Emergent principles for river management

Abstract

Paradigms for land and water management are on the move. New approaches are said to be, or meant to be, more ‘participatory’, ‘integrated’, ‘adaptive’, ‘ecosystem-based’ and so on. The present paper explores emergent principles for land and water management in ecological management theory, environmental science and the social sciences. These principles comprise adaptive management, opportunity-driven analysis, visions of managers and the public, and co-management that includes local and supra-local rationality. The paper concludes that for river management, these principles largely reinforce each other. This lays a basis for a style of river management in which the river managers may continue to be the guardians of science-based and whole-basin rationality, while at the same time interacting more successfully with society.