GLOSSARY OF TERMS
1. LITERATURE REVIEW AND PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.3. THE IMPORTANCE OF MAKING OWRM ADAPTABLE
1.3.1. Towards Strategic Adaptive Management
1.3.1.1. Adaptive Management
“Adaptive management” was first introduced to the sphere of natural resource management by Holling (1978) with his concept of “Adaptive Resource Management”. Broadly speaking, adaptive management has been defined as “The process of treating
resource management as an experiment such that the practicality of trial and error is added to the rigour and explicitness of the scientific experiment, producing learning that is both relevant and valid” (Meffe et al., 2002) (*).
Adaptive management is accepted internationally as a primary tool for the management of natural resources and the social-ecologic systems in which they are embedded (Johnson, 1999; Meffe et al., 2002).
Adaptive management differs from traditional approaches in that it addresses uncertainty directly by using management as a tool to gain critical knowledge and allows for a new science that is cognisant of practice and management experience and consequently enables both science and management to complement each other to achieve innovative approaches to IWRM, and so address the uncertainty.
Johnson (1999) recognises 5 types of management decision approaches:
1) Political/social approach.
2) Conventional wisdom approach.
3) Best-current-data approach.
4) Monitor-and-modify approach.
5) Adaptive management approach.
These five decision-making approaches constitute a progression of increasing complexity. Each successive approach adds features that focus more agency resources on the problem. Thus the costs of implementation and evaluation increase as one moves through the list. Adaptive management requires considerable time and money to organise workshops for stakeholders, develop models and policy assessments, and monitor the effects of management. However, if more complex decision-making approaches lead to more effective management, they may be cheaper in the long run and it has been proposed earlier in this thesis that IWRM is a complex field that requires adaptive management.
However, evidence for the successful implementation of adaptive management within the IWRM context is meagre. It is stated that although adaptive management is the best approach available to agencies for addressing this type of complex problem, its success has been limited thus far (Johnson, 1999; Pollard and du Toit, 2011). The Shared Rivers Initiative, Phase 1, of the lowveld rivers of South Africa (Pollard and du Toit, 2011) also found that such approaches are not evident in any of the catchments, except for the Inkomati WMA where it is emerging through the development of the CMS.
(*) Refer to section 1.3.2. “Action Research”, which details the importance of trial and error coupled
to scientific rigour in managing complex systems.
Adaptive management most complex approach, but nb. for IWRM
The term and practice of adaptive management has since morphed into many forms, with Strategic Adaptive Management (Rogers and Bestbier, 1997) being
one of them (*).
1.3.1.2. Dual Learning Pathways
The discourse on the concepts of complexity, requisite simplicity and adaptive management in the preceding sections infer that the dual learning pathways of science
and management are equally important for water resources management. These concepts all acknowledge this duality in various ways.
The importance of this duality can be further supported by the fact there is often high uncertainty in the relevant science (Dorcey, 1991; Holmes and Scoones, 2000) and the complexity, uncertainty and potentially long-term duration and impact of environmental effects are seen to remove the justification for experts to decide on these problems alone (Holmes and Scoones, 2000). Allied to this, there is growing evidence of public mistrust of scientific expertise, political leaders and state institutions (Holmes and Scoones, 2000).
Within the scientific field, the technical (science and engineering) and social aspects are also equally important for water resources management as, although dependent on science and engineering, water resources management is a social process (Rhoads et al., 1999) and learning can be derived from both technical and social processes (Stankey et al., 2005).
Those tasked with managing complex systems (#) often complain that science delivers fragmented information that is not useful at the scale of implementation (Roux et al., 2006). As scientists, we must be prepared to move
outside our specialist areas and form bridges between scientific disciplines and across the domains of science, management, and societal values (Max-Neef, 2005).
It is thus evident that engineering and scientific (social and technical) learning as well as management learning are equally important for the effective implementation of IWRM.
Need for Social Learning:
McLoughlin et al. (2011) emphasised the importance of social learning in adaptive resource management during their investigation into the implementation thereof for the ecological flow requirements in the lowveld river catchments of South Africa.
When conducting IWRM it is thus important to develop a methodology to both implement and facilitate a social learning process as well as to evaluate it, as the facilitation of social learning and the creation of institutions under the adaptive management umbrella are key criteria for the management of complex problem situations (Daniel and Walker, 1996; Jiggins and Roling, 2002).
In order to do that, one must first understand what social learning is.
(#) Refer to section 1.1.2.
“Complexity” for detail on complexity.
(*) Refer to section 2.3.2.1. “ICMA CMS, Strategic Action Programmes and Objectives” for detail on the
ICMA CMS and its use of SAM.
Also refer to section 1.3.3. “Strategic Adaptive Management”.
Social learning has been defined as achieving concerted action in complex and uncertain contexts and situations (Ison and Watson, 2007, Ison et al., 2007). According to Proost and Leeuwis (2007) there is a list of preconditions to social learning. These are:
1) A sense of urgency.
2) Feelings of interdependence amongst stakeholders.
3) Stakeholders organise themselves for negotiation.
4) Meetings and other opportunities for interaction.
5) A degree of confidence that a negotiated outcome satisfying to all parties will be reached.
6) A degree of institutional space to implement outcomes.
7) Accepted leadership in the process.
8) Process facilitation.
9) Reflection built in from the start.
Mcloughlin et al. (2011) adopted the key capacities of Pahl-Wostl and Hare (2004) and the key fostering and hindering factors of Mostert et al. (2007) to measure social learning achievements within the Crocodile River catchment associated with the implementation of the ecological flow requirements.
It is thus recommended that a combination of the criteria and preconditions discussed above could be used when evaluating social learning. The consensus
based participatory decision making criteria discussed in section 1.1.4 are also relevant and a combination of these consensus based participatory decision making and social learning criteria and preconditions is proposed for the evaluation of these aspects of IWRM (*) within this study.
It must be noted that there is scope for further investigation into and understanding of stakeholder participation, consensus based decision making and social learning in the context of adaptive operational water resources management. However, this is not within the scope of this thesis.
Need for Management Learning:
Rogers (2006) states that managers have a very limited tool box with which to work, and that modern society has largely transferred the risk of failure to them. Rogers (2006) further states that managers need to focus on preparing society to engage the knowledge, the problem and the solutions needed to achieve some collectively defined set of future conditions; to actively engage scientists in the development of technology for altering patterns of resource use and to undertake actions needed to achieve the desired future distribution of the costs and benefits of resource use in society. Managers – or practitioners - thus carry a heavy burden for the implementation of IWRM and engaging their knowledge and learning is vital for studies within this field.
IWRM should thus be developed and implemented in an ”adaptive manner” that stimulates scientists and practitioners through the philosophy of “learn by doing” informed by practice, as traditional systems of governance and management generally do not effectively accommodate the diversity of
(*) Refer to section 3.2 for the actual methodology used for the evaluation
of consensus based participatory decision making and social learning in
this thesis.
legitimate stakeholder needs and value-sets as well as the rapidly changing circumstances that confound societal decision making.
Action research is a methodology for conducting research and Strategic Adaptive Management is a methodology for managing complex river catchments that respectively facilitate the incorporation of both scientific and management learning into the implementation of IWRM. The need for these two methodologies is described in sections 1.3.2 and 1.3.3.