ANU Workshop, August 2007 NeWater New approaches to adaptive water management under uncertainty Transdisciplinary Research Project: FP6 EU January 2005 – December 2008 Funded with 12 Mio Euro from the EU 35 project partners

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Guiding Assumptions  Sustainable management of water resources and IWRM cannot be realized unless current water management regimes undergo a transition towards more adaptive water management  Systems to be managed are too complex to predict with accuracy the outcome of management interventions and to control all processes  Water management is a political process and implementation of all policies are to some extent experiments. systematic process  Adaptive management is needed as a systematic process for improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of implemented management strategies.

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Key research questions  What characterizes effective integrated and adaptive management regimes?  How can we determine the “location” of a regime along its path towards more integrated and adaptive water management?  How can we determine if only adaptation or major (and which) structural transformations (= transitions) are needed?  How can we support change?

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Water Management Regime  A management regime is here referred to as the whole complex of technologies, institutions (= formal and informal rules), environmental factors and paradigm that together form the base for the functioning of the management system targeted to fulfil a societal function.  Due to the high interconnectedness and internal logic, individual elements of a regime cannot be exchanged arbitrarily

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Paradigm shifts in water management

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Paradigm Shift in Water Management Pahl-Wostl et al, 2006 Paradigms in Water Management Newater Deliverable Similarities in paradigm shifts in water management derived from sources published during past decade  Participatory management and collaborative decision making  increased integration of issues and sectors  management of problem sources not effects  decentralized and more flexible management approaches  more attention to management of human behaviour by “soft” measures  include environment explicitly in management goals  open and shared information sources (including linking science and decision making)  incorporating iterative learning cycles

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Understand elements of regime and their interdependence

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Predict, Control Regime Integrated, Adaptive Regime Governance Centralized, hierarchical, narrow stakeholder participation Polycentric, horizontal, broad stakeholder participation Sectoral Integration Sectors separately analysed resulting in policy conflicts and emergent chronic problems Cross-sectoral analysis identifies emergent problems and integrates policy implementation Scale of Analysis and Operation Transboundary problems emerge when river sub-basins are the exclusive scale of analysis and management Transboundary issues addressed by multiple scales of analysis and management Information Management Understanding fragmented by gaps and lack of integration of information sources that are proprietary Comprehensive understanding achieved by open, shared information sources that fill gaps and facilitate integration Infrastructure Massive, centralized infrastructure, single sources of design, power delivery Appropriate scale, decentralized, diverse sources of design, power delivery Finances and Risk Financial resources concentrated in structural protection (sunk costs) Financial resources diversified using a broad set of private and public financial instruments

Regulatory Framework Consumer behavior and habits Long lived interdependent infrastructure Engineers and Planning rules Lock-In effects prevent change Dependence generates stability

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Understand change towards more integrated and adaptive water management

ANU Workshop, August 2007

Understanding change – some conceptual considerations

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Multi-level approach in structural change (transition) Drivers and barriers at all levels Climate Change!

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Multi-level process of change Actor network Negotiation & learning platform

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Concept for Social Learning Role of ICT Tools Problem Framing Boundary Management Ground rules Leadership

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Development and Implementation of NeWater Management and Transition Framework

ANU Workshop, August 2007 How to develop knowledge base?  Analyse current regime and needs for change  Identify barriers for change  Analyse process of transition  Identify and implement actions at different levels Methodological development and integration Participatory process of analysis and assessment in cases

ANU Workshop, August 2007 NeWater Case Studies

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Structure of the NeWater Project 5 International Expert- and Thematic Platforms Guidance & Tools Key Drivers and Vulnerabilities Transition to ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT in River Basins Case Studies in River Basins 6 NeWater Project Coordination Platform NeWater Project Coordination Platform International Expert- & Thematic Platforms Details

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Resolving conflicts between water quantity, quality and ecosystems Resilience & Adaptive Capacity of Complex Water Systems Vulnerability & Exposure to Shocks and Stresses Integration of IWRM & Spatial Planning Managing Buffering Capacity Governance, Institutions & Participation TRANSITION to Adaptive Management Adaptive Management Regimes Consequences of Climate Hazard and Climate Change

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Challenges for a Framework  Lack of comprehensive concepts and theories  Different scientific concepts and world views  Local knowledge and stakeholder perspectives  Quantitative information to fuzzy data and qualitative analyses.  Multiple spatial and temporal scales  Scientific credibility & practical usefulness  Implementation within four years

