Dealing with uncertainty: adaptive approaches to sustainable river management

1. Sustainable river management is the proclaimed aim of many agencies and institutions, but it remains challenging to bring this worthy ideal from the level of political rhetoric to that of practical river management. 2. Amongst the many drivers that already pressure the river manager, from internal institutional goals, through political aspirations to systemic change within the biophysical process system, one common element emerges, that of prevailing uncertainty. 3. Once it has been accepted that conventional science and engineering approaches to uncertainty (risk) minimization may be sub-optimal in a truly holistic (biophysical, socio-economic, political) system, the challenge emerges of developing a more appropriate framework without destroying over-burdened managers and management systems in the process. 4. It is argued that the necessary components are often already in place or under consideration. A linked model is proposed comprising practical measures of sustainability, robust approaches to uncertainty (if necessary, involving attitude change), responsive (adaptive) management frameworks, and an important underpinning of fuzzy decision support.

[1]  Richard J. T. Klein,et al.  An Anatomy of Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability , 2000 .

[2]  I. Ajzen,et al.  Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research , 1977 .

[3]  Jean-Luc Jannink,et al.  A Classification of Collaborative Management Methods , 2000 .

[4]  Martin Welp.  The Use of Decision Support Tools in Participatory River Basin Management , 2001 .

[5]  Hubert H. G. Savenije,et al.  Incorporation of people's participation in planning and implementation of water resources projects , 1995 .

[6]  Alan Haney,et al.  Adaptive management for sound ecosystem management , 1996, Environmental management.

[7]  Keith W. Hipel,et al.  Using environmental indicators to quantify the robustness of policy alternatives to uncertainty , 2000 .

[8]  J. de Jong,et al.  Systematic approaches in water management: Aquatic outlook and decision support systems combining monitoring, research, policy analysis and information technology , 1996 .

[9]  Keith W. Hipel,et al.  Fuzzy Relation Analysis for Multicriteria Water Resources Management , 1999 .

[10]  F. H. Dawson,et al.  Quality assessment using River Habitat Survey data , 1998 .

[11]  N B Chang,et al.  Identification of river water quality using the fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach. , 2001, Journal of environmental management.

[12]  P. J. Boon,et al.  Towards an integrated approach to classifying and evaluating rivers in the UK , 1998 .

[13]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  Integration of heuristic knowledge with analytical tools for the selection of flood damage reduction measures , 2001 .

[14]  Gary W. Yohe,et al.  Assessing the Role of Adaptation in Evaluating Vulnerability to Climate Change , 2000 .

[15]  R. McLain,et al.  Adaptive management: Promises and pitfalls , 1996, Environmental management.

[16]  Kenneth H. Williams,et al.  Protocol and Practice in the Adaptive Management of Waterfowl Harvests , 1999 .

[17]  R. Clark,et al.  Roles of research scientists in natural resource decision-making , 2001 .

[18]  W. J. Young,et al.  Development of an environmental flows decision support system , 2000, Environ. Model. Softw..

[19]  CAROLIN M. LORENZ,et al.  Indicators for Transboundary River Management , 2001, Environmental management.

[20]  R. Gregory,et al.  Decision Aiding, Not Dispute Resolution: Creating Insights through Structured Environmental Decisions , 2001 .

[21]  S. Arnstein,et al.  Ladder of Citizen Participation , 2020 .

[22]  Robin Gregory,et al.  Democratizing Risk Management: Successful Public Involvement in Local Water Management Decisions , 1999 .

[23]  P. J. Boon.  The development of integrated methods for assessing river conservation value , 2000 .

[24]  J. Wright,et al.  River classification using invertebrates: RIVPACS applications , 1998 .

[25]  G. A. Bradshaw,et al.  Conservation Ecology: Uncertainty as Information: Narrowing the Science-policy Gap , 2008 .

[27]  R. Tol,et al.  Weathering Climate Change - Some Simple Rules to Guide Adaptation Decisions , 1999 .

[28]  D. Ludwig.  The Era of Management Is Over , 2001, Ecosystems.

[29]  J. Richard Eiser,et al.  Social Psychology: Attitudes, Cognition and Social Behaviour , 1986 .

[30]  M Stubbs,et al.  Learning to Network and Networking to Learn: Facilitating the Process of Adaptive Managementin a Local Response to the UK's National AirQuality Strategy , 2001, Environmental management.

[31]  M. Naura,et al.  The development of physical quality objectives for rivers in England and Wales , 2002 .

[32]  Usha Iyer-Raniga,et al.  FORUM: A Context for Participation in Sustainable Development , 2000, Environmental management.

[33]  Mark E. Borsuk,et al.  Stakeholder Values and Scientific Modeling in the Neuse River Watershed , 2001 .

[34]  The application of SERCON (System for Evaluating Rivers for Conservation) to a selection of rivers in Britain , 1998 .

[35]  F. Dallmeier,et al.  Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability: Adaptive Management , 2000 .

[36]  Harry Biggs,et al.  Integrating indicators, endpoints and value systems in strategic management of the rivers of the Kruger National Park , 1999 .

[37]  Slobodan P. Simonovic,et al.  One View of the Future , 2000 .