Integ River Basin Governance_AW 05/08/2005 1:20 PM Page 1 Integrated River Basin Governance: Learning from International Experience is designed to help practitioners implement integrated approaches to river basin management (IRBM). It aims to help the coming generation of senior university students learn how to design IRBM and provides current researchers and the broader water community with a resource on river basin management. Drawing on both past and present river basin and valley scale Integrated River Basin Governance catchment management examples from around the world, Integrated Bruce Hooper River Basin Governance develops an integration framework for river basin management. Grounded in the theory and literature of natural resources management and planning, the thrust of the book is to assist policy and planning, rather than extend knowledge of Integrated River Basin hydrology, biophysical modelling or aquatic ecology. Providing a classification of river basin organizations and their use, Governance Integrated River Basin Governance also covers fundamental issues related to implementation: decision-making; Learning from International Experience institutions and organizations; information management; participation and awareness; legal and economic issues; Bruce Hooper integration and coordination processes; and building human capacity. Integrated River Basin Governance focuses on the social, economic, organizational and institutional arrangements of river basin management. Methods are outlined for implementing strategic and regional approaches to river basin management, noting the importance of context and other key elements that have been shown to impede success. The book includes a range of tools for river basin governance methods, derived from real life experiences in both developed and developing countries. The successes and failures of river basin management are discussed, and lessons learned from both are presented. www.iwapublishing.com ISBN 1 843390 88 4 Integrated River Basin Governance Integrated River Basin Governance Learning from International Experiences Bruce P. Hooper LONDON • SEATTLE Published by IWA Publishing, Alliance House, 12 Caxton Street, London SW1H 0QS, UK Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7654 5500; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7654 5555; Email: [email protected] Web: www.iwapublishing.com First published 2005 C 2005 IWA Publishing All photos C Bruce Hooper unless otherwise stated Copy-edited and typeset by TechBooks Ltd, India Printed by Lightning Source Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1998), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, or, in the case of photographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency in the UK, or in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the appropriate reproduction rights organization outside the UK. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the terms stated here should be sent to IWA Publishing at the address printed above. The publisher makes no representation, expressed or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for errors or omissions that may be made. Disclaimer The information provided and the opinions given in this publication are not necessarily those of IWA or of the editors, and should not be acted upon without independent consideration and professional advice. IWA and the editors will not accept responsibility for any loss or damage suffered by any person acting or refraining from acting upon any material contained in this publication. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 1 84339 088 4 Contents Preface vii 1 The IRBM paradigm 1 1.1 Prevailing concerns 1 1.2 Changing paradigms in water resources management 2 1.3 Integrated river basin management 8 1.4 Scale issues—river basins as management units 14 1.5 Case study: learning from the past—inventing the future in Australian river basin management 15 1.6 Summary 20 1.7 References 20 2 River basin governance: experiences and evaluations 24 2.1 A typology of river basin organisations 24 2.2 Evaluating IRBM experience 39 2.3 Functions and principles of integrated river basin governance 47 2.4 Summary 54 2.5 References 54 3 Governance in IRBM: a decision-making process 59 3.1 Governance is a decision process 59 3.2 Levels of decision-making in IRBM 64 3.3 Characterising individual decision-making 72 3.4 The role of psycho-social variables in individual decision-making 79 v vi Contents 3.5 Case study: attitudes and social norms towards decisions in integrated floodplain management in the Namoi Valley, Australia 84 3.6 New understandings of IRBM decision-making 99 3.7 Summary 105 3.8 References 106 4 IRBM protocols and plans 109 4.1 Adaptive, integrated river basin management 109 4.2 A protocol for adaptive integrated river basin management 110 4.3 Components