Policymakers and Practitioners

ECWS-7 2023

Water governance in the EU is enshrined in the Water Framework Directive (WFD), with the engagement of stakeholders being one of the governance cornerstones. The inclusion of the interests of scientific and non-scientific groups in decision-making is crucial. Our objective is to examine the contribution of the participatory approach to the effectiveness of local water resource management. Within the Eye4water project, a participatory assessment was applied for the Lissos river basin, through joint identification and evaluation of the main water-related issues. Firstly, we identified the social system engaged to the basin through stakeholders' mapping. Secondly, based on criteria selection, three stakeholders' groups were invited to a workshop. Our preliminary results show that mutual learning should be encouraged at multiple levels. Well-recognized threats such as water pollution, flood risk, and groundwater lowering are present, while biodiversity issues are quite underrepresented.

International Journal of River Basin Management, 2014

Environmental flows programmes can be controversial, given that they transfer water from consumptive to environmental uses. It is, therefore, imperative that their performance is assessed against their anticipated ecological benefits. However, environmental flows present both technical and institutional challenges that cannot be addressed by traditional approaches to monitoring and evaluation. We present a framework that is currently being employed to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental flows in Victoria, Australia. The framework encourages a shift from expert-based models of ecological response to flow variation to those developed using the so-called 'evidence-based' methods that have become commonplace in medicine. The framework relies on close collaboration between scientists and managers for the design of monitoring programmes, collection and collation of data, and analysis and interpretation of results. Results will inform adaptive management of environmental flows in Victoria and improve basic understanding of the ecological impacts of changes in flow regime. Our experience suggests that the technical and institutional challenges for monitoring and evaluating environmental flows can be mostly overcome by close and continuing collaboration between managers and researchers. We are unaware of any equivalent programmes anywhere in the world and believe that our framework is transferable to any other large-scale environmental flows monitoring programme.

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 2006

To ensure science better informs the decision-making process, researchers and policy/program managers need to understand and respect each other's way of working, culture and operational timelines. However, there is little practical guidance on how this should be done and even less documented experience with specific mechanisms that better link these two groups. The published literature on information transfer has largely emphasized the dissemination of standard packages of information to ill-defined constituencies whose needs for scientific information are not well understood. Environment Canada's National Water Research Institute, on behalf of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, led a series of "Linking Water Science to Policy Workshops" as one such mechanism by which recent science could be delivered to practitioners, and practitioners could identify their research needs to scientists and research managers. There is a pressing need to explore and share experiences using creative mechanisms for sustained dialogue and networking between scientists and policy and program managers. The lessons learned from the workshop series and the need for science to continually inform the decision-making process has particular relevance for Canada's Ecosystem Initiatives given their integrated, place-based focus on long-term restoration and protection, and the challenge of continually changing ecosystems.

2021

Clearly policy makers should consider the impacts of any decisions they might make before making them. Science can provide estimates of various economic, ecologic, environmental, and even social impacts of alternative policies, impacts that determine how effective any particular policy will be. These impact estimates can be used to compare and evaluate alternative policies in the search for identifying the best one to implement. Among all scientists providing inputs to policy making processes are analysts who develop and apply models that provide these estimated impacts and, possibly, their probabilities of occurrence. But just producing them is not a guarantee that they will be considered by policy makers. This paper discusses ways scientists, including systems analysts, can effectively contribute to and inform those involved in making water management decisions. Brief descriptions of a variety of past and on-going water management policy making processes illustrate both some succe...

Frontiers in Environmental Science, 2020

Frontiers in Environmental Science, 2018

Hydrology, 2021

Water resource management policies impact how water supplies are protected, collected, stored, treated, distributed, and allocated among multiple users and purposes. Water resource policies influence the decisions made regarding the siting, design, and operation of infrastructure needed to achieve the underlying goals of these policies. Water management policies vary by region depending on particular hydrologic, economic, environmental, and social conditions, but in all cases they will have multiple impacts affecting these conditions. Science can provide estimates of various economic, ecologic, environmental, and even social impacts of alternative policies, impacts that determine how effective any particular policy may be. These impact estimates can be used to compare and evaluate alternative policies in the search for identifying the best ones to implement. Among all scientists providing inputs to policy making processes are analysts who develop and apply models that provide these ...

