Capsule Summary We found a range of user needs to inform the development of drought monitoring and early warning systems in four countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region through engagement with governmental, academic, civil society, private sector, and international organizations.

The Middle East and North Africa region experiences severe socioeconomic and political impacts during droughts and faces increasing drought risk in future climate projections. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s Sendai Framework and the International Drought Management Programme provide a global standard (a norm) to manage droughts through natural hazard risk reduction approaches. We use participatory engagement to evaluate whether norm diffusion has taken place in four countries. Data were collected in interviews, focus groups, workshops, and policy documents. Analysis reveals incomplete norm diffusion; stakeholders subscribe to relevant values, but national policies and implementation do not fully reflect the norm. Process tracing reveals that the availability of drought early warning data is a key barrier to risk reduction. Further more, a drought early warning system would not be feasible or sufficient unless paired with policy measures and financial mechanisms to reduce the political and economic costs of a drought declaration.

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This article presents the Liwa Oasis as a hydrosocial territory. It is defined by its natural resource, social, economic, and political context and we show how these manifest in policy and practice. The article identifies these components through analysis of the political economy of water management and agricultural production systems. Two distinct hydrosocial periods are defined: from independence in 1971 to the formation of agencies with water sustainability remits in 2006, and then from 2010 to the present, when subsidy regimes incentivized changes to cropping in existing agricultural production systems. The changes between these periods reflect alterations in the hydrosocial cycle stemming from natural resource degradation and from how agricultural policy responded to it, while still meeting social stability and food security objectives. In Liwa, water management and agricultural production regimes reflect the distributive nature of the state, in that agricultural subsidies and payments are a significant source of supplementary income for UAE citizens. The current hydrosocial cycle leads to major groundwater resource degradation, which is beginning to pose a major challenge. This disruption is at the heart of the hydrosocial dialectic playing out now in Liwa: resource degradation and depletion will ultimately require new patterns of resource utilization. Arriving at new practices will require new laws, policies and modes of governance, which will alter the political, social, and economic context.

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A method for objectively estimating reference states for suspended fine sediment (turbidity) is presented. To be fit for water policy development and implementation the method had to satisfy four requirements: (1) the method must not be dependent on data from minimally-disturbed reference sites; (2) the method must facilitate characterization of reference states throughout heterogeneous river networks, given patchy data; (3) the classification of reference states must be relevant and legitimate to end-users; (4) the method should provide several classifications of reference states at different spatial resolutions allowing selection of the resolution yielding the most parsimonious classification of reference states throughout the network. Implementing the method involves two stages: (1) Development of a river classification based on sediment supply and retention regimes (defining ‘turbidity classes’) at multiple spatial resolutions. (2) At each resolution, for each turbidity class, estimation of a reference state based on relationships between turbidity and anthropogenic stressors, then objective selection of the resolution yielding the most parsimonious classification of reference states throughout the network. Implementing the method requires a river network GIS and turbidity data within classes, preferably from monitoring sites spanning the domains of the anthropogenic stressor variables used for model-based estimation of reference states. A method is presented for estimating reference states for suspended fine sediment (turbidity) throughout spatially heterogeneous river networks. Development of the method was guided by the requirements of policy analysts during reform of water policy in New Zealand. The method presented was used to develop fine sediment regulatory thresholds of national water policy.

Water allocation is an increasingly prominent policy issue in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), where regulation has largely failed to secure sustainable management of water resources over the past three decades. Although there is abundant water in NZ, the cumulative effects of abstractions and diversions, alongside diffuse pollution from agriculture and other urban and rural land uses, have led to highly degraded and depleted water resources in some locations. This has had significant social and ecological impacts. As a result, governmental planning and decision-making around water allocation (and land-use and development more widely) are increasingly driven by the imperatives to maintain ‘environmental flows’ and safeguard community values. In the NZ context, the Government has special obligations to partner with Māori (Indigenous New Zealanders) in all aspects of environmental management. This task must be informed by principles and values from Te Ao Māori (the Māori world), meaningfully involve Māori in governance and management, and recognise Māori rights and interests in water. Local government (regional councils), which are responsible for defining allocation rules, must ensure rules serve broader freshwater management objectives that are developed through engagement with Māori and wider communities, and which safeguard the health and wellbeing of waterbodies, associated ecosystems, and people.

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