Handling uncertainty through adaptiveness in planning approaches: comparing adaptive delta management and the water diplomacy framework

Planners and water managers seek to be adaptive to handle uncertainty through the use of planning approaches. In this paper, we study what type of adaptiveness is proposed and how this may be operationalized in planning approaches to adequately handle different uncertainties. We took a comparative case study approach to study two planning approaches: the water diplomacy framework (WDF) and adaptive delta management (ADM). We found that the approaches differ in their conceptualization of uncertainty and show that different types of adaptiveness are used in the approaches. While WDF builds on collaborative adaptive management as a set of ongoing adjustments and continuous learning to handle uncertainty, ADM deliberately attempts to anticipate future adaptations through a set of tools which allows for seizing opportunities and avoiding lock-in and lock-out mechanisms. We conclude that neither of the approaches is fully able to account for different uncertainties. Both approaches may benefit from specific insights in what uncertainty and adaptiveness entail for the development of water management plans.     

From disaster management to adaptive governance? Governance challenges to achieving resilient food systems in Australia

Building resilient food systems in the context of climate change and increased natural disasters depends on governance being more ‘adaptive’. Through a case study of events surrounding the extensive flooding that occurred in Queensland, Australia, in 2011, this paper examines how governance settings and processes affected food system actors’ engagement with three aspects of adaptive governance – responsibility, participation and collaboration – as those actors sought to ensure food availability and access during the crisis. We found that, despite the existence of formal governance instruments committed to disaster management, food security and resilience at local, state and national levels, responsibilities for ensuring food supply during a disaster were not clearly articulated. Responsibility was largely assumed by supermarkets, who in turn increased the influence of retailer–government coalitions. The participation of non-supermarket food system actors in governance was low, and there was limited collaboration between local, and other, levels of governance. The policy challenge is to ensure that responsibility, participation and collaboration become a stronger foci for adaptive governance during and after a disaster such as flooding.     

‘Learning by doing’: adaptive planning as a strategy to address uncertainty in planning

Adaptive management, an established method in natural resource and ecosystem management, has not been widely applied to landscape planning due to the lack of an operational method that addresses the role of uncertainty and standardized monitoring protocols and methods. A review of adaptive management literature and practices reveals several key concepts and principles for adaptive planning: (1) management actions are best understood and practiced as experiments; (2) several plans/experiments can be implemented simultaneously; (3) monitoring of management actions are key; and (4) adaptive management can be understood as ‘learning by doing’. The paper identifies various uncertainties in landscape planning as the major obstacles for the adoption of an adaptive approach. To address the uncertainty in landscape planning, an adaptive planning method is proposed where monitoring plays an integral role to reduce uncertainty. The proposed method is then applied to a conceptual test in water resource planning addressing abiotic-biotic-cultural resources. To operationalize adaptive planning, it is argued that professionals, stakeholders and researchers need to function in a genuinely transdisciplinary mode where all contribute to, and benefit from, decision making and the continuous generation of new knowledge.     

Networks,Agency and (De)stabilization: The Issue of Navigation on the River Wye,UK

This paper assesses the way in which an actor network presiding over the management of the River Wye has stabilized through accepting a particular view on the issue of navigation. The paper provides an account of how the network was challenged by a dissonant actor who, through reviving an old company, developed a counter network. It is argued that network stabilization is a form of consensus-building and it is contended that the way in which an issue is defined is crucial in terms of the successful enrolment of actors. The paper illustrates some of the conflicts and complexities encountered in resource planning, suggesting that research of this nature should trace actors back through time as well as through space if dynamics between actors involved in rural planning and management are to be effectively understood.     

