4. CONCEPTS 3: WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
4.2 Adaptive Water Resources Management
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• Develop new concepts and methods for public and stakeholder participation in multi-scale integrated assessment processes and modelling.
To deal with these challenges, IWRM must be able to respond to changes in the natural and social environment and to anticipate the uncertainties associated with these changes. Pahl-Wostl et al. (2005a) advocate adaptive water resources management (AWRM) as an essential and timely extension of the IWRM approach.
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process is considered as “learning-by-doing” and provides a way of ensuring proactivity even in the face of uncertainty (MacKay et al., 2003). Therefore, adaptive management could be seen as a process that is both anticipatory as well as adaptive.
4.2.1 Elements of an adaptive management approach
Various models have been proposed for adaptive management, ranging from simple to relatively elaborate (e.g. Nyberg, 1998; MacKay et al., 2003; Levine, 2004; Pahl- Wostl et al., 2005b; Tracy, 2006). Each of these describes adaptive management as a continually repeated cycle of an organised sequence of activities. Simplified, an adaptive management framework can be described as being a six-step process (Nyberg, 1998), as depicted in Figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1 Simplified adaptive management framework (adapted from Nyberg, 1998)
Many researchers have emphasised the importance of stakeholder involvement throughout the process for improving the quality and perception of decisions made at each step (e.g. Holling, 1995; Lescuyer, 2002; Pahl-Wostl et al., 2005a; Möllenkamp
Assessment
Design Feedback
Monitoring
Evaluation Implementation
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and Kastens, 2009). This is particularly important in Step 1 (problem assessment), where relevant stakeholders, including water users, managers and scientists, define the scope of the management problem (Murray and Marmorek, 2003). Making use of the best available information about the system, management objectives can be defined and key indicators for each objective determined (Murray and Marmorek, 2003; Tracy, 2006). Thereafter comes the building of scenarios to represent or illustrate potential outcomes of alternative management actions (MacKay et al., 2003;
Murray and Marmorek, 2003).
The second step (design) involves designing a management plan and monitoring programme that will provide reliable feedback about the effectiveness of the chosen actions (Murray and Marmorek, 2003). In South Africa, the National Water Act provides for the development of catchment management strategies, which will specify the timeframes for achieving objectives, actions to be taken and responsibilities of the various parties, including water management institutions as well as water users and stakeholders (MacKay et al., 2003).
The third step comprises implementation of the restoration plan. It is critically important that implementers understand the logic of the experimental design. All aspects of the plan must be adhered to, including prescribed locations and timing of restoration actions. Deviations from the plan may occur for unavoidable operational reasons. If so, these deviations, and their rationale, must be clearly documented (Murray and Marmorek, 2003).
Indicators are the ideal means by which progress towards a goal can be monitored (Walmsley et al., 2001). In Step 4, indicators are monitored to determine how effective actions are in meeting management objectives (Murray and Marmorek, 2003). Furthermore, monitoring prolongs community interest/involvement and keeps information flowing across the centre of the stakeholder platform (Newson, 2009).
Through monitoring and evaluation (Step 5, where the actual outcomes are compared to the outcomes predicted in Step 1 and the reasons underlying any differences are interpreted), knowledge is gained about the resources being managed and how these resources respond to various actions, to identify if the
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strategy needs to be adapted in order to achieve the predefined objectives (MacKay et al., 2003; Murray and Marmorek, 2003).
The feedback step is the final step before the next iteration in the adaptive management process, the purpose of which is to use the acquired knowledge on the behaviour of the system to guide the next cycle of the adaptive management process (Tracy, 2006). Therefore, one begins the cycle with deeper knowledge and understanding than before and, hence, with an ability to make better decisions, design better and more detailed action plans, and institute better monitoring programmes (MacKay et al., 2003). However, in order to fully reap the benefits of an adaptive management process, the feedback step must go beyond merely providing an argument for changing management actions; it must actually force changes in management actions when justified by the results of the evaluation step (Tracy, 2006).
4.2.2 Barriers to adaptive management
Despite the appeal of adaptive management, as with IWRM, several barriers to its successful implementation have been identified. Reflecting on many years of experience in attempting to apply adaptive management, Walters (1997) identified the following to be the most common barriers:
• Protracted modelling exercises, based on the presumption that detailed modelling can be substituted for field experimentation.
• Effective experiments in adaptive management often seen as being too costly or risky.
• Strong opposition to experimental policies by stakeholders protecting various self-interests.
• Fundamental conflicts in values among diverse stakeholders.
Other barriers to implementation include, inter alia:
• Lack of “buy-in” from politicians and bureaucrats, who are sceptical owing to the considerable time required and costly nature of adaptive management (Jiggins and Röling, 2002; Levine, 2004; Möllenkamp and Kastens, 2009).
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• Monitoring, which is essential to well founded adaptive management, is seldom funded at the required level (Thomas, 2006).
• Lack of leadership and coordination (Levine, 2004).
• The term “adaptive management” is unclear owing to various interpretations and misinterpretations of its meaning (Nyberg, 1998).
4.2.3 Need for an adaptive management approach
There would be little need to develop new policies or methods if managers were dealing with stable and predictable ecological and social systems (Nyberg, 1998).
However, most natural systems exhibit uncertainties in that they are variable, non- linear, complex, and inherently possess the potential for irreversible change (Lescuyer, 2002). Water managers, when planning for the future, somehow need to account for these various uncertainties, including:
• Inter- and intra-annual climate variability and its repercussions for water resources management (Kabat et al., 2003 - cf. Chapter 1).
• Human impacts on the environment through global climate change, new technology, and a growing population (Nyberg, 1998 - cf. Chapter 2).
• Lack of knowledge about many aspects of the systems being managed, not only because trends occur over time, but also because the system elements and their interactions that generate those trends are not well understood (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2005b - cf. Chapter 3).
Uncertainty is what drives adaptive management (Walters, 1986). Where high uncertainty and risk coexist, adaptive management can provide an effective path forward (Boesch et al., 2006) by not allowing uncertainties to thwart socially timely action (Lee, 1993; cited by Newson, 2009). However, adaptive management will only be effective to the degree to which identified barriers are effectively overcome (Boesch et al., 2006).
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This chapter has provided an overview of the current status of water resources management in South Africa and has introduced the concept of AWRM as a timely extension to current water resources management approaches, as suggested by the NeWater Project. By developing techniques for assessing projected impacts of climate change on hydro-climatic hazards, this study aims at facilitating AWRM by providing decision-makers with a tool with which to convert GCM climate scenarios into hydro-climatic hazard scenarios, the analyses of which can subsequently be used to make decisions and establish proactive policies to reduce future risks posed by a changing climate – by influencing either the hazard or vulnerability side of the risk equation (cf. Chapter 3). The following chapter describes the approaches adopted in this study to model the impacts of climate change on the Orange River Catchment’s hydrological system.
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