Structural and Contentual Complexity in Water Governance

Rudy Vannevel,Peter L M Goethals

doi:10.3390/su13179751

Abstract

Social-ecological systems and governance are complex systems and crises that affect those systems are likely to be complex as well. Environmental topics are multi-faceted with respect to both structure and content. Structural complexity is about societal and institutional organization and management, whereas contentual complexity deals with environmental (or societal) analyses, knowledge, and problem-solving. Interactions between both are manifold, and it is essential they are included in decision-making. Describing these interactions results in a series of nineteen units, arranged in a matrix according to their prevailing mutual dependencies. These units show dominant processes and concepts, representative of environmental analysis. This approach, called ACCU (aggregation of concepts and complex adapted systems units), is provided with evidence through practices of, in particular, water governance.

Highlights

Water governance is characterized by a wide diversity of policy areas, decentralized water policy-making, a sectoral fragmentation of water-related tasks across ministries and public agencies, a diversity of actors involved in water policy making, and policy makers facing conflicting objectives [1]
Biodiversity loss, shrinking natural resources, and pandemics lead to questioning the prevailing paradigms and call for more adaptive and integrative approaches to respond to societal shifts
There is an increasing conviction that current economic practices and technological developments alone do not hold the solution to these kinds of issues, and even lose value in favour of stakeholders’ involvement [3,4,5]

Summary

Introduction

Water governance is characterized by a wide diversity of policy areas, decentralized water policy-making, a sectoral fragmentation of water-related tasks across ministries and public agencies, a diversity of actors involved in water policy making, and policy makers facing conflicting objectives [1]. Content and context are part of a webbed structure, making any analysis or decision difficult and incomplete They are at the basis of the ‘governance gaps’ defined by OECD [1] (policy gap, information gap, capacity gap, accountability gap, administrative gap, funding gap, and objective gap), potentially contributing to uncertainty in decision-making. There is an increasing conviction that current economic practices and technological developments alone do not hold the solution to these kinds of issues, and even lose value in favour of stakeholders’ involvement [3,4,5] This results in a common and gradual shift from an evidence-based scientific-technological towards a more tentative social-involvement form

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion