Managing water through change and uncertainty: comparing lessons from the adaptive co-management literature to recent policy developments in England

Luke Whaley,Edward Weatherhead

doi:10.1080/09640568.2015.1090959

Abstract

Water management is set to become increasingly variable and unpredictable, in particular because of climate change. This paper investigates the extent to which water policy in England provides an enabling environment for ‘adaptive co-management’, which its proponents claim can achieve the dual objective of ecosystem protection and livelihood sustainability under conditions of change and uncertainty. Five policy categories are derived from a literature review, and are used to conduct a directed content analysis of seven key water policy documents. The findings reveal that although, in part, English water policy serves as an enabling environment for adaptive co-management, there is a level of discrepancy between substantive aspects of the five policy categories and water policy in England. Addressing these discrepancies will be important if English water policy is to allow for the emergence of processes, like adaptive co-management, that are capable of coping with the challenges that lie ahead.

Highlights

Widespread water quality issues, regional and localised periods of water scarcity, a growing population, and a more variable and uncertain future climate means that in the upcoming years water governance in England faces a stern test (Weatherhead and Howden 2009; Collins and Ison 2009; Barker and Turner 2011)
The key features of water policy in England that we identified as facilitating adaptive co-management are: (1) a recognition of the many economic and non-economic functions that water and the water environment perform, using the framework of the ecosystem services approach, (2) an acceptance that change is an inherent feature of water management that is only likely to become more prominent in the future, (3) a desire to enhance the resilience of the system, (4) the promotion of participatory and locally based management approaches that are linked across scales of organisation, (5) a growing awareness of water management as a long-term social process
We have examined current water policy in England through the lens of adaptive co-management, an emerging approach to environmental and natural resource management that is claimed to enhance the resilience of complex socialÀecological systems under conditions of change and uncertainty

Summary

Introduction

Widespread water quality issues, regional and localised periods of water scarcity, a growing population, and a more variable and uncertain future climate means that in the upcoming years water governance in England faces a stern test (Weatherhead and Howden 2009; Collins and Ison 2009; Barker and Turner 2011). As a result, enhancing the capacity of England’s system of water governance to cope with future uncertainties becomes a crucial objective. This contrasts starkly with the rigid and bureaucratic approach that came to characterise water management in England during the last century, “founded on the assumption of a stable and certain operating environment in which discrete policy problems could be addressed rationally and objectively by neutral officials acting alone” (Watson and Treffny 2009, 450).

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Conclusion