Water Management Decision Making in the Face of Multiple Forms of Uncertainty and Risk

In the Wasatch Range Metropolitan Area of Northern Utah, water management decision makers confront multiple forms of uncertainty and risk. Adapting to these uncertainties and risks is critical for maintaining the long‐term sustainability of the region's water supply. This study draws on interview data to assess the major challenges climatic and social changes pose to Utah's water future, as well as potential solutions. The study identifies the water management adaptation decision‐making space shaped by the interacting institutional, social, economic, political, and biophysical processes that enable and constrain sustainable water management. The study finds water managers and other water actors see challenges related to reallocating water, including equitable water transfers and stakeholder cooperation, addressing population growth, and locating additional water supplies, as more problematic than the challenges posed by climate change. Furthermore, there is significant disagreement between water actors over how to best adapt to both climatic and social changes. This study concludes with a discussion of the path dependencies that present challenges to adaptive water management decision making, as well as opportunities for the pursuit of a new water management paradigm based on soft‐path solutions. Such knowledge is useful for understanding the institutional and social adaptations needed for water management to successfully address future uncertainties and risks.     

System Dynamics to Sustainable Water Resources Management in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Under Water Supply Uncertainty1

Abstract: Water supply uncertainty continues to threaten the reliability of regional water resources in the western United States. Climate variability and water dispute potentials induce water managers to develop proactive adaptive management strategies to mitigate future hydroclimate impacts. The Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer in the state of Idaho is also facing these challenges in the sense that population growth and economic development strongly depend on reliable water resources from underground storage. Drought and subsequent water conflict often drive scientific research and political agendas because water resources availability and aquifer management for a sustainable rural economy are of great interest. In this study, a system dynamics approach is applied to address dynamically complex problems with management of the aquifer and associated surface‐water and groundwater interactions. Recharge and discharge dynamics within the aquifer system are coded in an environmental modeling framework to identify long‐term behavior of aquifer responses to uncertain future hydrological variability. The research shows that the system dynamics approach is a promising modeling tool to develop sustainable water resources planning and management in a collaborative decision‐making framework and also to provide useful insights and alternative opportunities for operational management, policy support, and participatory strategic planning to mitigate future hydroclimate impacts in human dimensions.     

Collaborative environmental governance and transaction costs in partnerships: evidence from a social network approach to water management in France

Several studies attempt to explain how collaborative environmental governance processes operate, but the question of why collaboration relationships form has received much less attention. Motivated by this need, this paper provides insights to the broad question: why does collaborative river basin management in France depend so heavily on partnerships made up around a few actors? Accordingly, our analytical framework develops a transaction cost explanation for the extent to which participatory procedures help stakeholders to identify partners and initiate collaboration, and for the causal link between the attributes of these stakeholders and their partnerships. The p2 model is implemented to investigate partnership networks of the key actors that govern the management of the Gironde estuary, the study case. The results provide evidence that environmental institutions bring together heterogeneous actors who might not be ready for collaboration, thereby actors’ perceived power similarity; their geographical proximity and co-presence in formal fora limit transaction costs.     

“Unwritten,unsaid, just known”: the role of Indigenous knowledge(s) in water planning in Australia

Water planning processes in Australia have struggled to account for Indigenous interests and rights in water, including the use of Indigenous knowledge in water management. In exploring the role of Indigenous knowledge in government-led water planning processes, how might tensions between Western scientific and Indigenous knowledges be lessened? Drawing on two case studies from northern Australia we examine how Indigenous knowledge is represented and managed as a different social knowledge to that of Western science in a management context where legal and planning conventions assume priority. The role of Indigenous (social) knowledges in developing options and strategies for sustainable water management is contingent upon the participation of Indigenous people in water planning. We suggest that water planning processes must contain the possibility of an explicit approach to mutual recognition and consequent translation of the conceptual and pragmatic bases of water management and planning in both Western scientific and Indigenous domains.     

Flexibility in water management planning as an intra-organisational issue

This paper is a case study of a team of Dutch water managers who saw that to achieve flexibility in planning they needed to engage with organisational control requirements. Rather than approaching flexibility normatively, as much planning literature does, this paper presents a case of flexibility empirically – as something actors negotiate through their strategising within planning practice, within their organisational context. The analysis shows the importance of approaching flexibility in planning as an intra-organisational issue, presents insights on the strategies actors employ in negotiating flexibility and control intra-organisationally, and points to the political nature of dynamics between flexibility and control.     