2002

Attempts to bridge the gap between those who generate scientific information and those who use it have not always been successful. This is true in part because most research methodologies encourage a relatively narrow, disciplinary focus on questions, frequently avoiding the complexities and interdependencies of the “real” world. A true dialog between end users of climate information and those who generate data is rarely achieved. Improved scientific information is important to managing water supplies in the context of increasing competition for water. However, scientists may not fully understand the context within which water management decisions are made, or have the appropriate training to ensure that the information that they produce is useful. There are major limitations to the applicability of current scientific products, in part because they are generated without a full understanding of institutional and political limitations to using the products in implementing new manageme...

2008

The Nostrum-DSS EU funded Co-ordination Action (CA) aims at contributing to the achievement of improved governance and planning in the field of sustainable water management within the Mediterranean Basin by establishing a network between the science, policy, and civil society spheres and through the development and dissemination of Best Practices Guidelines (BPGs) for the design and implementation of DSSs for IWRM in the Mediterranean Area. Decision Support Systems (DSS) have a great theoretical potential as tools for the identification of optimal water resource management regimes in the Mediterranean basin, thus helping policy makers (PMs) to bring the principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) into practice. However, such tools are only episodically exploited outside the academia. This article presents the outcomes of project activities targeting the development of more effective communication strategies, in order to facilitate the development of research products with greater potential for been up taken by the expected end-users, i.e. the community of policy makers, and their staffs, advisors, consultants, etc., in the Mediterranean Region.

Environmental Research Letters, 2023

The implementation of environmental flows (e-flows) aims to reduce the negative impacts of hydrological alteration on freshwater ecosystems. Despite the growing attention to the importance of e-flows since the 1970s, actual implementation has lagged. Therefore, we explore the limitations in e-flows implementation, their systemic reasons, and solutions. We conducted a systematic review and a bibliometric analysis to identify peer-reviewed articles published on the topic of e-flows implementation research in the last two decades, resulting in 68 research and review papers. Co-occurrence of terms, and geographic and temporal trends were analyzed to identify the gaps in environmental water management and propose recommendations to address limitations on e-flows implementation. We identify the underlying causes and potential solutions to such challenges in environmental water management. The limitations to e-flow implementation identified were categorized into 21 classes. The most recognized limitation was the competing priorities of human uses of water (n = 29). Many secondary limitations, generally co-occurring in co-causation, were identified as limiting factors, especially for implementing more nuanced and sophisticated e-flows. The lack of adequate hydrological data (n = 24) and ecological data (n = 28) were among the most mentioned, and ultimately lead to difficulties in starting or continuing monitoring/adaptive management (n = 28) efforts. The lack of resource/capacity (n = 21), experimentation (n = 19), regulatory enforcement (n = 17), and differing authorities involved (n = 18) were also recurrent problems, driven by the deficiencies in the relative importance given to e-flows when facing other human priorities. In order to provide a clearer path for successful e-flow implementation, system mapping can be used as a starting point and general-purpose resource for understanding the sociohydrological problems, interactions, and inherited complexity of river systems. Secondly, we recommend a system analysis approach to address competing demands, especially with the use of coupled water-energy modeling tools to support decision-making when hydropower generation is involved. Such approaches can better assess the complex interactions among the hydrologic, ecological, socioeconomic, and engineering dimensions of water resource systems and their effective management. Lastly, given the complexities in environmental water allocation, implementation requires both scientific rigor and proven utility. Consequently, and where possible, we recommend a move from simplistic flow allocations to a more holistic approach informed by hydroecological principles. To ease conflicts between competing water demands, water managers can realize more 'pop per drop' by supporting key components of a flow regime that include functional attributes and processes that enhance biogeochemical cycling, structural habitat formation, and ecosystem maintenance.