Water Governance as Connective Capacity

Nanny Bressers, Jurian Edelenbos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138252059
• eBook ISBN: 9781317000181
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Water is becoming one of the world's most crucial concerns. A third of the world's population has severe water shortage, while three quarters of the global population lives in deltas which run the risk of severe flooding. In addition, many more face problems of poor water quality. While it is apparent that drastic action should be taken, in reality, water problems are complex and not at all easy to resolve. There are many stakeholders involved - industries, local municipalities, farmers, the recreational sector, environmental organisations, and others - who all approach the problems and possible solutions differently. This requires delicate ways of governing multi-actor processes. This book approaches the concept of 'water management' from an interdisciplinary and non-technical, but governance orientation. It departs from the fragmented nature of water management, showing how these lack cooperation, joint responsibility and integration and instead argues that the capacity to connect to other domains, levels, scales, organizations and actors is of utmost importance. Connective capacity revolves around connecting arrangements (such as institutions), actors (for instance individuals) and approaches (such as instruments). These three carriers of connectedness can be applied to different focal points (the objects of fragmentation and integration in water management). The book distinguishes five different focal points: (1) government layers and levels; (2) sectors and domains; (3) time orientation of the long and the short term; (4) perceptions and actor frames; (5) public and private spheres. Each contributor pays attention to a specific combination of one focal point and one connective carrier. Bringing together case studies from countries including The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Romania, Sweden, Finland, Italy, India, Canada and the United States, the book focuses on the question of how to deal with the various sources of fragmentation in water governance by organizing meaningful connections and developing 'connective capacity'. In doing so, it provides useful scientific and practical insights into how 'connective capacity' in water governance can be enhanced.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Conceptualizing Connective Capacity in Water Governance

Jurian Edelenbos, Nanny Bressers and Peter Scholten

DOI: 10.4324/9781315547626-1

Water Issues and the Need for Water Governance

Water is an important source for living. It is expected that due to interplay of climate change, population growth and industrialization, fresh water will become one of the scarcest resources for humans, societies, and ecosystems. In several areas of the world, for example, the state of California in the US and southern parts of Australia, this is already visible. Water shortage affects not only social human conditions, but also has an economic impact, for example in the agricultural domain. Water has social, economic, and environmental aspects. A country is said to experience ‘water stress’ when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per person. It is argued that a third of the world’s population nowadays lives in water-stressed countries. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds (Edelenbos and Teisman 2011, IPCC-WGII 2007).

However, not only water shortage is a problem. In almost all delta areas in the world also the surplus of water causes problems. Three-quarters of the world population lives in deltas and runs the risk of severe flooding due to climate change. This will occur by, for example, heavy peak rainfalls and extreme weather conditions (IPCC-WGII 2007), such as in Louisiana (2005), Great Britain (2007), Romania in 2010, and recently the Queensland flood in Australia (2010-2011) and the floods in Thailand (2011). In numerous countries all over the world, defense strategies, such as constructing dams, dykes and levees, are employed. At the same time many countries develop adaptive approaches in trying to face water surplus by providing more room for the rivers. These room for the river programs are being developed to provide space for the rivers that are often been enclosed by urban areas (Warner et al. 2012). In practice a combination of resistance (defensive) and resilience (adaptive) strategies are employed in water governance processes.

At the same time countries all over the world, especially the developing countries, face problems of poor water quality, for example, due to water pollution by industries. But also in developed countries these issues remain high on the political agenda. The Water Framework Directive of the European Union (Directive 2000/60/EC¹), for instance, urges the countries of the European Union to come up with policies to (further) improve the quality of drinking water by explicitly providing guidelines on how to involve stakeholders in this process.

1See http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/index_en.html for more information and the document.

