New Methods for Adaptive Water Management

The special feature on New Methods for Adaptive Water Management in Ecology and Society is still in-progress but the list of available articles is growing. You can find the list of articles below. The articles can be downloaded from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/viewissue.php?sf=31
free of charge.


Mechanisms of Resilience in Common-pool Resource Management Systems: an Agent-based Model of Water Use in a River Basin
by Maja Schlüter and Claudia Pahl-Wostl

A Framing Approach to Cross-disciplinary Research Collaboration: Experiences from a Large-scale Research Project on Adaptive Water Management
by Art Dewulf, Greet François, Claudia Pahl-Wostl, and Tharsi Taillieu

Managing Change toward Adaptive Water Management through Social Learning
by Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Jan Sendzimir, Paul Jeffrey, Jeroen Aerts, Ger Berkamp, and Katharine Cross

Facing the Adaptive Management Challenge: Insights from Transition Management
Rutger van der Brugge and Roel van Raak

Assessing the Resilience of a River Management Regime: Informal Learning in a Shadow Network in the Tisza River Basin
Jan Sendzimir, Piotr Magnuszewski, Zsuzsanna Flachner, Peter Balogh, Geza Molnar, Attila Sarvari, and Zsuzsanna Nagy

Assessing Management Regimes in Transboundary River Basins: Do They Support Adaptive Management?
G.T. (Tom) Raadgever, Erik Mostert, Nicole Kranz, Eduard Interwies, and Jos G. Timmerman

Seminar Barbara Gray at Wageningen University

seminar by Barbara Gray at Wageningen University

click here for more information

Deadline extension Transitions Conference

The deadline for abstracts for the Transitions conference has been extended until April 30th 2008. The conference takes place in Wageningen, 26-29 Oct. 2008.

For more information see http://www.agricultureintransition.eu

Train-the-trainer Workshop Cairo

The NeWater project and the Nile Basin Initiative together organized a workshop about adaptive management for people involved in the management of the Nile river basin. A very diverse African group of participants, from Egypt to Rwanda and Burundi, took part in the workshop, together with NeWater people from Belgium, Netherlands and Uzbekistan.

Thanks to the preparations of Fons Jaspers, the fluent Arabic of Koen Roest and the many helpful staff members of the training centre of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (including visa and passport helpers, drivers, sheet-turners, engineers and furniture carriers) the training went very well. It was an interesting occasion with the necessary enthusiasm and critical questions, turning it into a learning event for both trainers and participants.

We used the Podocarpus National Park simulation as a tool to learn about dealing with multiple actors and diverging frames, which led to lively negotiations and discussion about the feasibility of such an appraoch in a number of African cases.

Publication "Identification of major sources of uncertainty in current IWRM practice"

The following paper, which is the result of joint work in the NeWater project, has been published in Water Resources Management:

Identification of major sources of uncertainty in current IWRM practice. Illustrated for the Rhine basin.

P. van der Keur, H.J. Henriksen, J-C. Refsgaard, M. Brugnach, C. Pahl-Wostl, A. Dewulf and H. Buiteveld

Here's the abstract:

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) can be viewed as a complex process in which the effect of adopted water management measures must be monitored and adjusted in an iterative way as new information and technology gradually become available under changing and uncertain external impacts, such as climate change. This paper identifies and characterises uncertainty as it occurs in the different stages of the IWRM process with respect to sources, nature and type of uncertainty. The present study develops a common terminology that honour the most important aspects from natural and social sciences and its application to the entire IWRM process. The proposed framework is useful by acknowledging a broad range of uncertainties regarding data, models, multiple frames and context.,Relating this framework to the different steps of the IWRM cycle is helpful to determine the strategies to better handle and manage uncertainties. Finally, this general framework is illustrated for a case study in the transboundary Rhine river basin.

The paper can be downloaded here or from the journal's website http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11269-008-9248-6