Jose Pablo Ortiz Partida

Union of Concerned Scientists · Climate and Energy

The COVID-19 pandemic will be an unprecedented test of governments’ ability to manage compound risks, as climate hazards disrupt outbreak response around the world. Immediate steps can be taken to minimize climate-attributable loss of life, but climate adaptation also needs a long-term strategy for pandemic preparedness.

Shifts away from the historical hydroclimate in populated regions can have dire consequences for water management. Regions like the state of California-where highly engineered, geographically interconnected, and inflexible water management systems are predicated on particular spatiotemporal patterns of water availability-are particularly vulnerable...

Water resources management is threatened by climatic, economic, and political pressures, and these challenges are on particular display in Latin America and the Caribbean. To assess the region's ability to manage water resources, we conducted an unprecedented literature review of over 20,000 multilingual research articles using machine learning and...

A common approach in scientific research and policy is a commitment to develop projects or legislation trying to improve problems experienced by low-income and rural communities; however, lack of interaction with community members during the process tends to produce unsatisfactory results. We visited disadvantaged communities in the San Joaquin Val...

Frontline communities of California experience disproportionate social, economic, and environmental injustices, and climate change is exacerbating the root causes of inequity in those areas. Yet, climate adaptation and mitigation strategies often fail to meaningfully address the experience of frontline community stakeholders. Here, we present three...

Low-income, rural frontline communities of California's Central Valley experience environmental and socioeconomic injustice, water insecurity, extremely poor air quality, and lack of fundamental infrastructure (sewage, green areas, health services), which makes them less resilient. Many communities depend financially on agriculture, while water sca...

Of the 46 GSPs submitted in January 2020, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) determined eight GSPs to be adequate and 34 GSPs to be incomplete. In this paper, we evaluate to what extent DWR’s determinations provide oversight on the key issues of drinking water, disadvantaged communities, the environment, stakeholder involvement, and climate c...

Streamflow patterns are shifting with climate change, and these shifts pose increasing risk to freshwater ecosystems. These emerging changes must be linked with ecological functions of river systems to understand how climate change may affect freshwater biota. In this study we used a functional flows approach to analyze the ecological effects of ch...

Water resources planning in regions with sufficient data continuity and quality is complex, but in regions with poor water data, the task is further complicated. In this paper, we share our experience developing a multi-objective technical assessment of water resources in a region with scarce water data. This research is an example of collaborative...

The Rio Grande/Bravo is an arid river basin shared by the United States and Mexico, the fifth-longest river in North America, and home to more than 10.4 million people. By crossing landscapes and political boundaries, the Rio Grande/Bravo brings together cultures, societies, ecosystems, and economies, thereby forming a complex social-ecological sys...

Infographic made by Jessie Kanter, translated by Chia Thao.

Low-income, rural frontline communities of California’s Central Valley experience environmental and socioeconomic injustice that makes them less resilient, including lack of fundamental infrastructure (sewage, green areas, health services), water insecurity, and the lowest air quality in the United States. These communities often depend financially...

California’s Climate Change Assessment for the San Joaquin Valley addresses the effects of climate change on people, agriculture, infrastructure, and the environment. https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/CA4_CCA_SJ_Region_Eng_ada.pdf

El Informe de la Región del Valle de San Joaquin sobre los impactos del cambio climático habla sobre los efectos del cambio climático en las gentes, la agricultura, las infraestructuras, y el medio ambiente. Disponible en https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/CA4_CCA_SJ_RegionHilites_Spanish_ada.pdf

Environmental flows (e‐flows) are powerful tools for sustaining freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services, but their widespread implementation faces numerous social, political, and economic barriers. These barriers are amplified in water‐limited systems where strong trade‐offs exist between human water needs and freshwater ecosystem protection...

