Paul Jeffrey

Managing change toward adaptive water management through social learning

The management of water resources is currently undergoing a paradigm shift toward a more integrated and participatory management style. This paper highlights the need to fully take into account the complexity of the systems to be managed and to give more attention to uncertainties. Achieving this requires adaptive management approaches that can more generally be defined as systematic strategies for improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of previous management actions. This paper describes how the principles of adaptive water management might improve the conceptual and methodological base for sustainable and integrated water management in an uncertain and complex world. Critical debate is structured around four questions: (1) What types of uncertainty need to be taken into account in water management? (2) How does adaptive management account for uncertainty? (3) What are the characteristics of adaptive management regimes? (4) What is the role of social learning in managing change? Major transformation processes are needed because, in many cases, the structural requirements, e.g., adaptive institutions and a flexible technical infrastructure, for adaptive management are not available. In conclusion, we itemize a number of research needs and summarize practical recommendations based on the current state of knowledge.

A critical review of the theory and application of social learning in participatory natural resource management processes

Social learning is increasingly cited as an essential component of sustainable natural resource management and the promotion of desirable behavioural change. This paper attempts to contribute to the current debate about social learning and public participation by reviewing the many perspectives on social learning and associated claims and benefits. Based on this analysis the paper identifies conceptual and practical weaknesses of the concept of social learning and their implications for the design of participatory processes in natural resource management.

From Premise to Practice: a Critical Assessment of Integrated Water Resources Management and Adaptive Management Approaches in the Water Sector

The complexity of natural resource use processes and dynamics is now well accepted and described in theories ranging across the sciences from ecology to economics. Based upon these theories, management frameworks have been developed within the research community to cope with complexity and improve natural resource management outcomes. Two notable frameworks, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and Adaptive Management (AM) have been developed within the domain of water resource management over the past thirty or so years. Such frameworks provide testable statements about how best to organise knowledge production and use to facilitate the realisation of desirable outcomes including sustainable resource use. However evidence for the success of IWRM and AM is mixed and they have come under criticism recently as failing to provide promised benefits. This paper critically reviews the claims made for IWRM and AM against evidence from their implementation and explores whether or not criticisms are rooted in problems encountered during the translation from research to practice. To achieve this we review the main issues that challenge the implementation of both frameworks. More specifically, we analyse the various definitions and descriptions of IWRM and AM. Our findings suggest that similar issues have affected the lack of success that practitioners have experienced throughout the implementation process for both frameworks. These findings are discussed in the context of the broader societal challenge of effective translation of research into practice, science into policy and ambition into achievement.

Smoothing the Waters Observations on the Process of Cross-Disciplinary Research Collaboration

Although both research funders and knowledge users continue to call for more and higher-quality collaboration between researchers from different disciplines, there is little evidence available to inform the structure and management of cross-disciplinary research teams. A descriptive account of cross-disciplinary collaboration is presented based on a study of a cross-disciplinary team researching natural resource degradation issues. A number of tools are identified that characterize and support the collaboration process, including the use of story-lines and metaphor, choice of vocabulary, the nature of dialogue and the role of mediating agents. Four products of collaboration are also identified: ‘process’, ‘understanding’, ‘utility’ and ‘knowledge integration’. Conclusions focus on the implications for research programme design and the content of research training curricula.

A review of residential water conservation tool performance and influences on implementation effectiveness

Water scarcity and household water consumption has received increasing attention on national public agendas in recent years. At the same time a number of important demand-side management (DSM) studies have been reported on by non-academic institutions, and there is a need for a comprehensive, up to date review of the impacts of DSM tools and the factors which influence their effectiveness. This paper aims to address an apparent lack of coverage in the academic literature by presenting a review of residential DSM tools using reports of recent DSM campaigns in the western (developed) world. The central objectives are to understand the potential for residential DSM tools to save water in different types of household under varying conditions and to identify influences on implementation effectiveness. In the discussion, we explore causes of uncertainty in DSM planning including the non-transferability of trends and existing methods of evaluation, and describe some of the resulting problems. The conclusions offer recommendations as to areas that require, and offer the greatest scope, for future research. This review article will be of interest to, among others, water company professionals, policy makers, regulators, researchers, and environmental agencies.