It is argued that governments should take drastic action to address the problems of water pollution, water shortage/supply and water surplus (for instance, Edelenbos and Teisman 2011). Numerous methods and technologies for solving water problems seem to be at hand, but at the same time the capacity (for example: skills, experience, financial resources, etc.) to implement these methods and technologies seems to be lacking. Some argue that the current ‘water crisis’ is not caused by a lack of water technology, but rather by a failure in water governance (UNESCO 2006). The explanation for this is that water issues cannot be solved by new water technologies in a top-down, hierarchical manner, but need to be addressed and approached through a bottom up, horizontal and multi-stakeholder way of working. This is what is meant by the shift from a government approach to a governance approach (Kooiman 1993, 2003). Water can be considered a complex and interconnected system, which touches upon other domains and fields like agriculture, economic development, social development, ecology, health, etc. Water is of interest to many stakeholders, industries, municipalities, farmers, recreational sector, environmental organizations and others, who all approach the problem and the possible solutions differently (Leach and Pelkey 2001, Kuks 2004). Consistent with the global rise of (formal and informal) networks (Castells 2000), water is a governance challenge, which requires certain capacities to solve water problems in an effective, efficient and legitimate way (Edelenbos et al. 2010).

Due to the complex nature of water systems, a water governance approach is needed in which different values, interests and uses of water are interconnected so that water policy and measurements are developed and implemented with the support of different stakeholder groups. However, effective and legitimate water governance approaches are not easy to develop because of the wicked nature of the problem due to conflicting values and interests. This means that the solution can only be found beyond the boundaries of one layer and segment of government and even often beyond the boundaries of government as a whole. It requires delicate ways of governing multi-actor processes, which we call water governance in this book. As in the case with governance in general (Kickert et al. 1997) and also in the case of water governance, there has been a general shift from an emphasis on state provision to private provision based on market principles and more recently a multi-stakeholder approach in water governance. We will come back to this core concept in this introduction and the book itself.

Oftentimes the water governance capacity to solve water problems is insufficient due to the existing institutional fragmentation of responsibilities in this field. Water has many aspects, which are often handled by different organizations and institutions and these themselves are often bound by geographical and functional jurisdictions (Sabatier et al. 2005). In many cases there are different institutions with different and conflicting interests concerning water, like water safety, water quality or water shortage (Leach and Pelkey 2001, Lubell and Lippert 2011, Sabatier et al. 2005). But water also touches the issues of climate change, spatial planning and development. In this perspective spatial quality and integrated planning are often-mentioned goals and ambitions (Edelenbos 2010, Van Schie 2010). Achieving cooperation, joint responsibility and integration in such fragmented water governance systems is a core problem (Edelenbos and Teisman 2011). The water system is complex and interconnected of nature, but at the same time the governmental institutions and processes are fragmented and not capable of developing and implementing integrated and interconnected visions, plans, projects and programs. Therefore, dealing with water systems seems to become more and more a compounded problem. If a problem becomes more compounded, the interdependency with adjoining policy fields will grow, the amount of actors (uses and users) involved often tends to increase and the amount of frames, goals and ways of working easily multiplies. Within this kaleidoscopic environment the capacity to connect to other domains, levels, scales, organizations and actors becomes a very important aspect of water governance. The importance of connective capacity is also stressed in holistic approaches of water issues (Margerum 1999, Borin and Sonzogni 1995). In this holistic approach the interconnective dimension is emphasized, addressing interrelationship and linkages among multiple, cross-cutting, and often conflicting resource uses. This holistic approach is gaining popularity. However, it is not yet (fully) implemented in practice: “This is not surprising, since most water professionals consider, at least implicitly, water to be very important, if not the most important resource” (Biswas 2004: 253).

This interconnecitivity aspect of water governance, and its struggle with it, is the main topic of this book. Connective capacity revolves around connecting arrangements (such as institutions), actors (for instance individuals) and approaches (such as instruments). Water governance in this book will be approached as a way of connecting organizations, actors and institutions from different sectors and domains (agriculture, environment, economy, social welfare, nature, regional, landscape and spatial planning) to jointly face water problems and cooperate in developing effective, integrative and legitimate solutions for those water problems. This connecting aspect is often touched upon in water policy and management literature by literature on co-management and adaptive management (Pahl-Wostl 2007, Tortajada 2010), Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM, for example, Margerum 1995) and Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM, for example, Lubell and Lippert 2011), but has not yet been an exclusive point of view in literature on water policy and management. This book is devoted to this view. Therefore the following main research question is leading in this book: which connective capacities in water governance are to be developed in order to face water problems in an integrative, effective and legitimate way?