Water resources management in Latin America and the Caribbean is particularly threatened by climatic, economic, and political pressures. To assess the region's ability to manage water resources, we conducted an unprecedented literature review of over 20 000 multilingual research articles using machine learning and an understanding of the socio-hydr...

Frontline communities experience social, economic, and environmental injustices, and climate change is exacerbating the root causes of injustice in those areas. Yet, climate adaptation and mitigation strategies often fail to meaningfully address the experience of frontline community stakeholders. Here, we present three challenges, three errors, and...

There is a surge of interest in reaching social and environmental justice in California's disadvantaged communities by governments, non-governmental organizations, and academia. However, actions taken so far are insufficient to reduce those inequities substantially. We propose the lack of effective policies and relevant scientific work results in p...

Abstract: A common approach in scientific research and policy is a commitment to develop projects or legislation with the intention to improve problems experienced by communities; however, lack of interaction with community members during the process may produce unsatisfactory impacts. We visited disadvantaged communities in the Central Valley of C...

This guide equips San Joaquin Valley (SJV) community members and advocates with information and ideas to address the rapidly evolving climate change issues affecting community members’ health and to prepare for climate challenges. You will find information about climate impacts on water and agriculture and about socioeconomic issues across cities...

Water is core to California’s way of life. But as climate change causes more volatile precipitation, less snowpack, more flooding, higher temperatures, and shorter wet seasons, the water system will increasingly fail to meet the needs of California’s communities, industry, and agriculture. A new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows t...

Climate change will affect water availability and its management, with more frequent and extended droughts, more severe floods, and lower water quality. Water allocation policies, regulations, and infrastructure in Mexico are not designed for changing future climate conditions. This chapter reviews the implications of climate change for water resou...

This book presents case studies that share important experiences regarding Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) in various countries. Following an introduction to theoretical concepts, responsibilities, and challenges, the subsequent chapters address, among other topics, an analysis of policies and regulations for water management in Brazil,...

The uncertainty of water resources availability is a growing problem in California as agricultural industrialization, population growth, and climate change affect water resources. The intense manipulation of the hydrological regime has led to the depletion of the water resources in the state and the subsequent use of various adaptive management str...

The uncertainty of water resources availability is a growing problem in California as agricultural industrialization, population growth, and climate change affect water resources. The intense manipulation of the hydrological regime has led to the depletion of the water resources in the state and the subsequent use of various adaptive management str...

Robust reservoir operation has long been considered a promising solution for addressing water allocation problems in the absence of reliable hydroclimatic forecasts. This study aims to evaluate the performance of this solution using a novel two-stage stochastic optimization model. The model maximizes economic benefits from reservoir deliveries whil...

The US and Mexico share a common history in many areas, including language and culture. They face ecological changes due to the increased frequency and severity of droughts and rising energy demands; trends that entail economic costs for both nations and major implications for human well being. We describe an ongoing effort by the Environment Worki...

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is the first comprehensive legislative effort to reform groundwater management in the state of California after years of uncoordinated and voluntary governance of this resource. The objective of this study is to a) describe the SGMA in California, b) describe a method for estimating a water budget,...

OVERVIEW This project describes the past and present water management objectives, policies, allocation practices and water uses, summarizes the state of water resources models that are available to explore Environmental Flows (EF), and outlines a methodology for developing a geodatabase that summarizes water-related elements in the basin and availa...

Water resource modeling tools have been developed for many different regions and sub-basins of the Rio Grande/Bravo (RGB). Each of these tools has specific objectives, whether it is to explore drought mitigation alternatives, conflict resolution, climate change evaluation, tradeoff and economic synergies, water allocation, reservoir operations, or...

Study region: The study region is the Big Bend Reach of the Rio Grande/Bravo, from Luis L. Leon reservoir in the Rio Conchos to Amistad reservoir in the Rio Grande/Bravo mainstem. This reach is part of the Rio Grande trans-boundary river basin between United States and Mexico, an area of recognized environmental and socioeconomic significance by bo...