Relational quality and uncertainty in common pool\xa0water management: an exploratory lab experiment

Marcela Brugnach,Sander De Waard,Stefano Farolfi,Dimitri Dubois

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-94517-6

Abstract

If there is one certainty for the sustainable management of water resources is that facing uncertainty is an unavoidable matter. A concern that, in addition to the best available scientific knowledge and models, requires deep insights about the socio relational processes that underlie decision-making. Our objective here is to better understand if and how the socio relational environment in which decisions are made shapes decision-making under uncertainty in common pool water resource management. Our goal is twofold: methodological and analytical. It consists in designing experiments for carrying out uncertainty analysis to explore the influence that the relationships established among decision actors have in making decision choices under uncertainty in management processes. To this end, we developed one experimental game protocol, representing a typical water management scenario: irrigation, which we use to test two different conjectures about the combined effects of uncertainty and relationships. In doing so, we play close attention to the quality of relationships developed among players (acting as water managers), and how these relationships are structured and organized. Initial tests confirmed the importance that the relationships established among players have for coping with uncertainty in managing water resources.

Highlights

If there is one certainty for the sustainable management of water resources is that facing uncertainty is an unavoidable matter
As several scholars have already s uggested[16], social and natural systems are better conceived as single dynamic socio-ecological systems that are able to adapt and to change; where human actors play the dual role of modifying a system that they are part of, while at the
Aiming at a more comprehensive understanding of the role and function of collective decision-making, we questioned the influence of relationships in coalescing decision choices

Summary

Introduction

If there is one certainty for the sustainable management of water resources is that facing uncertainty is an unavoidable matter. Deep knowledge gaps remain regarding key features of collective behaviors and responses to uncertainty: how decision choices are influenced by the way in which decision-actors relate to one another as well as to the natural system in collective decision-making processes; and how these features can be better characterized and d escribed[9,10]. This raises methodological, conceptual and practical questions about how to better address uncertainty when managing natural resources. In such multi-actor-settings, uncertainties in the natural system are enmeshed with those related with the social system

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Conclusion