Toward the adaptive governance of transboundary water resources

Abstract

Transboundary water resources, such as international river basins, pose complex and often contentious management challenges. In response to the failures associated with the state-centric approach to the governance of international waters, discussions on transboundary water resources governance over the last two decades or so have focused largely on public involvement. The need to build resilience into such governance systems has been virtually overlooked. Based on a conceptualization of transboundary water resources as complex social-ecological systems, the manuscript proposes adaptive governance as a unifying framework for informing policies aimed at promoting the conservation of transboundary water resources in an increasingly unpredictable future. The key attributes of adaptive governance satisfy the requirements for good governance of transboundary water resources, as well as preparing the coupled social-ecological system to respond to unpredictable drivers of change.

Adaptive governance in the developing world: disaster risk reduction in the State of Odisha, India

“…The majority of studies have evaluated the adaptive governance concept in the area of water management. Particularly, prominent thematic areas on water included, for instance, trans-boundary water resources governance (Akamani & Wilson, 2011), management of river basins (Bakker & Morinville, 2013;Foerster, 2011Mandarano & Mason, 2013Schultz et al, 2015), groundwater and ecosystem services (Knüppe and Pahl-Wostl, 2013) and integrated water resource management (Herrfahrdt-Pähle, 2013;Rouillard, Heal, Ball, & Reeves, 2013).While the majority of studies have evaluated the adaptive governance concept in the area of water management and other ecosystems, fewer studies have explored adaptive governance for DRR (Djalante et al, 2013). And although the concept is being mentioned in the official document such as the Sendai Framework for DRR, it remains rarely explored on the ground and very few empirical examples are provided.…”

A table for five: Stakeholder perceptions of water governance in Alberta

“…(National Round • including, but extending beyond, conflict resolution (Funder et al, 2010); • promoting effective responses to changing political, economic, social and environmental conditions (Akamani and Wilson, 2011); • addressing uncertainty and ongoing change through knowledge development and application (de Löe et al, 2009), and • encouraging informal relationships (outside formal political structures) into formal decision-making processes (Innes et al, 2004).…”

Cross-scale interactions of socio-hydrological subsystems: examining the frontier of common pool resource governance in Arizona

“…Much of the water governance literature has focused on scale mismatch related to establishing the 'appropriate' boundaries for the system in terms of spatial extent (Moss 2012), but this issue is exacerbated by telecoupling and temporal scale (Evans et al 2009, Akamani andWilson 2011). Building upon the ideas of Gibson et al (2000), we illustrate the action situations for various actors with the spatial scale on the y-axis, and the temporal scale on the x-axis (figure 4).…”