PROCEEDINGS MTM-III - OPENING AND INTRODUCTION OPENING AND INTRODUCTION A.R. van Bennekom Institute for Inland Water Management and Waste Water Treatment RIZA, P.O. Box 17, 8200 AA Lelystad, The Netherlands Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the third international workshop Monitoring Tailor-Made. The subject of our workshop is information for sustainable water management. Sustainable water management is a matter of balancing. There are many stakeholders that share the same water resources and decision makers have to find a balance between all these interests. To support good decisions, that integrate between all interests, water management policy needs good, integrated information. Decisions have to balance ecological, economic and sociological factors that influence the quality and quantity of the water, and consequently the required information should integrate these disciplines. In this workshop we will be discussing what kind of information water management policy needs to be able to make decisions, and how such information can be obtained. WATER CRISIS Good information is becoming ever more important. There is a water crisis today. But the crisis is not about having too little water to satisfy our needs. It is a crisis of managing water so badly that billions of people, and the environment, suffer badly (Cosgrove and Rijsberman 2000). Managing water in a sustainable way requires good information. The problem as described by the Prince of Orange is that we have too little, too much or too polluted water. At the second World Water Forum, this is extensively discussed, and it was concluded in the Ministerial Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the 21st Century that an integrated water resources management is needed, accounting for social, economic and environmental factors and integrating surface water, groundwater and the ecosystems through which they flow. We will not discuss the water crisis here, but it underlines the importance of our work; without suitable and solid information about these social, economic and environmental factors and without knowledge of the status of surface waters, their linking to groundwaters and their relation to the surrounding ecosystems, sustainable water management is not possible. In this workshop we will discuss how we can come to integrated information, how we should deal with transboundary issues, how we can make policy makers and scientists communicate and how we can make scientists from different disciplines communicate and come to an integration of techniques. I will discuss these items one by one and to the end, I will come to covering idea of this all: Tailor-Made Monitoring. INTEGRATED WATER ASSESSMENT There is not really a shortage of data. Of course there are regions in the world that can be described as data-poor. But it is not a matter of having too little data. Usually there is data on water quality and quantity, there is data on ecology, economics and sociology, but the issue is that we can not combine these data into useful information. Data are collected for a specific reason and are less suitable for use in an other context. Therefore, we must find an approach to collect data that can be integrated into suitable information for water management. This implies integration of different scientific disciplines in the domains of the natural sciences and socio- economic sciences. Can we link biological data to industrial production data and is it possible to combine data about recreation with chemical data? Such are the questions we are facing. Integrated water assessment is also concerned with integrating information on groundwater and surface water systems. Both systems have different properties, but they are both part of the same hydrological cycle and influence each other. It was concluded from the workshop Monitoring Tailor-Made II that the same concepts in monitoring strategies are applicable for groundwater and surface water. The differences are mostly related to differences in physical characteristics (Van Luin and Ottens 1997). The same goes for the ecosystems surrounding water bodies. Water management cannot deal with these systems separately. This also requires an integrated approach; on a spatial scale. 10 PROCEEDINGS MTM-III - OPENING AND INTRODUCTION TRANSBOUNDARY ISSUES Then there is the matter that water bodies require an integrated approach crossing borders. Water bodies, being groundwaters or surface waters, do not stop at administrative borders. Management of a water body therefore requires a transboundary approach. Countries sharing a water body must tune their water management. This necessitates co-operation between different countries and harmonisation of different approaches towards the balancing of socio-economic and ecological values, as I discussed earlier. Such a process is full of pitfalls. It requires mutual trust, much communication and, not in the least, patience. Water management is largely regulated through legal systems. These legal systems put obligations on the collection of information. But such obligations tend