Adaptive management in the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System: science-management partnerships for conservation delivery

Adaptive management is an approach to recurrent decision making in which uncertainty about the decision is reduced over time through comparison of outcomes predicted by competing models against observed values of those outcomes. The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a large land management program charged with making natural resource management decisions, which often are made under considerable uncertainty, severe operational constraints, and conditions that limit ability to precisely carry out actions as intended. The NWRS presents outstanding opportunities for the application of adaptive management, but also difficult challenges. We describe two cooperative programs between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey to implement adaptive management at scales ranging from small, single refuge applications to large, multi-refuge, multi-region projects. Our experience to date suggests three important attributes common to successful implementation: a vigorous multi-partner collaboration, practical and informative decision framework components, and a sustained commitment to the process. Administrators in both agencies should consider these attributes when developing programs to promote the use and acceptance of adaptive management in the NWRS.     

Collaborative Implementation for Ecological Restoration on US Public Lands: Implications for Legal Context,Accountability, and Adaptive Management

The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), established in 2009, encourages collaborative landscape scale ecosystem restoration efforts on United States Forest Service (USFS) lands. Although the USFS employees have experience engaging in collaborative planning, CFLRP requires collaboration in implementation, a domain where little prior experience can be drawn on for guidance. The purpose of this research is to identify the ways in which CFLRP’s collaborative participants and agency personnel conceptualize how stakeholders can contribute to implementation on landscape scale restoration projects, and to build theory on dynamics of collaborative implementation in environmental management. This research uses a grounded theory methodology to explore collaborative implementation from the perspectives and experiences of participants in landscapes selected as part of the CFLRP in 2010. Interviewees characterized collaborative implementation as encompassing three different types of activities: prioritization, enhancing treatments, and multiparty monitoring. The paper describes examples of activities in each of these categories and then identifies ways in which collaborative implementation in the context of CFLRP (1) is both hindered and enabled by overlapping legal mandates about agency collaboration, (2) creates opportunities for expanded accountability through informal and relational means, and, (3) creates feedback loops at multiple temporal and spatial scales through which monitoring information, prioritization, and implementation actions shape restoration work both within and across projects throughout the landscape creating more robust opportunities for adaptive management.     

Vulnerability of Water Systems to the Effects of Climate Change and Urbanization: A Comparison of Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon (USA)

The coupled processes of climate change and urbanization pose challenges for water resource management in cities worldwide. Comparing the vulnerabilities of water systems in Phoenix, Arizona and Portland, Oregon, this paper examines (1) exposures to these stressors, (2) sensitivities to the associated impacts, and (3) adaptive capacities for responding to realized or anticipated impacts. Based on a case study and survey-based approach, common points of vulnerability include: rising exposures to drier, warmer summers, and suburban growth; increasing sensitivities based on demand hardening; and limited capacities due to institutional and pro-growth pressures. Yet each region also exhibits unique vulnerabilities. Comparatively, Portland shows: amplified exposures to seasonal climatic extremes, heightened sensitivity based on less diversified municipal water sources and policies that favor more trees and other irrigated vegetation, and diminished adaptive capacities because of limited attention to demand management and climate planning for water resources. Phoenix exhibits elevated exposure from rapid growth, heightened sensitivities due to high water demands and widespread increases in residential and commercial uses, and limited adaptive capacities due to weak land use planning and “smart growth” strategies. Unique points of vulnerability suggest pathways for adapting to urban-environmental change, whether through water management or land planning. Greater coordination between the land and water sectors would substantially reduce vulnerabilities in the study regions and beyond.     