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Guiding Assumptions Shared conceptual framework and structure to represent knowledge facilitates  Comparison of methods  Comparative analyses  Integration of results from different sources Without imposing constraints

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Elements of the framework

ANU Workshop, August 2007

Formal management process Learning cylce Learning processes as integral part of water management A = Structural Change  Transition B = Experimentation with measures  Operational adaptive management Restructuring of problem and solutions Develop vision Scenarios – analysis of development paths – Implementation strategies Design experiments Pilote studies – capacity development Evaluation Set strategic goals and assess current state Develop policy and operational management plan Implement measures and monitor impact Upscaling?

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Comparative Analyses e.g. How to effectively deal with climate-related extreme events in River Basins?

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Comparative Analyses between cases

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Some results (not robust yet)  Hypotheses on structural requirements for adaptive management partly confirmed (comparative analyses yet to be done)  Change at operational level slow despite change in political rhetoric and supportive political frameworks  Reluctance of stakeholders to acknowledge uncertainties  Evidence that supports to focus on process of learning and change  No panaceas but development of a diagnostic approach

ANU Workshop, August 2007 NeWater  Comprehensive comparative analyses  Development of webportal for guidance  Training for practitioners and university students Further  Global database on water management regimes  Comparative analyses on adaptive capacity and performance of water management regimes and processes of change with emphasis on adaptation to climate change  Network of exchange among practitioners and scientists Outlook to future products / activities

ANU Workshop, August 2007 More information available  –NeWater Project  –CAIWA - Conference on Adaptive and Integrated Water Management  –Journal Ecology and Society – two special features on social learning and adaptive water management

ANU Workshop, August 2007

Definition Paradigm A water management paradigm  refers to set of assumptions about –the nature of the system to be managed –the goals of management –the ways in which these goals can be achieved.  is shared by “ an epistemic community” of actors involved in water management.  is manifested in artefacts such as technical infrastructure, planning approaches, regulations, engineering practices, models etc Pahl-Wostl et al, 2006 Paradigms in Water Management Newater Deliverable 1.1.2

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Adaptive Management and Policy Cycle Adaptive management is learning to manage by managing to learn” “ Adaptive management is learning to manage by managing to learn”

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Steps in Policy Cycle  In the definition of the problem different perspectives need to be taken into account in a participatory process.  The design of policies should include scenario analyses to find strategies that perform well under different possible future developments and to identify key uncertainties.  Decisions should be evaluated by the costs of reversing them.  The design of monitoring programmes should include different kinds of knowledge to become aware of undesirable developments at an early stage.  The management cycle must include institutional settings where actors assess the performance of management strategies and implement change if needed.

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Major Uncertainties  Ambiguity (= more than one legitimate and plausible interpretation) in defining operational targets for different management goals  Complexity of system to be managed.  Changes in environmental and/or in socio-economic conditions

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Water Management in the Alpine Region Flood Protection in the Rhone basin Paper for Rosenberg Water Policy Forum Pahl-Wostl, Cross and Berkamp

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Road River

ANU Workshop, August 2007  Major dike constructions and  94% of original floodplain disappeared  Many species are endangered  Severe flooding in the 90ties and 2000 (potential damage estimated to 10 Billion CHF)  Some doubts on effectiveness of control paradigm Flood Protection in Swiss Rhone Basin

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Expected Impacts Climate Change  In summer, water shortages due to decreasing precipitation, increased likelihood of drought periods, increased probability of low-flow conditions (decline of natural buffering capacity due to retreat of glaciers and snow fields) and intensification of water demand for irrigation.  Due to increased likelihood of winter and spring floods - increasing demand to use reservoir storage for flood prevention.  Request from downstream areas for balancing water flows to buffer extremes (floods and droughts) - potential trade-offs in reservoir and flood management

ANU Workshop, August 2007  Safety, ensure protection against floods.  Environmental, re-establish and strengthen biological functions – more space for river.  Socio-economic, guarantee base for present and future socio-economic development of river basin  30 year project with estimated costs of 1 Bio CHF Objectives Third Rhone Correction

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Plans for Change – Use conflicts….

