Enhancing water security for the benefit of humans and nature

Enhancing water security to the benefits of humans and nature –

a multi-level governance challenge

Claudia Pahl-Wostl

Professor for Resource Management University of Osnabrück, Germany

Co-Chair Global Water System Project

Some statements to start with

Ø  Human water security has often been achieved to the detriment of the environment

Ø  and with negative, sometimes irreversible impacts on the resilience of social-ecological systems

Ø  Good governance essential to enhance water security without jeopardizing sustainability

Ø  Move from discourse to effective structural change

Normative principles good water governance:

–  Participatory

–  Consensus oriented

–  Accountable

–  Transparent

–  Responsive

–  Effective and efficient

–  Equitable and inclusive

–  Follows the rule of law

AND

–  Flexible and adaptive

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2003

Moving from discourse to structural change

Context Frames Actions Outcomes

Single-Loop LearningIncremental improvement of

established routines

Double-Loop LearningReframing

Triple-Loop Learning

Transforming

Context Frames Actions Outcomes

Single-Loop LearningIncremental improvement of

established routines

Double-Loop LearningReframing

Triple-Loop Learning

Transforming

Discourse Structural Change

From applying panaceas to mastering complexity: Comparative analyses of water governance

systems

Projects & Case Studies

Case studies

Framework of analysis for diagnostic approach

…. analyse how certain characteristics of a water governance system influence its performance and how this is affected by the context in which the system is embedded

Water Governance

System

Context

Performance

(a)

Performance in geographic

regions

WFD - Classification of Surface Waters

in Germany

Ecological Status

Chemical Status

Becoming richer no guarantee for improvement…..

Performance as Function of GDP

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

0 5.000 10.000 15.000 20.000 25.000 30.000 35.000 40.000

GDP per capita ppc

Tota

l Per

form

ance

[% m

ax]

Insights Twin2Go Governance System –> Performance

Ø  No support for simple recipes (panaceas)

Ø  Regulatory frameworks necessary but not sufficient

Ø  Associations rarely confounded by context – but context important to explain variation in associations

-> Transfer of general principles that can be tailored to context

Ø  Adaptive capacity (CC adaptation) strongly related to polycentric governance, knowledge management and innovative ways for dealing with uncertainty

Ø  Economic development leads to fulfilling needs of human population but to a much lesser extent of the environment

Ø  Cases where rivers are (still) in good condition have often poor governance and management systems

Transformation towards adaptive governance and enhanced water security requires…

…. a balance between decentralization and coordination to avoid

both fragmentation and rigid central control -> POLYCENTRIC

…. an integration of governance modes

…. a balance between economic and institutional development

…. an explicit integration of learning cycles into policy and management processes

The way forward

}  Comparative analyses of transformative capacity of Water Governance and Management Systems

}  Development of context-sensitive policy advice to support sustainable transformations towards enhanced water security

}  Build global learning network of transition basins