Participatory Water Resources Management Research Articles

Normalizing Masculinities in Water Bureaucracy in Thailand

This article addresses the question of whether the culture of masculinity, which is dominant in the water bureaucracy of Thailand, has been changing since the country officially adopted the international paradigm shift towards an integrated approach that emphasizes, among other things, gender equality and women's participation in water resources management. Despite official rhetoric, masculinities have held sway in organizational structure and behavior. Women in both traditional and new water agencies, and those under their mandates, continue to be disadvantaged and excluded. More potent change measures, such as strong gender-sensitive capacity building, are needed. To succeed, such measures may also require broader reforms in state bureaucracy.

Community Participation in Water Resources Management in South Africa

Community Participation in Water Resources Management in South Africa

Time to Talk? How the Structure of Dialog Processes Shapes Stakeholder Learning in Participatory Water Resources Management

Public participation is increasingly viewed as a means to initiate social learning among stakeholders, resource managers, and policy makers rather than to ensure democratic representation. This growing understanding of participatory activities as learning platforms can be seen as a direct response to shifts in how natural resources management is framed, namely as uncertain, non-linear, and interlinked with the human dimensions. Social learning as it is discussed within the natural resources management (NRM) context features a process of collective and communicative learning that is thought to enable stakeholders to arrive at a shared understanding of a specific environmental situation and to develop new solutions as well as ways of acting together in pursuit of a shared ambition. Yet, although case-study research on social-learning processes provides multiple accounts of positive experiences, there are also reports of mistaken learning, the intensification of tensions or conflict, and failure to reach agreement or verifiable consensus. Based on results of a postal survey of stakeholder experiences in two involvement initiatives, we can draw two main conclusions: First, social learning is a multidimensional and dynamic process and, as such, evolves in stages and to various degrees. Second, stakeholder processes are shaped and affected by a multitude of factors that constrain the occurrence of learning processes and eventually limit the extent to which these can contribute to sustainable NRM. Foremost, the fact that the intensity of stakeholder learning differed in the two investigated initiatives reinforces the role organizational arrangements play in encouraging the type of communicative process necessary for stakeholder learning.

Traditional pastoralist decision-making processes: lessons for reforms to water resources management in Kenya

The purpose of this paper is to consider the vision for public participation in water resources management embedded in Kenya's 2002 Water Act, as it relates to pastoralists. The Act envisions that responsibility for management of water resources at the local level will be devolved to community-level bodies. Our approach was qualitative and included interviews with government officials and Gabra pastoralists, observation of and participation in traditional Gabra korra meetings and focus group discussions. We conclude that the ‘institutional model’ of participation being pursued through the creation of Water Resource User Associations is particularly problematic for mobile pastoralists such as the Gabra, and we suggest an alternative strategy that would focus on the fostering of deliberation processes.

Catchment Residents-Based SWOT Analysis of a Reservoir Ecosystem for Sustainable Water Management: A Case Study From the Region of Alentejo, Portugal

Abstract The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC) makes public participation a requirement in managing water resources and maintaining water quality in a watershed. Whilst participatory approaches to sustainable water management are supported by a growing body of research, actively involving people affected by water resources is far from straightforward. This paper investigates the use of the Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis framework as a consultation tool to support catchment populations participation in water resources management by a case study developed in a reservoir ecosystem. The application of a multiple correspondence analysis helped identify underlying structures of respondents SWOT stated issues and their associations with socio-demographic characteristics and type of reservoir ecosystem uses. In particular, five clusters of responses were suggested by this analysis, focusing on: the use and importance of the reservoir ecosystem for agriculture, existing qualities/amenities at the study area for recreation, socioeconomic issues, concerns about littering and litter management of the area, and issues about reservoir water quality and management. Overall, the issues raised information about public perceptions and understandings of the reservoir ecosystem, which may enable decision makers and water managers to perform fair and sustainable management of water resources.