ANU Workshop, August 2007  Political rhetoric of change in management not confirmed by real changes at operational level  Conservative strategy driven by technical and economic considerations and avoidance of use conflicts  Stakeholder involvement only at level of consultation  Potential opportunities for learning and change not effective due to strong initial framing  Uncertainties and climate change no prominent role Summary of Current Outcomes

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Structural system-level constraints as barriers to implement sustainable - integrated and adaptive management approaches

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Current state with regulated and controlled rivers Adaptive management with a multi-functional dynamic landscape Paradigm of water management Management as control - Technology driven. Risk can be quantified and optimal strategies can be chosen. Implementation of controllable and predictable technical infrastructure (reservoirs, dams) based on fixed regulations for acceptable risk- thresholds Adaptive and integrated water management. “Living with water”. Robust strategies are negotiated. Implementation of multi-functional landscape and increased adaptive capacity of the system. Designed risk dialogue and cascade of adaptation measures to live with extremes. Comparison current - potential future state

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Current state with regulated and controlled rivers Adaptive management with a multi-functional dynamic landscape Stakeholder groups and their roles Authorities as regulators in highly regulated environment Engineers who construct and operate dams, reservoirs and levees House owners living in floodplains Agriculture using land in vicinity of rivers …………………. Authorities as contributors to an adaptive management process with shared responsibilities Neutral third parties act as facilitators of the decision making process Engineers with skills in systems design House owners with property in floodplain at higher flooding risk Tourism industry and tourists using the floodplains for recreation ………… Comparison current - potential future state

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Command, Control Regime Transition to Adaptive Management Integrated, Adaptive Regime Governance Sectoral Integration Scale and Analysis of operation Information mangement Infrastructure Finances and risk Centralized, hierarchical, narrow stakeholder participation Sectors separately analysed resulting in policy conflicts and emergent chronic problems Transboundary problems ermerge when river sub- basins are exclusive scale of analysis and management Understanding fragmented by gaps and lack of integration of proprietary information sources Massive, centralized infrastructure, single sources of design, power, delivery Financial resources concentrated in structural protection Build Adaptive Capacity to reduce vulnerability Integrate IWRM with spatial planning Resolve resource use conflicts Address poverty, health, gender issues Create and adapt transboundary institutions to driving forces and pressures Test and incorporate novel monitoring systems into decision making processes Test and apply innovative methods and technologies for river basin buffering capacity Investigate management of risks to identify innovative approaches in the financial sector Polycentric, horizontal, broad stakeholder participation Cross-sectoral analysis Identify emergent problems and integrates policy implementatio Transboundary issues addressed by mulitiples scales of analysis and management Comprehensive understanding achieved by open, shared information sources that fill gaps and facilitate integration Appropriate scale, decentralized, diverse sources of design, power, delivery Financial resources diversified using a broad set of private and public financial instruments Enhance governance with stakeholder processes integrated with policy and science Elements of Transition

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Requirements for governance  Adaptive and integrative to enable learning and change  Transparent and accountable  Multi-level and adapted to regional context  Balance between stability and change Combination of  Bureaucratic hierarchies – formal legislation  Markets – economic transactions, formal institutions  Networks – formal and informal institutions, emergent behavior

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Research needs  Establishment of global data base on governance regimes (includes policy frameworks, actor networks, formal and informal institutions, characterization of environmental conditions and resource base) and their effectiveness to balance human and ecosystem water demands.  Comparative analyses across basins at global scale to identify which factors determine effectiveness of governance regimes and processes of change.  Identification of need for global policy frameworks  Strengthening of the science-policy dialogue on basin and global scales – Environmental Flows Network

ANU Workshop, August 2007 The journey continues…

ANU Workshop, August 2007

What is Social Learning?  Social learning refers to the capacity of all stakeholders to deal with different interests and points of view and to collectively manage the resources in a sustainable way.  Important are issues such as the development of a shared problem definition and shared understanding of the physical system at stake, perception issues and mental frames, negotiation processes and strategies, and the quality of communication.

