Current Approaches to Participation in Water Management

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Current Approaches toParticipation in Water
Management

• Claudia Pahl-Wostl
• Institute of Environmental Systems Research
• University of Osnabrück

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Challenges for Water Management

• Technological tradition.
• Based on ability to predict and quantify risks
• Human behaviour as boundary condition.
• Uncertainties in climate change, economic
  development -gt flexible integrated management
  schemes.
• The Human Dimension gains in importance.

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Some activities at European Level FIRMA
HarmoniCOP
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HarmoniCOP HARMONIzing COllaborative Planning

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Implementation Needs

• Integrated management straegies require
  participatory approaches
• to deal with different valuation schemes
• to mediate conflicts of interest
• to combine ethical considerations with formal
  approaches in risk assessment
• NEED FOR SOCIAL LEARNING!

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Social learning in water management

• Social learning is required for all stakeholders
  to deal with different interests and points of
  view and to collectively manage their river basin
  in a sustainable way.

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Elements of Social Learning

• Build up shared problem perception in a group of
  actors.
• Build trust for self-reflection - recognition of
  individual mental frames and images and how they
  pertain to decision making.
• Recognize mutual dependencies and interactions.
• Reflect on assumptions about the dynamics and
  cause-effect relationships in the basin.
• Reflect on subjective valuation schemes.
• Engage in collective decision- and learning
  processes.

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PUBLIC AND STAKEHOLDER PARTICIPATION
Public and stakeholder participation refers to
the active involvement of individual citizens,
individual companies, public interest groups and
economic interest groups in decision making.
Communication and information flows are
important aspects of PP. Information and
communication tools are of major importance.
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SOCIAL LEARNING

• It is argued here that transformation and
  change, and processes of social learning are of
  major importance if the sustainability of current
  resource management regimes is to be improved.
• However, the theoretical base for social
  learning is still fragmented. This must be
  attributed to the fact that an interdisciplinary,
  system-oriented approach is missing in the social
  sciences.

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SOCIAL LEARNING

• Social learning is based on the idea that social
  change requires
• critical self-reflection,
• the development of participatory, multi-scale,
  democratic processes,
• reflexive capabilities of individuals and
  societies,
• the capacity of social movements to shape the
  political and economic boundary conditions
  towards improvement of the current situation.

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SOCIAL LEARNING

• Social learning with respect to sustainable
  development is based on the participatory
  processes of social change and societal
  transformations with the aim of
• making clear the goals and stakes that are
  involved in transformation processes,
• achieve better (because democratic) solutions to
  environmental problems,
• thus fostering the implementation of measures
  that have been agreed upon,
• and better manage conflicts.

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ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL LEARNING 1

• Processes of social learning should contain the
  following elements
• Build up a shared problem perception in a group
  of actors, in particular when the problem is
  largely ill-defined (this does not imply
  consensus building).
• Build trust as base for a critical
  self-reflection, which implies recognition of
  individual mental frames and images and how they
  pertain to decision making.

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ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL LEARNING 2

• Recognize mutual dependencies and interactions in
  the actor network.
• Reflect on assumptions about the dynamics and
  cause-effect relationships in the system to be
  managed.
• Reflect on subjective valuation schemes.
• Engage in collective decision- and learning
  processes (this may include the development of
  new management strategies, and the introduction
  of new formal and informal rules).

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Stakeholder groups in the development and use
of models
Participatory Model developers
Practitioners
Model developers
Concept for the use of models in river basin
management Expectations on the needs of
endusers and how models should be applied
Information needs Policy problems Implementation
Questions Expectations about Models /
Information
Conceptual approaches on participatory processes
and the role of information/models Experience on
success and failure
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FIRMA Freshwater Integrated Resource Management
with Agents
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Models and information in processes of social
learning
SOFT
HARD
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Participatory agent based social simulation

• Actors participate in the model development
  process
• Actors learn and may change the rules under which
  they operate when confronted with a
  representation of their system.
• Modeling to learn and not to predict!

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LockIn- Effects
preventing change.
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Our Methodological Approach to explore innovation

• Elicit domain knowledge on decision making
  processes with experts (thesis as input)
• Design participatory process with stakeholder
  groups and citizens
• Develop an agent based model in a participatory
  setting
• Use model moderation to establish a shared
  problem perception and foster processes of social
  learning

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Mental Models (Methodological development by
Matthew Hare)
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Mental Models Hexagon Method

• Cause-effect relationships

Household Water- technology
Water Demand
environmental awareness
Water- bill
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Modell Structure
System Indicators Water demand Water supply Water
quality
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Social Learning in Actors platform
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Some results

• Role playing game and model with qualitative
  dynamics was very useful to challenge current
  thinking, foster innovation and clarify thoughts
  about the role of different stakeholder groups.
• One major product was a memo of understanding
  with results of the whole process.
• Promising approach to explore the potential and
  implement new management strategies.