Integrated and adaptive water resources management: exploring public participation in the UK

Abstract

Contemporary water management practices worldwide are informed by two leading paradigms: integrated water resources management and adaptive management. While previous scholarship has already studied the two paradigms, as well as their central principles, in isolation, there are few attempts only to theorise their interaction and to explore empirically their parallel implementation and co-existence. This article contributes to this emerging literature. Its ambition is to review and complement current frameworks conceptualising the impact of integrated water resources management on adaptive capacity. To this end, the article analyses the involvement of non-state actors in United Kingdom water and flood risk management, specifically in England and Wales. This is an exciting case to study: for many decades, environmental management in England and Wales had a reputation for being a technocratic exercise. In the past 15 years, however, environmental authorities undertook major efforts to lay the foundations for enhanced collaboration and stakeholder participation, amongst others encouraged by two European Union initiatives reflecting integrated and adaptive management principles: the Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive. The empirical evidence suggests a spurious link only between the two paradigms. This contradicts conventional wisdom which, so I argue, tends to oversimplify a complex relationship. I introduce three theory-informed arguments -relating to conceptual diversity, path dependency, and the nature of the dependent variable -to address these shortcomings and to contribute to theory building.

Preliminary flood risk assessment: Case study of systematic processing of available or readily derivable information

“…PFRA reflects a new paradigm of flood issues (Plate, 2002; Werritty, 2005; Johnson et al , 2005; Fritsch, 2016), that is, flood risk assessment takes into account the flood hazard and negative consequences (Wisner et al , 2004). Flood hazard is a process that usually begins with a rainfall event and continues to transform the rainwater into different forms of runoff, eventually threatening the property and health of the population.…”

Who Governs at What Price? Technocratic Dominance, Ways of Knowing, and Long-Term Resilience of Brazil's Water System

“…However, while the conceptualization of these new forms has advanced, their practices and implementation are still lacking (Medema et al, 2008;Pahl-Wostl, 2009;Brugnach, 2017). Scholars have also discussed the compatibility and relationship between existing IWRM and AM (Engle, 2011;Fritsch, 2017), with a few proposing a broader interpretation of the IWRM framework that expands the role of alternative narratives and WoKs as an avenue to balance the weight of technical experts and a focus on technocratic solutions (Mukhtarov and Gerlak, 2014). In this conceptualization, increasing the role of alternative WoK in decision-making may facilitate effective transitions to AM practices.…”

Interdisciplinary and participatory approaches: the key to effective groundwater management

“…There is a growing consensus that the challenges of the changing world-not only those related to global warming, but also land and water-use changes arising from social, political and demographic pressures-can only be rationally and effectively addressed through collaboration between experts and practitioners from different disciplines (Holm et al 2013;Nature 2015). Furthermore, there is growing agreement that science needs to build on stakeholder opinions and processes in order to generate useful knowledge that may lead to positive outcomes in terms of sustainable and equitable groundwater management (Borowski and Hare 2007;Fritsch 2016;Pahl-Wostl et al 2007). Effective social organization is a prerequisite for the promotion of sound governance of groundwater resources (Garduño et al 2010;Lopez-Gunn and Cortina 2006;Mukherji and Shah 2005;van Steenbergen 2006).…”