to be inflexible and do not account for specific local situations. And across the border, there is another legal system, having other requirements. We should ask ourselves if we can use information to influence developments in policy and legislation, and maybe use it to come to a harmonised system between countries. POLICY MAKERS AND SCIENTISTS One of the big problems we are facing in producing information is that information producers, like scientists, often do not speak the same ‘language’ as information users, like policy makers and the public (Helsel 1997). Information users tend to oversimplify and have unrealistic expectations, whereas information producers fail to address the management needs (MacDonald 1994). So one of the issues is to bring these professional groups together and have them approaching water management in an integrated way. The step of specification of information needs is a crucial one in this respect. And at the other end of the information cycle the step of information utilisation is just as essential. These are issues that need more and more fundamental discussion. TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS This is the age of information. Technology provides us with numerous possibilities to unlock information in a way that was never though possible before. But are we using these possibilities, and can we use technology to support water management? We use databases to store the data, we use sophisticated software to analyse data, we use models to make prediction and analyse water management, and we use GIS to make surveyable maps. But integration of all these techniques is seldom done. How can we integrate such techniques. And can we find examples of integration of techniques that really worked? MONITORING TAILOR-MADE This brings us to the workshops Monitoring Tailor-Made. The previous, succesfull, workshops were in 1994 and 1996. In these workshops we discussed tailor-made monitoring. But after these two workshops do we know what tailor-made monitoring is? The theory says that tailor- made monitoring is providing the right information to support management decisions. Tailor- made information is effective: the information product is tailored to the questions, and efficient: the information is provided at a reasonable and affordable price (Adriaanse 1997). But that is theory. In practice, tailor-made monitoring is not fully developed. The 1994 workshop Monitoring Tailor-Made I concluded that a better fit should be found between the information produced and the water management needs (Adriaanse et al. 1995). A better fit yes, but how? In the 1996 workshop Monitoring Tailor-Made II this notion was developed into the conclusion that a lack of methodologies to deal with the upper ‘information’ parts of the monitoring cycle is hindering the linking of information to policy. A stronger participation of policy makers and public, and involvement of other than the traditional disciplines were recommended to improve monitoring information (Van Luin and Ottens 1997). This is where we left four years ago. And now many of you are here again to discuss the progress we made since 1996. And many new people are here, also from disciplines that are new to this workshop, to add your experience. Monitoring Tailor-Made II made special effort to involve groundwater professionals. You seem to have settled, as you are well represented again. 11 PROCEEDINGS MTM-III - OPENING AND INTRODUCTION Now Monitoring Tailor-Made III made an effort to involve professionals from the socio- economic sciences I hope this will prove to be lasting as well. The workshop Monitoring Tailor-Made is intended to provide a stage for the exchange of knowledge and experiences in integrating across scientific disciplines, professional groups, and administrative borders. I hope you all will use this opportunity to discuss and learn. I wish you interesting, fruitful and, not in the least, very enjoyable days here in Nunspeet. REFERENCES Adriaanse, M., J. Van de Kraats, P.G. Stoks, and R.C. Ward (eds.) (1995) Conclusions Pages 345 - 346 in Proceedings of the international workshop Monitoring Tailor-made. Beekbergen, The Netherlands. Adriaanse, M. (1997) Tailor-made guidelines: a contradiction in terms? Pages 391 - 399 in: J.J. Ottens, F.A.M. Claessen, P.G. Stoks, J.G. Timmerman and R.C. Ward (eds.) Proceedings of the international workshop Monitoring Tailor-Made II. Nunspeet, The Netherlands. Cosgrove, W.J. and F.R. Rijsberman (2000) World water vision; making water everybody’s business. Earthscan Publications Ltd, London, UK. Helsel, D.R. (1997) The value of water quality information for national environmental policy. Pages 47 - 52 in: J.J. Ottens, F.A.M. Claessen, P.G. Stoks, J.G. Timmerman, and R.C. Ward (eds.) Proceedings of the international workshop Monitoring Tailor-made - II. Nunspeet, The Netherlands. MacDonald, L.H. (1994) Developing a monitoring project. Journal of soil and water conservation, May - June 1994, p. 221 - 227. Van Luin, A.B. and J.J. Ottens. (1997) Conclusions and recommendations. Pages 401 - 403 in: J.J. Ottens, F.A.M.