Identification

Title

A philosophical justification for a novel analysis-supported, stakeholder-driven participatory process for water resources planning and decision making

Abstract

Two trends currently shape water resources planning and decision making: reliance on participatory stakeholder processes to evaluate water management options; and growing recognition that deterministic approaches to the evaluation of options may not be appropriate. These trends pose questions regarding the proper role of information, analysis, and expertise in the inherently social and political process of negotiating agreements and implementing interventions in the water sector. The question of how one might discover the best option in the face of deep uncertainty is compelling. The question of whether the best option even exists to be discovered is more vexing. While such existential questions are not common in the water management community, they are not new to political theory. This paper explores early classical writing related to issues of knowledge and governance as captured in the work of Plato and Aristotle; and then attempts to place a novel, analysis-supported, stakeholder-driven water resources planning and decision making practice within this philosophical discourse, making reference to current decision theory. Examples from the Andes and California, where this practice has been used to structure participation by key stakeholders in water management planning and decision-making, argue that when a sufficiently diverse group of stakeholders is engaged in the decision making process expecting the discovery of the perfect option may not be warranted. Simply discovering a consensus option may be more realistic. The argument touches upon the diversity of preferences, model credibility and the visualization of model output required to explore the implications of various management options across a broad range of inherently unknowable future conditions.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d75t3pdr

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-07-31T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact