australia/ New Zealand (46.6%), West and East Africa(41.2% and 35%), East and Central Asia (35.3% and 31.8%), Central and North Europe (30.3% and 26.1%), and Southeastern South America (31.7%). Given that most artificial reservoirs are managed to meet water supply, flood control, and other human needs, they are more susceptible to human influence than natural lakes. Therefore, the authors compared drought occurrence between the two types of lakes across hotspot regions, assuming consistent climatic conditions within each region, to elucidate the role of human activities. They say their results demonstrate that human activities exacerbate regional lake droughts to some extent, although they are not the dominant driver. For instance, in Southern United States, where over 60% of artificial reservoirs serve as critical water resources, more reservoirs (59%) exhibit a significantly increasing trend in drought frequency compared to natural lakes (39%). The authors claim this underscores the predominant role of climatic factors in driving lake droughts. Furthermore, they add their global analysis also reveals that more reservoirs experience significant upward trends in drought frequency compared to natural lakes. For example, most reservoirs and dams mainly located at middle latitudes, such as in China, India, the United States, and the Middle East, are constructed to support community needs. Consequently, climatic factors play a dominant role in lake droughts, while human activities (e.g., dam construction and regulation) also contribute to reservoir droughts.


Critical issue Due to significant upward trends in drought frequency


over the past decades, Cheng et al believe this remains a critical issue under climate change and intensified anthropogenic activities. They say their findings underscore the urgent need to understand and address the underlying causes of lake droughts, particularly in regions facing increasing water demands and shortages. Looking to the future, further research on lake droughts


needs to focus more on quantifying human causes and drivers. Accurate monitoring, prediction, and projection of lake resources under various future climate and development scenarios is also an urgent need to better analyse lake droughts in the future.


Above: Low water levels of Lake Mead, viewed from the Hoover Dam in the US, during September 2024


References


World Bank. 2025. Enhancing the Safety and Resilience of Dams in the Context of Climate Change and Extreme Hydrological Events: Detailed Methodologies and Case Studies. World Bank, Washington, DC.


Rafik F. Hirji and Alfred Duda. Integrated management of lakes, reservoirs, and their basins is critical for a climate-resilient planet: an urgent wake-up call from collective amnesia. Water Policy Vol 27 No 1, 66. https:// doi.org/10.2166/wp.2024.296


Xing Cheng, Shuo Wang, Jianli Chen & Amir Agha Kouchak. Global assessment and hotspots of lake drought. Communications Earth & Environment (2025)


6:308. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s43247-025-02285-2


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