The water sector is a perfect field of research for the exploration of this question. Water systems are complex and compounded and often go beyond the boundaries of municipalities, regions and states. The issue of scarcity, pollution and flooding is furthermore complicated by the fact that they are heavily interrelated with other systems, like land-use and climate. In all there is much institutional and organizational complexity and fragmentation around water issues.

This book is primarily aimed at researchers working on (water) governance. However, due to our focus on concrete cases and tangible projects we believe this book is valuable for practitioners in the water field as well.

Fragmentation and Integration Regarding Water Issues

Society has become increasingly specialized and, as a consequence, fragmented. Specialization has for decades been the driving force for economic prosperity and wealth (Edelenbos and Teisman 2011). The division of labor and specialization was seen as an inevitable feature of modern society and modern organizations. Specialized organizations were able to do their specific task by internal coordination, often in hierarchical terms. The external coordination was assumed to be managed by the hidden hand of the market or formal rules. Organizations were perceived as a machine, composed of different parts that were managed and coordinated in a mechanical way (Morgan 1986: 27). Coordination is in itself a specialty and the coordinators will ensure that activities fit together in a coherent and beneficial way (Kanter 1983: 58-61).

Although this specialization brought increasing wealth, there are also negative side effects. Weber already discovered that bureaucracies undermined the capacity of spontaneous action (Kanter 1983: 60). Furthermore, increased emphasis on control and reduction of transaction costs by increasing specialization can lead to a simplification of reality and a limitation of connections with other actors and domains. “Organizations seek to transform confusing, interactive environments into less confusing, less interactive ones by decomposing domains and incline to treat their own subdomains as more or less autonomous. Organizations even tend to create buffers with surrounding subdomains” (March 1999: 197). Organizations often strive for autonomous space and maintaining, defending or enlarging that space. Each subunit of an organization strives for more autonomy and optimization of its self-interest. The unit does this by breaking down a complex problem into separate parts in which its own part is analyzed and solved separately without much attention for the combination or aggregate level of the subparts.

The problem of collective action is also present in water management (Sabatier et al. 2002). Fragmented and uncoordinated action guided by sub-goals and individual time frames and action schemes, may become rather dysfunctional on a larger system level leading for solving societal problems (March 1999). Functional specialization creates a structure that is supposed to be a system of cooperation but often turns out as a system of competition (Morgan 1986). Due to this, the envisaged benefits of specialization may hamper progress and development of the public system. Regarding water, we see specialization on water safety, water quality, droughts, etc. that each has its quality, but hampers a more integrated view on water because each discipline has its own background, way of working and substantial focus.

The Need for Connective Capacity: From Water Management toward Water Governance

Water governance takes place in circumstances of high complexity. This complexity is characterized by the involvement of many organizatio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Conceptualizing Connective Capacity in Water Governance
• 2 The Role of Political-public Leadership for Connective Capacity in Water Governance
• 3 Connective Capacity in a Dynamic Context: Changing Water Governance Structures in Romania
• 4 Connecting Multiple Levels of Governance for Adaptation to Climate Change in Advanced Industrial States
• 5 Framing and Linking Space for the Grensmaas: Opportunities and Limitations to Boundary Spanning in Dutch River Management
• 6 The Climate Game: Connecting Water Management and Spatial Planning through Simulation Gaming?
• 7 Connecting Levels and Disciplines: Connective Capacity of Institutions and Actors Explored
• 8 Short-term and Long-term Tensions in Water Programs: The Role of Leadership and Organization
• 9 Connecting Long and Short-term via Envisioning in Transition Arenas
• 10 Connecting Time Spans in Regional Water Governance: Managing Projects as Stepping-stones to a Climate Proof Delta Region
• 11 Framing Strategies and Connective Capacity in Water Governance Policy: The Case of the Second Delta Committee
• 12 Bridging Knowledge Frames and Networks in Climate and Water Governance
• 13 Values Connecting Societies and Water Systems
• 14 Creating Legitimacy in Water Governance Networks through Complexity Sensitive Management
• 15 The Influence of Connective Capacity on the Legitimacy of Flood Management
• 16 Great Lakes Water Governance: A Transboundary Inter-Regime Analysis
• 17 Conclusions: Towards a Synchronization Perspective of Connective Capacity in Water Governance
• Index