A Critical Assessment of Integrated Water Resources Management and Adaptive Management

The May edition of the Ecology and Society Journal was published as a Special Feature on New Methods for Adaptive Water Management edited by Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Jan Sendzimir, and Paul Jeffrey.

Included in this edition is a synthesis article by authors Wietske Medema, Brian S. McIntosh, and Paul J. Jeffrey entitled "From Premise to Practice: a Critical Assessment of Integrated Water Resources Management and Adaptive Management Approaches in the Water Sector". The article examines the current practice of Integrated Water Resource Management (or IWRM) and Adaptive Management (AM) as two of the best-practice models of water governance and planning, but identify a series of issues and barriers to the effective uptake and implementation of both. Specifically, both models are limited in implementation by institutional barriers, difficulties in demonstrating success, the ambiguity of their definitions and by the pragmatic concerns of agencies including cost, complexity and risk. This article is of particular interest for its review of these frameworks, and also in providing a future research agenda for improving IWRM and AM.

Abstract

The complexity of natural resource use processes and dynamics is now well accepted and described in theories ranging across the sciences from ecology to economics. Based upon these theories, management frameworks have been developed within the research community to cope with complexity and improve natural resource management outcomes. Two notable frameworks, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and Adaptive Management (AM) have been developed within the domain of water resource management over the past thirty or so years. Such frameworks provide testable statements about how best to organise knowledge production and use to facilitate the realisation of desirable outcomes including sustainable resource use. However evidence for the success of IWRM and AM is mixed and they have come under criticism recently as failing to provide promised benefits. This paper critically reviews the claims made for IWRM and AM against evidence from their implementation and explores whether or not criticisms are rooted in problems encountered during the translation from research to practice. To achieve this we review the main issues that challenge the implementation of both frameworks. More specifically, we analyse the various definitions and descriptions of IWRM and AM. Our findings suggest that similar issues have affected the lack of success that practitioners have experienced throughout the implementation process for both frameworks. These findings are discussed in the context of the broader societal challenge of effective translation of research into practice, science into policy and ambition into achievement. Read the full article here.

Reference

Medema, W., B. S. McIntosh, and P. J. Jeffrey. 2008. From premise to practice: a critical assessment of integrated water resources management and adaptive management approaches in the water sector. Ecology and Society 13(2): 29.