Public participation in water resources management of Haihe river basin, China: the analysis and evaluation of status quo

Effective public participation is the key factor to improve the efficiency of the river basin's water resource management and succeed in its comprehensive management. Anyang and Baoding city as typical urban modules, Qingfeng and Laishui county as rural modules, Boai and Anxin County as eco-sensitive area, in the upper and middle reaches of Haihe River Basin are selected in this paper for the research. Methods such as questionnaire survey, interview with interest groups and expert consultation are adopted to analyze and evaluate the environment awareness of residents in this basin, and the current situation of participation in the water resource management of the river basin (WRMRB) with one ten-thousandth of population as sampling. Residents among different reaches and different modules in Haihe River Basin are compared and evaluated in terms of environment knowledge, information circulation channel, water environment satisfaction, willingness to participate, and actual participation rate, etc. As the results show, the status quo of public participation in water resource management (WRM) is eco-sensitive areas>urban modules>rural modules, and the middle reaches> the upper reaches. The main channels for the public to obtain environment knowledge and information are personal experience and passive acceptance through media publicity; the channels of participation are not smooth, and the actual participation rate is lower than the percentage of the willingness to participate, which means there is a high uncertainty of willingness to participate. The main participation activities which the government carried out are publicity and education. It means that they failed to consider the river basin as a whole, and were unable to communicate smoothly within the upper and lower reaches of the basin and make the corresponding design; meanwhile, the decision-making was weak and the whole-process participation was not in place. The residents of this river basin haven’t formed a set of commonly-accepted values for this basin. Suggestions are made in three aspects: decision-making and whole-process participation; non-governmental environmental protection organizations’ role in promotion; environmental education in schools.

Evaluation of Bayesian Networks in Participatory Water Resources Management, Upper Guadiana Basin, Spain

Stakeholder participation is becoming increasingly important in water resources management. In participatory processes, stakeholders contribute by putting forward their own perspective, and they benefit by enhancing their understanding of the factors involved in decision making. A diversity of modeling tools can be used to facilitate participatory processes. Bayesian networks are well suited to this task for a variety of reasons, including their ability to structure discussions and visual appeal. This research focuses on developing and testing a set of evaluation criteria for public participation. The advantages and limitations of these criteria are discussed in the light of a specific participatory modeling initiative. Modeling work was conducted in the Upper Guadiana Basin in central Spain, where uncontrolled groundwater extraction is responsible for wetland degradation and conflicts between farmers, water authorities, and environmentalists. Finding adequate solutions to the problem is urgent because the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive requires all aquatic ecosystems to be in a “good ecological state” within a relatively short time frame. Stakeholder evaluation highlights the potential of Bayesian networks to support public participation processes.

Community and participation in water resources management: gendering and naturing development debates from Bangladesh

Community and participation have become popular in development discourse and practice, particularly in the global South and in relation to water resources management. Greater involvement of people in decisionmaking, implementation and evaluation of water management practices is expected to increase efficiency and equity in water projects. However, scholars have pointed out that such discourses are often problematically used and idealised, leading to the exacerbation of gender, class and other social differentiations. Drawing from a case study of drinking water contamination by arsenic in Bangladesh, this article examines the mobilisation and outcomes of participation and community in water provision and arsenic mitigation. Water hardship, conflicts and marginalisations are found to be products of social processes (that are gendered, classed and spatialised) as well as natural processes (local geohydrology, depth of arsenic sediments), in addition to the very ways that community and participation are conceptualised and practised. Nature/water comes to play a critical role in the ways that development interventions play out, thereby complicating the general debates around community and participation. This article seeks to problematise the ways that considerations of both the roles of nature and gender power relations can be more critically and productively engaged in development geography. As such, the article brings together debates in nature–society geography and development geography to argue that scholars studying community and participation need to pay greater attention not only to gender and spatial power relations, but also to the importance of geographical locations and the agency of heterogeneous nature in the ways water management and development interventions fail and succeed, and are thereby critiqued. More adaptive, reflexive and inclusive development realities that are simultaneously embedded in society and nature may then be envisioned, and more nuanced understandings of nature‐in‐development enabled.

Reflexive Water Management in Arid Regions: The Case of Iran

To illuminate the problems and perspectives of water management in Iran and comparable (semi-) arid Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, three paradigms can be distinguished: the traditional, the industrial and the reflexive paradigm. Each paradigm is characterised by its key technical system, its main social institution and its ethico-religious framework. Iran seems to be in a state of transition from the ‘hydraulic mission’ of industrial modernity to a more reflexive approach to water management. This article sketches the contours of the emerging paradigm: a complementary system of traditional and modern methods of water provision, a participatory water resources management and a ‘post-mechanistic’ ethico-religious framework.