of an IRBM plan 123 4.4 Summary 161 4.5 References 162 5 Information systems for IRBM 164 5.1 The river basin management information problem 164 5.2 Types of information systems 166 5.3 Stakeholder-driven river basin management information exchange 190 5.4 Summary 196 5.5 References 197 6 A prototype river basin information exchange programme 200 6.1 Delivering R&D to river basin managers 200 6.2 Building information integration 205 6.3 A prototype river basin information exchange programme 211 6.4 References 224 7 Social dimensions, institutional arrangements and performance measurement for IRBM 226 7.1 The power of the social domain in IRBM 226 7.2 Basin governance snapshots: south and north 233 7.3 ‘Best’ practice in IRBM governance 237 7.4 Social capacity building tools for IRBM 243 7.5 Building institutional capacity 251 7.6 Measuring river basin governance performance 268 7.7 Summary and future directions 272 7.8 References 272 Annex: International River Basins 277 Index 301 Preface This idea of this book was conceived in the early 1990s in the backblocks of the Namoi Valley.I was doing research in integrated floodplain management on the vast riverine floodplains of the northern Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. I had spent every day for two months interviewing farmers and agency staff about floodplain management. Everyone had their own solution—but very few had the ‘big picture’ about the immense valley in which they lived and worked. Why was this? There were so many landscape interdependencies. After a fifteen-year gestation, this book came together in 2004 in Carbondale, near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Basins. The growth of this book was like a river: fed by tributary inflows from practical research and consultancy projects in India, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. I trust it has now reached some semblance of adulthood. In some respects, I see this book cataloguing the growth and maturity of inte- grated river basin management. By the end of the twentieth century, it had become apparent that single issue, sectoral natural resource management in many of the world’s great river basins had produced suboptimal outcomes for both people and the natural environment. This happened in both developing and developed countries. There is now growing acceptance that an integrated, adaptive approach to river basin management is needed, one which harnesses the power of people and the institutions we create. This approach, integrated river basin management (IRBM), is the focus of this book. Why a book on IRBM? It was written to help advance thinking on the decision- making dimensions of river basin management, and to extend the understanding vii viii Preface of how integrated water resources management is implemented at the basin scale. It was also written to help practitioners implement IRBM and to assist a growing generation of river basin managers in professional practice. I trust this book is also useful for postgraduate students, providing practical tools and conceptual frameworks. As well, this book provides the broader water community with a resource on experiences in river basin management. This book owes its existence to several people who provided practical assis- tance. I thank Ian Borthwick, Michael Dunn and Alan Peterson (IWA Publishing) for their collegiate and helpful advice; KVGK Rao (Andhra Pradesh) for assistance in the Warangal case study; Sergio Bögeholz (Sydney) for assistance in the evalu- ation of catchment management organizations; Helen Sartori and Dianne Dredge (Brisbane) for the evaluation and compilation of information systems; staff of the Andhra Pradesh Water Conservation Mission for photographs and maps; Kristen Milton, Murray-Darling Basin Commission (Canberra), for cartography of that basin; Aaron Wolf, Marcia Macomber and Sam Littlefield, Oregon State Univer- sity, for providing data and maps of international river basins; Rishath Ahamed, Nathan Eidem, Greg Gurbal, Stacy Nicklow and Michael Pease (Carbondale) for copyediting, style formatting, database management and case studies. I acknowledge the international contributions of Jenny Bellamy, John Burton, John Fargher, Clive Lyall, Graham Marshall, Jim McDonald, Peter Millington, John Pigram (Australia); Tony Dorcey, Bruce Mitchell, Dan Shrubsole (Canada); KVGK Rao, PS Rao (India); Frank van Steenbergen (The Netherlands); Hilary Sunman, Colin Green (United Kingdom); Steve Born, Ben Dziegielewski, Chris Lant, Bob Lee, Rich Margerum, Tony Prato (USA). I would like to thank the many reviewers who provided valuable comments on the proposal to write this book. Finally, I thank my wife Kaye and my children for their encouragement and support. IRBM is both an art and a science. I trust that readers of this book will be better equipped to manage river basins.