Adaptive Comanagement for Building Resilience in Social–Ecological Systems

Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems that require flexible governance with the ability to respond to environmental feedback. We present, through examples from Sweden and Canada, the development of adaptive comanagement systems, showing how local groups self-organize, learn, and actively adapt to and shape change with social networks that connect institutions and organizations across levels and scales and that facilitate information flows. The development took place through a sequence of responses to environmental events that widened the scope of local management from a particular issue or resource to a broad set of issues related to ecosystem processes across scales and from individual actors, to group of actors to multiple-actor processes. The results suggest that the institutional and organizational landscapes should be approached as carefully as the ecological in order to clarify features that contribute to the resilience of social–ecological systems. These include the following: vision, leadership, and trust; enabling legislation that creates social space for ecosystem management; funds for responding to environmental change and for remedial action; capacity for monitoring and responding to environmental feedback; information flow through social networks; the combination of various sources of information and knowledge; and sense-making and arenas of collaborative learning for ecosystem management. We propose that the self-organizing process of adaptive comanagement development, facilitated by rules and incentives of higher levels, has the potential to expand desirable stability domains of a region and make social–ecological systems more robust to change.Published online     

‘We cannot be at the forefront,changing society’: exploring how Swedish property developers respond to climate change in urban planning

It is increasingly expected that private actors play the role as entrepreneurs and front-runners in implementing climate measures, whereas empirical studies of the position, role and engagement of private actors are scarce. Situated in the context of urban planning, a critical arena for triggering climate transitions, the aim of this paper is to explore how Swedish property developers respond to climate change. Qualitative analyses of corporate policy documents and semi-structured interviews with property developers reveal a vast divergence between the written policies, where leadership ambitions are high, and how the practice of property development is discussed in interviews. In the latter, there is little evidence of property developers pursuing a forward-looking or cutting-edge climate change agenda. Instead, they are critical of increased public regulation for climate-oriented measures. Explanations both confirm previous studies, highlighting lack of perceived customer demand, uncertainty of financial returns and limited innovations, and add new elements of place-dependency suggesting that innovative and front-runner practices can only be realized in the larger urban areas. Municipalities seeking to improve their climate-oriented profile in urban planning by involving private property developers need to develop strategies to maneuver the variance in responses to increase the effectiveness of implementation.     

Assessments of sustainable waste management alternatives: How to support complex knowledge management

The vision of sustainable development is a driving force for change. To understand more about processes of local policy making, and their prerequisites for such change, it is relevant to examine how individual actors use briefing material and how they make assessments in complex planning situations. This study is about the processing of knowledge in a case of planning of a future waste management system. In this case, the written briefing material was shown to have less impact on the arguments and assessments of participating actors. Consequently, process facilitation for complex planning situations needs to support and strive for collective, reflective and transparent knowledge management. High-quality process support thus needs to have its emphasis on arguments, rather than on particular assessment tools and the written briefing material.     

Cautious but Committed: Moving Toward Adaptive Planning and Operation Strategies for Renewable Energy’s Wildlife Implications

Wildlife planning for renewable energy must cope with the uncertainties of potential wildlife impacts. Unfortunately, the environmental policies which instigate renewable energy and those which protect wildlife are not coherently aligned—creating a green versus green dilemma. Thus, climate mitigation efforts trigger renewable energy development, but then face substantial barriers from biodiversity protection instruments and practices. This article briefly reviews wind energy and wildlife interactions, highlighting the lively debated effects on bats. Today, planning and siting of renewable energy are guided by the precautionary principle in an attempt to carefully address wildlife challenges. However, this planning attitude creates limitations as it struggles to negotiate the aforementioned green versus green dilemma. More adaptive planning and management strategies and practices hold the potential to reconcile these discrepancies to some degree. This adaptive approach is discussed using facets of case studies from policy, planning, siting, and operational stages of wind energy in Germany and the United States, with one case showing adaptive planning in action for solar energy as well. This article attempts to highlight the benefits of more adaptive approaches as well as the possible shortcomings, such as reduced planning security for renewable energy developers. In conclusion, these studies show that adaptive planning and operation strategies can be designed to supplement and enhance the precautionary principle in wildlife planning for green energy.     

