Nathan L. Engle

Integrated and Adaptive Management of Water Resources: Tensions, Legacies, and the Next Best Thing

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) and adaptive management (AM) are two institutional and management paradigms designed to address shortcomings within water systems governance; the limits of hierarchical water institutional arrangements in the case of IWRM and the challenge of making water management decisions under uncertainty in the case of AM. Recently, there has been a trend to merge these paradigms to address the growing complexity of stressors shaping water management such as globalization and climate change. However, because many of these joint approaches have received little empirical attention, questions remain about how they might work, or not, in practice. Here, we explore a few of these issues using empirical research carried out in Brazil. We focus on highlighting the potentially negative interactions, tensions, and trade-offs between different institutions/ mechanisms perceived as desirable as research and practice attempt to make water systems management simultaneously integrated and adaptive. Our examples pertain mainly to the use of techno-scientific knowledge in water management and governance in Brazils IWRM model and how it relates to participation, democracy, deliberation, diversity, and adaptability. We show that a legacy of technical and hierarchical management has shaped the integration of management, and subsequently, the degree to which management might also be adaptive. Although integrated systems may be more legitimate and accountable than top-down command and control ones, the mechanisms of IWRM may be at odds with the flexible, experimental, and self-organizing nature of AM.

Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change in Less Developed Countries

This paper focuses on the relevance of adaptive capacity in the context of the increasing certainty that climate change impacts will affect human populations and different social groups substantially and differentially. Developing and building adaptive capacity requires a combination of interventions that address not only climate-related risks (specific capacities) but also the structural deficits (lack of income, education, health, political power, etc.—generic capacities) that shape vulnerability. We argue that bolstering both generic and specific adaptive capacities, with careful attention to minimizing the potential tensions between these two types of capacities, can help vulnerable groups maintain their ability to address risks in the long run at the same time as they respond effectively to short term climate impacts. We examine the relationship between generic and specific capacities, taking into consideration that they are not always positively related. We then propose a conceptual model describing positive and negative feedbacks between the two.

How does Diversity Matter? The Case of Brazilian River Basin Councils

Diversity as a concept has often been perceived as a positive system attribute to pursue and protect. However, in some social settings, the way different kinds of diversity shape outcomes can vary significantly. Diversity of ideas and individuals sometimes can lead to disagreement and conflict, which in turn can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. In this study, we examine identity diversity, i.e., age, income, education, worldviews, etc., within the context of Brazilian water governance. We find that within the basins studied in this project, first, the more diversity in organizations and the sectors represented on the council, the more council members participate in council activities, perceive decision making to be democratic, and perceive technical information to facilitate decision making. Second, diversity in what members perceive to be the most pressing problems facing the basin and also diversity in worldviews often correlate negatively with some measures of participation and the perceived importance of technical knowledge. Third, diversity in the level of experience with water issues negatively correlates with some measures of participation and perceived democratic decision making. Fourth, diversity in the perception of the most important problem facing the basin leads to poorer outcomes in the council. Our work provides an argument for supporting broad sectoral representation of interests within deliberative decision making bodies; however, it also illustrates that it is critical for these bodies to explore ways to resolve basic disagreements about the most important problems that need to be addressed and where their collective efforts should be focused.

Technical knowledge and democratic decision-making: Building adaptive capacity of fresh water systems in Brazil

Around the world, the effects of global climate variability and change have steadily risen in both the public and governmental policy agendas. Freshwater basins are among the systems most negatively affected by climate variability and are expected to be under even more stress under climate change. In this context it is important to understand the factors, including governance mechanisms that build water systems adaptive capacity to respond and adapt to climatic change. In principle, the design of governance mechanisms that introduce many of the theorized determinants of adaptive capacity such as democracy (including participation, representation, and accountability), use of knowledge, networks and social capital, and flexibility should increase the adaptability of fresh water systems to climate variability and change. Yet, in the process of water management these determinants are neither discrete nor independent; rather they influence and are influenced by each other and by several other factors at play at the different scales of water governance. And while these determinants have mostly been theorized as varying in the same direction and positively influencing each other, much less attention has been paid to the potential negative feedbacks and synergies between them. This study empirically explores a few of these relationships in the context of water management and reform in Brazil. In particular, it seeks to understand the interaction between knowledge use (especially climate information) and democratization of decisions in building the adaptive capacity of Brazilian water systems to climate variability and change. Figure 1: Relationship between technical knowledge use and democratic decision making with adaptive capacity to climate variability and change