Water serves a wide variety of environmental functions and human uses as it moves through North America's river basins, so the impacts of climate change are expected to be widespread and multifaceted. This increases the importance of collaborative adaptation efforts that are equitable, transparent and give voice to differing values, perspectives and entitlements across a broad socioeconomic spectrum of urban and rural, Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants . Adaptation planning may be hampered by conflicting interests, jurisdictional boundaries and inherent interconnections between actions and impacts at different points throughout a watershed or river basin. Differential power relationships, decision-making authority and access to information also can interfere with effective adaptive governance, while equitable processes for decision making bolstered by reliable shared information can help to overcome those impediments .
IPCC
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Report