1. 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

2. 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.
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

3. 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

4. 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
This definition of a management regime is close to the rergime concept used in the literature on socio-technical transitions (e.g. Smith,A., Sterling,A., and Berkhout,F The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions. Research Policy, 34, ).
It is broader than the definition of (international) political regimes used in the political sciences.
ANU Workshop, August 2007

5. Paradigm shifts in water management
The concept of water management regimes reflects the idea that water management in river basins has self-organized and has to be described as a strongly interdependent system with internal logic.
ANU Workshop, August 2007

6. Paradigm Shift in Water Management
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
Pahl-Wostl et al, 2006
Paradigms in Water Management
Newater Deliverable 1.1.2
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

8. Scale of Analysis and Operation Information Management
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

9. Lock-In effects prevent change
Dependence generates stability
Lock-In effects prevent change
Regulatory Framework
Consumer
behavior
and habits
Long lived
interdependent
infrastructure
Engineers and
Planning rules
One reason for the barriers to change is the strong interdependence of the factors stabilizing current management regimes.
In flood management for exampled long-lived infrastructure (dikes, reservoirs) and engineering design rules (build dikes for flood protection and how to design the size of a dam), regulatory frameworks and expectations of consumers living in flood plains have all co-evolved and depend on each other.
See also the next example for water supply management from Switzerland.

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

11. ANU Workshop, August 2007

12. Understanding change – some conceptual considerations
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

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

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

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

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

18. NeWater Case Studies
ANU Workshop, August 2007

19. 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
Structure of the NeWater Project
Details
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

21. 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

22. 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

23. Elements of the framework
ANU Workshop, August 2007

24. ANU Workshop, August 2007

25. Learning processes as integral part of water management
Set strategic goals and assess current state
Restructuring of problem and solutions
Develop vision
Formal management process
Learning processes as integral part of water management
Learning cylce
Develop policy and operational management plan
Scenarios – analysis of development paths – Implementation strategies
Design experiments
Implement measures and monitor impact
Pilote studies –
capacity development
Evaluation
Upscaling?
A = Structural Change  Transition
B = Experimentation with measures  Operational adaptive management
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

27. Comparative Analyses between cases
ANU Workshop, August 2007

28. 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

29. Outlook to future products / activities
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

30. 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

31. ANU Workshop, August 2007

32. 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

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

34. 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

35. 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

36. 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

37. River
Road
ANU Workshop, August 2007

38. Flood Protection in Swiss Rhone Basin
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

39. 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

40. Objectives Third Rhone Correction
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

42. Summary of Current Outcomes
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

44. Comparison current - potential future state
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.
ANU Workshop, August 2007

45. Comparison current - potential future state
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
…………
ANU Workshop, August 2007

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

47. 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

48. 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

49. END
THE
The journey continues…
ANU Workshop, August 2007

50. ANU Workshop, August 2007

51. 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

52. ANU Workshop, August 2007

53. Factors constraining SL
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

54. 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

55. 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 team
Set 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 actions
Establish coalitions
(7) Implement frameworks
(viii) Implement management interventions
Start up experiments / pilots
(8) Monitor
(ix) Monitor
Run experiments
(9) Evaluate progress
(x) Evaluate impacts in terms of management goals and hypotheses
Evaluate 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

56. Double Loop Left side: standard management cycle
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
Left side:
standard management cycle
Policies are developed that represent coherent approaches how and in which time frame to improve the current state of the water system
Operational goals are defined that allow assessing efficiency and effectiveness of measures and that are the base for monitoring programs
A plan with specific measures including an assessment of their effectiveness is developed
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
ANU Workshop, August 2007

57. Double Loop Left side: standard management cycle
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
Left side:
standard management cycle
Create Vision: Discussions are synthesized and brought into a single and inspiring vision
Broaden SH process: Bring in other SH to get access to different kind of knowledge and build critical mass for support
Developing paths: Scenarios are developed that illustrate barriers and bridges how to realize the visions
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
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)
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
Evaluate success of pilots and think about upscaling and adjustments to actor coalition, the visions and the next round of experiments
Demonstration projects with prototype experiments at smaller scale
ANU Workshop, August 2007

58. 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

59. ANU Workshop, August 2007
SoA report

60. NeWater Portal
Portal context
ANU Workshop, August 2007