Evaluating the success of public participation in water resources management: five key constituents

Public participation (PP) is increasingly expected to enhance the effectiveness of water resources management. This is recognized in recent legislation such as the European Union Water Framework Directive. We identify five key constituents that affect the success of PP processes and which can be used as indicators thereof. These comprise: 1) the scope of the participants; 2) communication with the public; 3) capacity building; 4) timing; and 5) financing of participation. They are based on the management of resources—namely time, human and financial resources—and on further aspects that emerge from the utilization of these resources throughout the PP process. Drawing on existing case studies from the European Union and Canada, we demonstrate the applicability of our evaluative scheme. We find severe deficits in the PP cases that can all be attributed to the five key constituents. Although not representative, our analysis points to important challenges for water policy, particularly in the European multi-level context.

Organizing Citizen Engagement for Democratic Environmental Planning

In recent years civic engagement emphasizing community involvement and collective learning has become a centerpiece of environmental management. This article explores civic participation in water resources management and whether a framework developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) fosters democratic environmental planning. We provide an overview of citizen involvement in water resource management, discuss the U.S. EPA framework, and highlight key issues with two case studies. It is widely acknowledged that lack of meaningful stakeholder and other public input in the planning process may lead to barriers to successful environmental management. Our case studies indicate that the U.S. EPA framework, while not new or especially innovative, represents a necessary commitment to civic engagement and provides a structure for organizing it. Findings from our study emphasize the importance of financial resources and strong commitment to the principle of civic engagement in order to increase and sustain the democratic underpinnings of environmental planning.

How participatory can participatory modeling be? Degrees of influence of stakeholder and expert perspectives in six dimensions of participatory modeling

The authors are involved in a project aiming at the development of a methodology for participatory modeling as a tool for public participation in water resource management. In this paper, some examples of different degrees of stakeholder influence in six key dimensions of participatory modeling are identified and discussed. Arnstein's (A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1969, 4, 216-224) critical discussion of different degrees of "real" decision-making power is taken as a point of departure to assess possible degrees of stakeholder influence. Can we as participatory modelers be sure that we are really inviting our research objects to an equal communicative relationship where local perspectives, knowledge and priorities are respected to the same extent as central and/or expert perspectives? This paper presents an approach that could be used as a tool for structured reflection to avoid unreflective tendencies towards expert knowledge dominance and low degree of stakeholders' real influence over the process.

Participants and non-participants of place-based groups: An assessment of attitudes and implications for public participation in water resource management

Policy-makers and public participation analysts face the question of who should be involved in environmental decision-making. Participants are often representatives of organized groups who share similar demographic and other characteristics. This raises concerns about the degree to which the interests and opinions of others are represented. The research presented here investigates the nature and degree of differences in environmental attitudes, specifically those toward water resource management efforts, among people who do and do not participate in place-based groups in metropolitan Portland, Oregon. Neighborhood associations and a watershed council were the focus of this research due to their involvement in land-use planning and resource activities. Thirty-four individual attitudinal judgments were evaluated, along with four indices representing attitudes toward resource protection goals, government, regulations, and economic measures. Survey findings revealed watershed council participants were more supportive of resource protection compared to others on all attitudinal dimensions except anthropocentric goals. In contrast, neighborhood association participants are relatively representative of non-participants except for heightened support for economic strategies. Participants in both groups exhibited higher socioeconomic status than non-participants. Written survey comments highlighted the perceived value of on-the-ground projects incorporating local input and feedback while interviews provided insights on how to expand participation in place-based groups and resource protection efforts.

Special Issue: Methods for Participatory Water Resources Management – Preface

Special Issue: Methods for Participatory Water Resources Management – Preface

Risk perception in participatory planning for water reuse

This paper focuses on how characterising and understanding the dissonance between stakeholder perceptions of risk could be of value when carrying out participatory planning of water reuse projects. Knowledge of the variation in stakeholders' concerns regarding risk from the onset of a participatory process, could breed insight and help guide the knowledge requirements of the stakeholder groups involved. The research input for this paper was generated from a questionnaire survey investigating stakeholders' views regarding wider participation in water resources management with particular regard to the following points: (1) What they considered to be the most important risks of a wastewater reuse project or scheme; (2) Individual expectations with regard to the coincidence level of risk perception between the stakeholder groups. Responses from four stakeholder groups (regulators, researchers, managers and domestic customers) are presented. Perspectives on the risks and uncertainties inherent in a project will probably vary from one stakeholder to another. The research findings suggest that levels of expected agreement regarding risk vary between different stakeholder groups. There is also a marked variability in expectations by risk type. Identification and characterisation of individual stakeholders' expectations and knowledge requirements with regard to risk could therefore help to form a sound basis for equitable deliberation, understanding and decision making within a social learning environment.

