Summary: A New Paradigm For Water? ...

Read the summary and the most important questions on A new paradigm for water? A comparative review of integrated, adaptive and ecosystem-based water management in the Anthropocene

• 1 Abstract

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• What is being created because of the failure of conventional approaches to achieve equitable and sustainable water management?

  A 'new water paradigm' that emphasizes broader stakeholder invovlement, integration of sectors, issues and diciplines, attention to the human dimensions of management, and wider recognition of the economic, ecological and cultural values of water.

• Which three arising approaches wihtin the new water paradigm does the article review?

  1. Integrated Water Resources Management
     
  2. Ecosystem-Based Approaches
  3. Adaptive Management

• 2 Introduction

• Why does the article uses the term Anthropocene?

  Because human-induced global change has become so pervasive that some argue the earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

• Which are the key features of the Anthropocene?

  1. Accelarated climate change associated with increased levels of greenhouse gases, altered biogeochemical and hydrological cycles, and extensive loss of habitat and biodiversity.
  • Threatened water resources by increasing mean global temparatures
  2. Extensive social changes, expansion of human settlements following industrialization.

• 3 Background: the rise of a new water paradigm

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• What is a paradigm?

  A paradigm is a shared pattern of seeing and thinking about the world, based on socially maintained assumptions.

• How is a water paradigm revealed?

  Through observing the assumptions people make about:
  

  1. The nature of the system being managed.
  2. The goals of management.
  3. The best approaches to solving problems and achieving goals. 

• What are the features of command and control management?

  1. Based on an assumption of 'stationarity' (predictable uncertainty).
     
  2. Reversible trajectories of change within natural systems.
  3. The goal of water management is to maximize resource exploitation by reducing natural variability.
  4. Centralized, sectoral institutions, limited stakeholder involvement and expert-led problem solving focused on technical engineering solutions.
  5. Reducing problems to parts.

• What does the Anthropocene demands?

  • Approaches that foster (bevorderen) adaptive capacity in preparation for unforseen changes emerging from the complex interconnections and feedbacks between societies, economies and the environment. 
  • Integrated and effective water management, but this cannot be achieved if people and ecosystems are conceptualized as sperate entitites. 

• Which defining features for the new paradigm are being discussed in the article?

  1. The conceptualizations of social-ecological systems as complex, adaptive systems that are inherently unpredictable and difficult to control.
     
  2. A shift in the goals of water managmenet to include sustainability, water security and adaptive capacity (economic, ecological, social and cultural values of water).
  3. The implementation of integrative and adaptive management approaches and dialogic problem solving focused on learning, governance and the human dimensions of management. 

• Which are the emphases of the three management approaches?

  1. IWRM - Sustainable, social and economic development (by providing a governance platform for actors to negotiate integrated land and water management at basin scales, based on communicative rationality and the need to gain legitimacy through participatory processes.)
     
  2. EBA - Conservation (though strategies like "wise use of wetlands" and the valuation of ecosystem services for improved decision making, based on complex adaptive systems theory).
  3. AM - Complements and supports both approaches. (implements policies as 'experiments, following a continuous cycle of planning, doing, monitoring and evaluating, it encourages structured learning, based on complex adaptive systems theory).