Natural resources management in general, and water resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. Management practices have largely been developed and implemented by experts using technical means based on designing systems that can be predicted and controlled. In recent years, stakeholder involvement has gained increasing importance. Collaborative governance is considered to be more appropriate for integrated and adaptive management regimes needed to cope with the complexity of social-ecological systems. The paper presents a concept for social learning and collaborative governance developed in the European project HarmoniCOP (Harmonizing COllaborative Planning). The concept is rooted in the more interpretive strands of the social sciences emphasizing the context dependence of knowledge. The role of frames and boundary management in processes of learning at different levels and time scales is investigated. The foundation of social learning as investigated in the HarmoniCOP project is multiparty collaboration processes that are perceived to be the nuclei of learning processes. Such processes take place in networks or "communities of practice" and are influenced by the governance structure in which they are embedded. Requirements for social learning include institutional settings that guarantee some degree of stability and certainty without being rigid and inflexible. Our analyses, which are based on conceptual considerations and empirical insights, suggest that the development of such institutional settings involves continued processes of social learning. In these processes, stakeholders at different scales are connected in flexible networks that allow them to develop the capacity and trust they need to collaborate in a wide range of formal and informal relationships ranging from formal legal structures and contracts to informal, voluntary agreements.

Uncertainty of late has become an increasingly important and controversial topic in water resource management, and natural resources management in general. Diverse managing goals, changing environmental conditions, conflicting interests, and lack of predictability are some of the characteristics that decision makers have to face. This has resulted in the application and development of strategies such as adaptive management, which proposes flexibility and capability to adapt to unknown conditions as a way of dealing with uncertainties. However, this shift in ideas about managing has not always been accompanied by a general shift in the way uncertainties are understood and handled. To improve this situation, we believe it is necessary to recontextualize uncertainty in a broader way-relative to its role, meaning, and relationship with participants in decision making-because it is from this understanding that problems and solutions emerge. Under this view, solutions do not exclusively consist of eliminating or reducing uncertainty, but of reframing the problems as such so that they convey a different meaning. To this end, we propose a relational approach to uncertainty analysis. Here, we elaborate on this new conceptualization of uncertainty, and indicate some implications of this view for strategies for dealing with uncertainty in water management. We present an example as an illustration of these concepts.

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This article develops a conceptual framework to theorize about and to intervene in multi-party collaboration projects related to natural resource issues. It is a recent trend in public and private interorganizational policy that multiple actors get involved to collaborate around issues of water and soil management, nature preservation, land use, farming practices, introduction of new technologies in life sciences and related problem domains. Awareness grows that blue print planningimplementation approaches are no longer sufficient to obtain viable and sustainable outcomes. The technical complexity and social embeddedness of these issues, require the collaboration of public authorities, private business, scientific experts, groups of users and social interest groups, non-governmental organizations and representatives of stakeholders in the particular ecological domain. The central concern is always an interdependent involvement of the stakeholders, the development of a shared problem definition, the coordination of the different actions on all levels and the orientation towards a shared common script and action strategy. Social psychology and particularly organizational psychology, building on theories of interorganizational collaboration and social and organizational development, are challenged to make a contribution here. The different stakeholders engage in joint practices where the acknowledgement and the development of viable interdependencies are at stake. Learning about those interdependencies is considered in this article as the critical constitutive process and form of these multi-party projects. Through sharing problem perspectives and working with different kinds of knowledge and competencies, multiple actors or stakeholder parties co-construct a social learning process in an emerging community of practice.

Uncertainty is an increasingly important concern when trying to manage complex systems of interrelated natural resources. Scientific knowledge or necessary information may be lacking or incomplete. Additionally, the multiple and interdependent users of those resources may diverge in defining what really is at stake. When they frame issues in very different ways, ambiguity results, i.e., the existence of two or more equally plausible interpretation possibilities. Environmental management in these conditions implies a shift in attention from solving clearly delineated problems to continuous negotiating and tuning between different actors and expertise domains. This requires dealing with the frame differences in a reciprocal way by mutually acknowledging frames and connecting them. Some or all parties will have to revise, enlarge or reframe the way they relate to the issues and to each other, in order to support mutual understanding and common action. The contribution of experts does not consist then in providing total predictability nor in predefining issues and solutions, but in supporting a joint learning and negotiation process among different actors and in feeding this process with relevant information. Behavioural simulations may play an important function to stimulate multi-actor learning and negotiation processes.

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Although cross-disciplinary research collaboration is necessary to achieve a better understanding of how human and natural systems are dynamically linked, it often turns out to be very difficult in practice. We outline a framing approach to cross-disciplinary research that focuses on the different perspectives that researchers from different backgrounds use to make sense of the issues they want to research jointly. Based on interviews, participants' evaluations, and our own observations during meetings, we analyze three aspects of frame diversity in a large-scale research project. First, we identify dimensions of difference in the way project members frame the central concept of adaptive water management. Second, we analyze the challenges provoked by the multiple framings of concepts. Third, we analyze how a number of interventions (interactive workshops, facilitation, group model building, and concrete case contexts) contribute to the connection and integration of different frames through a process of joint learning and knowledge construction.

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