ANU Workshop, August 2007

STRUCTURE - CONTEXT  Centralised political and economic systems  Privatisation and commercialisation of environment.  Bureaucratic systems.  Political secrecy and poor public access to information. PROCESS  Lack of clear objectives & process for involvement  Lack of time and effort taken to build trust  Lack of process to explore common ground rules and manage conflicts constructively  Lack of process to link planning at different levels of scale  Ineffective communication of technical issues Factors constraining SL

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Factors supporting SL STRUCTURE - CONTEXT  Increased decentralisation of power  Move away from bureaucracy  Political recognition of the positive value of the public voice  Greater environmental awareness by members of the public  Developing a more consensus based culture PROCESS  Provision of sufficient time and resources  Opportunities for participation early enough in process  Use of facilitators and process management  Definition of commonly accepted ground rules  Explicit recognition of different perspectives

ANU Workshop, August 2007 MTF – a concept and a process IWRM (GWP, 2000)Adaptive Management (Levine, 2004; Pahl-Wostl et al., 2007) Note : numbers at the end of sentence refer to steps in policy cycle (see figure 1) Transition Management (Rotmans & Brugge, 2005) (i) Establish Stakeholder AM teamSet up transition arena / connecting of actors (1) Establish status (water resources issues seen in national context) (ii) Problem identification: different perspectives need to be taken into account in a participatory process (0). Structuring the problem (2) Establish overall goals (iii) Establish goals and (learning) objectives; The design of policies should include scenario analyses (1). Creating transition vision (3) Build commitment to reform Process (political will, awareness, multistakeholder dialogue) Creating transition images (4) Analyse gaps (WRM functions required and management potentials and constraints) (iv) Specify conceptual model of the system (expressing collective understanding of systems functioning including uncertainties and external factors) Develop transition paths (5) Prepare strategy and action plan (v) Develop hypotheses; Policies must be understood as semi-open experiments that require a careful evaluation of potential positive or negative feedback mechanisms by planning and implementing other related policies (1,2). Formulate transition agenda (vi) Design management experiments (interventions) for testing hypotheses; Decisions should be evaluated in part by the costs of reversing them. (3) (vii) Design monitoring plan for measuring impacts of experiments (3) (6) Build commitment to actionsEstablish coalitions (7) Implement frameworks(viii) Implement management interventionsStart up experiments / pilots (8) Monitor(ix) MonitorRun experiments (9) Evaluate progress(x) Evaluate impacts in terms of management goals and hypothesesEvaluate experiments (xi) Reasses and adjust problem statement, goals, conceptual model, interventions and monitoring plan; A continuous re-planning and re- programming based on the results of monitoring and evaluation should be institutionalized (4).

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Double Loop Left side: standard management cycle Operational goals are defined that allow assessing efficiency and effectiveness of measures and that are the base for monitoring programs In this phase the measure are implemented on the ground at the appropriate level Monitoring serves to assess if the implemented measures lead to the achievement of the set goals and to detect potential unexpected and undesired consequences. Operational goal The strategic goals for the management process are set to determine a desirable state of the water system The current state of the water system is assessed to estimate the distance of the current state from the desired goal state A plan with specific measures including an assessment of their effectiveness is developed Policies are developed that represent coherent approaches how and in which time frame to improve the current state of the water system

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Cross awareness threshold: Dissatisfaction with current management approach beyond a threshold where the management decides to act A selected group of actors engages in a moderated process of social learning. May succeed in reframing the problem. The actors in the learning platform have succeeded in reframing and restructuring the problem Create Vision: Discussions are synthesized and brought into a single and inspiring vision Developing paths: Scenarios are developed that illustrate barriers and bridges how to realize the visions Broaden SH process: Bring in other SH to get access to different kind of knowledge and build critical mass for support Choosing viable paths, assess the resources required (and make a plan on how to get the resources to go down these paths. More stakeholders are involved in the whole process. This requires new methods to structure participation and information campaigns. A tactical campaign is launched The participants in the learning platform analyses specific possibilities along these paths. This is the first stage of more intensive discussions with the overall management board Demonstration projects with prototype experiments at smaller scale Build Capacity: Sustain momentum by continuing to gather resources (e.g. money) and inspire people; system can still die if not more substances are added (e.g. money or other resources) Evaluate success of pilots and think about upscaling and adjustments to actor coalition, the visions and the next round of experiments Double Loop Left side: standard management cycle

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Requirement for tools  of critical importance: initial phases of starting learning cycles –decision of management board to initiate a learning process –support of the initial phases of a learning cycle  Tools are needed that support –critical analysis and reflection on strategic goals –Evaluation of current state  group model building (causal loop diagrams, scenario development)  behavioural simulation and role playing game

ANU Workshop, August 2007 SoA report

ANU Workshop, August 2007 Portal context NeWater Portal