Integrated and Participatory Water Resources Management - Theory

9780444530134

0444530134

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), the new paradigm proposed by the Water Forum and UNESCO to cope with the water challenge of the new century, promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner, without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. Such a process must begin from the periphery and move towards the centre, from the particular towards the general, in brief bottom-up and not top-down, as is traditional, to construct a viewpoint that is holistic and shared, that embodies the viewpoints of the individuals as partial viewpoints all, however, equally considered. IWRM requires a multidisciplinary approach that integrates knowledge, concepts and tools from different fields ranging from Hydrology, through System and Control Theory, to Decision and Negotiation Theory. To this end, a procedure is required in which all these items are coherently framed and scoping, modelling, planning, policy design, evaluation and negotiations are not developed as separated processes but interpreted as the coordinated stages of the decision-making process. The target of this book is to define and develop such a procedure, namely, a Participatory and Integrated Planning (PIP) procedure, to analyse some of the main methods and tools to adopt in its stages and to demonstrate how they can be effectively intermeshed. Giving space to both theoretical and practical aspects, the book is tailored to researchers and university students, as well as water resources practising professionals. Ten appendices providing the essential background notions (statistics, system analysis and modelling, principles of negotiations and mediation) are available on the annexed CD, where the reader can also find a number of exercises and project examples that can be used to experiment with the PIP procedure. A twin volume (Volume 1B), focusing on the more practical aspects of the proposed procedure, is available in the same series: it shows how to get IWRM actually applied in a real life project.