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Key Issues in Seawater Desalination in California: Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

California’s water supply is vulnerable to seasonal extremes that are exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Seawater desalination is a reliable source of water, which can be especially valuable during a drought.

Community Resilience Fact Sheets Help Communities Prepare for Climate Change Impacts

As Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina have taught us, climate change is a global process with very localized impacts that can profoundly affect community health and quality of life. These localized impacts, ranging from extreme temperatures to rising sea levels, will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations such as the elderly, renters, low-income residents, limited English speakers, those with pre-existing medical conditions, and those without health or home insurance.

Climate Change Survivor Workbook with Games

Oakland residents can take steps to protect their communities in the face of climate change impacts.

National Geographic ScienceBlogs: Three Iconic Graphs Showing the Climate Fix We’re In

Here are three iconic graphs (unfortunately, there are many, many more) showing just some of the clear observational evidence that we’re changing the climate.

Cost Effectiveness of Water Conservation and Efficiency (CE2) Model

This model helps evaluate the economic desirability of water conservation and efficiency measures and explore how costs and benefits can be shared among customers, water utilities, and other entities. The model helps document the costs of starting and running a conservation program and estimate the associated water, energy, and financial savings.

A CE2 Model training webinar is available here.

California Urban Water Suppliers Water Use Map

This interactive online map helps users decode the wealth of information on water use in California. The features allow users to examine how water use varies within regions, across the state, and over time. Colored zones show a gradient of water use across the state, from green for lower per capita water use to bright red for the highest users. By clicking on each location, users can see graphs of per capita use over time and comparisons to the regional and state averages.

Jason Morrison speaks on Water Cooperation at UN General Assembly

Technical Assistance

The Pacific Institute lends its technical expertise through targeted assistance to organizations doing work consistent with our values and mission. Institute staff are leading professionals in diverse fields including engineering, environmental health, hydrology, economics, geography, and policy and planning.

Safe Return and Reintegration

The exponential expansion of the criminal justice system, its concentration in low-income communities of color, and the social stigma and legal exclusion that accompany it have made it one of the defining issues of this era. Through our partnerships with community-based organizations, the Pacific Institute has found that our participatory research processes and community capacity building have a powerful effect when adapted to work on these issues.

Planning for Environmental Health

Most city planners ascribe to the goal of fostering “healthy cities,” yet determining the best way to translate this vision into reality has posed a challenge given competing priorities like job creation, housing development, and access to transit.

Participatory Action Research

Participating in the decisions and activities of carrying out research can have a profound impact of empowering community members without previous training to understand, find solutions to, and communicate the challenges they face.

Multiple-Use Water Services

Recognizing that water is used for different purposes, Multiple Use Water Services (MUS) has emerged as one of the best ways to maximize water use.

Mobile Phone Solutions for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)

Rapidly growing populations, decreasing water availability, and more erratic precipitation due to climate change are causing a crisis among the urban poor: millions of city dwellers in developing countries don’t have access to regular, reliable, safe, or affordable water and sanitation. The urban poor are willing to pay for water and sanitation services, and often are paying many times more for water from private sources.

Green Jobs and Water

The transition toward more sustainable approaches to managing, delivering, and treating freshwater involves workers in many different sectors of the economy and shifts in markets, occupations, and jobs created.

Freight Transport Justice

Freight transport, or the movement of products and raw materials via truck, train, ship or plane, is a major source of unhealthy diesel pollution and other adverse impacts that disproportionately affect low-income communities, communities of color, and workers.

Corporate Water Disclosure

Corporate water disclosure – the act of collecting data on the current state of a company’s water management, assessing the implications of this information for the business, developing a strategic response, and ultimately reporting this information to stakeholders (investors, NGOs, consumers, communities, suppliers, employees, and others) – is a critical component of a company’s water management efforts and water-related sustainability more generally.

Corporate Water Assessment

Companies’ ability to measure and understand their water use and corollary risks and impacts is key to effectively mitigating specific water problems and becoming responsible water stewards.

Conflicts Over Water

There are complex and real links between water and conflict. While water resources have rarely been the sole source of violent conflict or war, there is a long history of tensions and violence over access to water resources, attacks on water systems, and the use of water systems as weapons during war.

Community Resilience to Climate Change

Those who have historically contributed the least to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions warming our planet often stand to be most affected by the localized adverse impacts that these will have on community health and quality of life. These localized impacts, ranging from extreme heat to rising sea levels, will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations such as the elderly, renters, low-income residents, those with pre-existing medical conditions, and those without health or home insurance.

Community Mapping Initiative

Maps are powerful tools for analyzing and communicating how environmental hazards and resources are distributed in a given place.

Climate Change Vulnerability and Resilience

The science of climate change is compelling and strong, and has been for over two decades, telling us that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities not only will change, but are already changing the climate. The Pacific Institute, since its founding in 1987, has been addressing many of these vulnerabilities to climate change.

Climate Change Resilience in Developing Countries

Thousands of cities in the developing world are facing rising pressures on institutions and infrastructure due to population growth and urbanization. Hundreds of thousands of people globally wake up each day wondering where they will get water, how long they will wait for it, how much they will pay for it, what the quality of that water will be, and whether that water will be there tomorrow.

Climate Change and Water

Since its founding, the Pacific Institute has been at the forefront of research on the impacts of climate change on water resources and on strategies to reduce those impacts. The water cycle and the climate cycle are inextricably linked.

The CEO Water Mandate

The UN CEO Water Mandate is a unique public-private initiative – established by the UN Global Compact in 2007 and endorsed by global companies from a variety of industry sectors – designed to assist companies in the development, implementation, and disclosure of corporate water stewardship practices and policies.

Business Engagement with Water Policy

Many water-related business risks stem from ineffective or non-existent public water policy and management. These risks are much more difficult to address than those associated with internal business practice since companies have limited influence in public water governance and decision making.