Preparing public participation at the catchment level: comparison of three methodologies applied to the Hérault river basin

Public participation in water resources management has increasingly been recommended to increase the effectiveness and the acceptability of proposed water management projects and plans. Different levels of public participation are possible depending on the governance context. This paper reports on the practical implementation of three different methodologies in the Hérault river catchment (France). The analysis of public view points, carried out using a quantitative opinion survey and focus groups, reveals important information needs which have to be fulfilled for any further consultation to be efficient. A complementary analysis of stakeholders' opinions, carried out through semi-structured interviews also highlights the need to construct a common knowledge base between stakeholders, expert and scientists. This is seen as a prerequisite to implementing more elaborated forms of participation.

Public Participation in Water Resources Management: Stakeholder Voices on Degree, Scale, Potential, and Methods in Future Water Management

The European Water Framework Directive puts strong emphasis on stakeholder and public participation in water management. Several practical questions regarding who should be involved, why, when, and how still remain unanswered. This paper investigates stakeholders' own experiences and views of increased public participation in water management. The article also explores the potential for increasing levels of participation by forming catchment committees with representation from stakeholder groups and through the use of various practical methods for participation. For both these aspects of participation, the views, expectations, and apprehensions of different stakeholder groups involved in nutrient loss management are investigated. Stakeholder opinions were collected by inviting representatives from five stakeholder groups within the Rönneå catchment in southern Sweden to a catchment dialog process.

What is Public Participation in Water Resources Management and Why is it Important?

Control of water is control of life. How we exercise this control reveals what we value, who we are, and what type of society we seek to become. Water management and its civil infrastructure is closely linked to our civic culture. Participation is central to such linkages. This paper looks at five dimensions of participation to discern why it is important to decision makers in water resources management.

ICT Tools to Support Public Participation in Water Resources Governance & Planning: Experiences from the Design and Testing of a Multi-Media Platform

Whilst the drivers for public participation in water resources management have been firmly established by the Water Framework Directive, guidance on the design, implementation and management of appropriate tools, particularly Information & Communication Technology (ICT) based tools, and processes to support such participation remains sparse. This paper begins by reviewing the motivations for stakeholder participation in water resources planning & governance and highlighting some of the methodological and technical problems associated with the design and deployment of suitable ICT platforms. It then goes on to report the design and field testing of a specific Multi-Media based ICT platform for use in stakeholder debates, drawing on case study material from a catchment in Southern France. Specifically, we focus our comments on the issues of content structuring, information presentation, knowledge quality and tool functionality, seen as the major determinants of the tool's ability to support dialogue among non-scientific stakeholders. Finally, we draw conclusions about the experimental deployment of the tool, draw out lessons for future design and implementation activities, and comment on some of the limitations emergent from the use of the tool.

Theory versus practice: The bureaucratic ethos of water resource management and administration in Pakistan

Cooperative interaction between the state and civil society actors can be a catalyst for equity and efficiency in resource management. By analyzing the perceptions of the Pakistani water bureaucracy towards civil society-based participatory management, the present paper hopes to contribute towards practical policy discourse on narrowing the gap between the state and civil society and the prospects for participatory water resources management. Pakistani water management bureaucracy as an integral part of a bureaucratic tradition, which is a lineal descendant of the British colonial Indian Civil Service, is structurally hostile towards the civil society. A series of interviews conducted with government officials at all levels of the water management bureaucracy in Pakistan indicates that most have a patronizing and adversarial attitude towards the public. A small minority of senior level officials, however, is beginning to recognize the value of public participation in water resources management. The interviews with water managers indicate that their assumptions and management of water resources are steeped in scientific modernity, which is not necessarily consonant with the public's discourse on water management. It is suggested that theoretically grounded, non-positivist research will contribute to generating knowledge that may facilitate better state and civil society synergy, at least in the realm of resource management.