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Water scarcity is a significant global concern affecting every continent. The problem of accessing safe water mainly occurs due to climate change, the increasing global population, and urbanization. The safe water crisis is more distressing in climate hot spots such as coastal areas, areas of low rainfall, and urban areas. Being a developing country, Bangladesh is experiencing the problem of water crisis in both coastal and urban areas. Safe water adaptability can be an integrative approach to mitigate water scarcity in these areas. Adaptability measures include monitoring surface and groundwater resources, using natural and artificial water storage, and providing technical training to the local community for safe water management, which can contribute to combat the safe water crisis across the globe. Safe water adaptability measures can be classified into four different dimensions (i.e., socioeconomic, institutional, physicochemical, and environmental) known as SIPE, which is based on some primary and secondary indicators. The SIPE approach measures the adaptability index by scoring the primary and secondary indicators and categorizes low to high adaptive community. Through the adaptability index, the capacity of the community and the gap between different levels of society can be measured, which can guide the review of existing policy and provide recommendations for a safe water adaptability action plan. This new approach will offer information and guidelines for the government, policymakers, and researchers to combat water scarcity problems. Although the proposed approach is applicable in the context of Bangladesh, this strategy can also be used for any parts of the globe by customizing the secondary indicators and considering the types of local problems to provide safe water for the community. The SIPE approach can be initiated at a micro level to become an integral part of national policies related to safe water access, especially for drinking and irrigation purposes.

Climate change influences the Baltic Sea ecosystem via its effects on oceanography and biogeochemistry. Sea surface temperature has been projected to increase by 2 to 4 °C until 2100 due to global warming; the changes will be more significant in the northern areas and less so in the south. The warming up will also diminish the annual sea ice cover by 57% to 71%, and ice season will be one to three months shorter than in the early 21st century, depending on latitude. A significant decrease in sea surface salinity has been projected because of an increase in rainfall and decrease of saline inflows into the Baltic Sea. The increasing surface flow has, in turn, been projected to increase leaching of nutrients from the soil to the watershed and eventually into the Baltic Sea. Also, acidification of the seawater and sea-level rise have been predicted. Increasing seawater temperature speeds up metabolic processes and increases growth rates of many secondary producers. Species associated with sea ice, from salt brine microbes to seals, will suffer. Due to the specific salinity tolerances, species’ geographical ranges may shift by tens or hundreds of kilometres with decreasing salinity. A decrease in pH will slow down calcification of bivalve shells, and higher temperatures also alleviate establishment of non-indigenous species originating from more southern sea areas. Many uncertainties still remain in predicting the couplings between atmosphere, oceanography and ecosystem. Especially projections of many oceanographic parameters, such as wind speeds and directions, the mean salinity level, and density stratification, are still ambiguous. Also, the effects of simultaneous changes in multiple environmental factors on species with variable preferences to temperature, salinity, and nutrient conditions are difficult to project. There is, however, enough evidence to claim that due to increasing runoff of nutrients from land and warming up of water, primary production and sedimentation of organic matter will increase; this will probably enhance anoxia and release of phosphorus from sediments. Such changes may keep the Baltic Sea in an eutrophicated state for a long time, unless strong measures to decrease nutrient runoff from land are taken. Changes in the pelagic and benthic communities are anticipated. Benthic communities will change from marine to relatively more euryhaline communities and will suffer from hypoxic events. The projected temperature increase and salinity decline will contribute to maintain the pelagic ecosystem of the Central Baltic and the Gulf of Finland in a state dominated by cyanobacteria, flagellates, small-sized zooplankton and sprat, instead of diatoms, large marine copepods, herring, and cod. Effects vary from area to area, however. In particular the Bothnian Sea, where hypoxia is less common and rivers carry a lot of dissolved organic carbon, primary production will probably not increase as much as in the other basins. The coupled oceanography-biogeochemistry ecosystem models have greatly advanced our understanding of the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. Also, studies on climate associated “regime shifts” and cascading effects from top predators to plankton have been fundamental for understanding of the response of the Baltic Sea ecosystem to anthropogenic and climatic stress. In the future, modeling efforts should be focusing on coupling of biogeochemical processes and lower trophic levels to the top predators. Also, fine resolution species distribution models should be developed and combined with 3-D modelling, to describe how the species and communities are responding to climate-induced changes in environmental variables.