Developing adaptive capacity within groundwater abstraction management systems

Groundwater is a key resource for global agricultural production but is vulnerable to a changing climate. Given significant uncertainty about future impacts, bottom-up approaches for developing adaptive capacity are a more appropriate paradigm than seeking optimal adaptation strategies that assume a high ability to predict future risks or outcomes. This paper analyses the groundwater management practices adopted at multiple scales in East Anglia, UK, to identify wider lessons for developing adaptive capacity within groundwater management. Key elements are (1) horizontal and vertical integration within resource management; (2) making better use of water resources, at all scales, which vary in space and time; (3) embedding adaptation at multiple scales (from farm to national) within an adaptive management framework which allows strategies and management decisions to be updated in the light of changing understanding or conditions; (4) facilitating the ongoing formation through collective action of local Water Abstractor Groups; (5) promoting efficient use of scarce water resources by these groups, so as to increase their power to negotiate over possible short-term license restrictions; (6) controlling abstractions within a sustainable resource management framework, whether at national (regulatory) or at local (Abstractor Group) scales, that takes account of environmental water needs; and (7) reducing non-climate pressures which have the potential to further reduce the availability of usable groundwater.     

Sustainable Water Resources Management in a Conflict Resolution Framework1

Abstract: A decision support system for sustainable water resources management in a water conflict resolution framework is developed to identify and evaluate a range of acceptable alternatives for the Geum River Basin in Korea and to facilitate strategies that will result in sustainable water resource management. Working with stakeholders in a “shared vision modeling” framework, sustainable management strategies are created to illustrate system tradeoffs as well as long‐term system planning. A multi‐criterion decision‐making (MCDM) approach using subjective scales is utilized to evaluate the complex water resource allocation and management tradeoffs between stakeholders and system objectives. The procedures used in this study include the development of a “shared vision model,” a simulated decision‐making support system (as a tool for sustainable water management strategies associated with water conflicts, management options, and planning criteria), and the application of MCDM techniques for evaluating alternatives provided by the model. The research results demonstrate the utility of the sustainable water resource management model in aid of MCDM techniques in facilitating flexibility during initial stages of alternative identification and evaluation in a basin suffering from severe water conflicts.     

Missing the trees for the forest? Bottom-up policy implementation and adaptive management in the US natural resource bureaucracy

For decades, natural resource agencies in the United States have attempted to restore ecosystems using adaptive management, a process that emphasizes experimental learning to reduce uncertainty. Most studies show that it rarely occurs in practice and explain implementation failures as organizational issues. This study draws on policy implementation theory to suggest that behaviors and attitudes of individuals may better explain implementation gaps. This comparative case study finds differences between experts implementing adaptive management in the Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey. These include differences in attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors aimed at promoting individual autonomy, performance standards, and defending individual interests on the job. Policy implications are twofold: first, that individual behaviors impact adaptive management implementation and intrinsic motivation to perform such functions. Second, regardless of agency, experts view their work as a social good. This suggests that a devolved planning process may remedy implementation obstacles.     

The role of scale in integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation in cities

By using a scale framework, we examine how cross-scale interactions influence the implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation actions in different urban sectors. Based on stakeholder interviews and content analysis of strategies and projects relevant to climate adaptation and mitigation in the cities of Copenhagen and Helsinki, we present empirical examples of synergies, conflicts and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation that are driven by the cross-scale interactions. These examples show that jurisdictional and institutional scales shape the implementation of adaptation and mitigation strategies, projects and tasks at the management scale, creating benefits of integrated solutions, but also challenges. Investigating the linkages between adaptation and mitigation through a scale framework provides new knowledge for urban climate change planning and decision-making. The results increase the understanding of why adaptation and mitigation are sometimes handled as two separate policy areas and also why attempts to integrate the two policies may fail.