Complex network analysis of water distribution systems

This paper explores a variety of strategies for understanding the formation, structure, efficiency, and vulnerability of water distribution networks. Water supply systems are studied as spatially organized networks for which the practical applications of abstract evaluation methods are critically evaluated. Empirical data from benchmark networks are used to study the interplay between network structure and operational efficiency, reliability, and robustness. Structural measurements are undertaken to quantify properties such as redundancy and optimal-connectivity, herein proposed as constraints in network design optimization problems. The role of the supply demand structure toward system efficiency is studied, and an assessment of the vulnerability to failures based on the disconnection of nodes from the source(s) is undertaken. The absence of conventional degree-based hubs (observed through uncorrelated nonheterogeneous sparse topologies) prompts an alternative approach to studying structural vulnerability based on the identification of network cut-sets and optimal-connectivity invariants. A discussion on the scope, limitations, and possible future directions of this research is provided.

Tools to think with? Towards understanding the use of computer-based support tools in policy relevant research

As environmental science has broadened to address policy concerns, there has been an effort to transfer the perceived benefits of formal modelling to these new areas through the creation of computer-based support tools. However, a number of poorly addressed issues pose barriers to the uptake of such tools. These issues are discussed to argue that the current support tool research agenda is too focussed on hard, technical concerns and that greater emphasis needs to be given to soft, contextual aspects of design and use. To counter these deficiencies we propose a framework for research based upon the concepts of innovation and receptivity. Three different sources of innovation relevant to support tools and end-user receptivity are identified. We contend that new technologies and new techniques for manipulating them have to be translated into the pre-existing knowledge and working practices of user communities before they can be effectively employed. To illustrate the proposed framework, the paper explores the impact of one innovation source on receptivity within the context of a research project developing and applying support tool technology. The need to better understand the dimensions of innovation and how they relate to the processes that determine user receptivity to support tools is emphasised.

Resilience enhancing expansion strategies for water distribution systems: A network theory approach

Planners and engineers attempting to improve the resilience of water distribution systems face numerous challenges regarding the allocation and placement of redundancy so as to reduce the likelihood and impact of asset failures and take into consideration the growing demand for clean water, now and into the future. Water distribution systems may be represented as networks of multiple nodes (e.g. reservoirs, storage tanks and hydraulic junctions) interconnected by physical links (e.g. pipes) where the connectivity patterns of this network affects its reliability, efficiency and robustness to failures. In this paper we employ the link-node representation of water infrastructures and exploit a wide range of advanced and emerging network theory metrics and measurements to study the building blocks of the systems and quantify properties such as redundancy and fault tolerance, in order to establish relationships between structural features and performance of water distribution systems. We study the water distribution network of a growing city from a developing country and explore network expansion strategies that are aimed to secure and promote structural invulnerability, subject to design and budget constraints.

A Conceptual Model of ‘Receptivity’ Applied to the Design and Deployment of Water Policy Mechanisms

The need to better understand how people and communities understand, interact with, and behave in relation to, water and water management systems has long been highlighted by both national and supra-national governmental bodies. Such understandings are of particular relevance to support the design and deployment of water policy instruments. We argue that, in analysing individual, community and organizational interactions with water as both a natural resource and a commodity, there is a need to move away from policy tool design and deployment perspectives which characterize consumer response as an artefact of social or economic status to one which explicitly incorporates the capacity for response as well as the ambition of policy. A framework for evaluating water management policy instruments based on a conceptual model of ‘receptivity’ is presented in detail and three case studies demonstrating its use in a variety of contexts (regional water management, water recycling, and water filters) are reported on. Comments on the relevance and scope of the approach are provided together with conclusions regarding strengths, weaknesses, and suitable application contexts.

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.