Reg Environ Change (2005) 5: 162163
DOI 10.1007/s10113-004-0090-y
PREFACE
Jos G. Timmerman
The need for participatory processes and its implications for water
management information
Published online: 19 January 2005
Springer-Verlag 2005
Many countries in the world over the last decade have
faced extremes in water management. Increasing
occurrences of heavy rainfall causing oods and pro-
longed dry periods with water shortage put pressure on
our societies. This situation has led to the recognition
that the present-day water management is not ready to
face future situations in which these extremes are likely
to appear more frequently. As the consumption of water
and its use for many dierent purposes is still increasing,
water management should increasingly become a shared
responsibility of governments and water users. There is
consequently a need for water management that can
adapt to sudden changes in a participative manner. This
new approach towards water management also em-
phasises the need for the information necessary to sup-
port decisions. Information on a wide range of issues has
to be made available timely and in a manner that is
understandable by a wide audience.
This special issue presents a selection of papers1 on
the need for participatory processes in present-day water
management and its implications for providing infor-
mation to the actors. This issue discusses why partici-
patory approaches in present-day water management are
imperative, both from the management and the infor-
mation perspective. In addition to showing how partic-
ipatory processes can be eectuated, it also shows that
participation should encompass all relevant stakehold-
ers. Excluding specic groups can lead to creating new,
unintended problems. Finally, this issue shows how the
participating actors can be provided with information
and tools to support their decision-making.
J. G. Timmerman
Institute for Inland Water Management and
Waste Water Treatment (RIZA), PO Box 17,
8200 AA Lelystad, The Netherlands
E-mail: j.g.timmerman@riza.rws.minvenw.nl
1
The papers are selected from the proceedings of the fourth inter-
national conference on information in support of sustainable water
management; Monitoring Tailor-Made IV. The proceedings are
available at http://www.mtm-conference.nl.
Society today faces problems that are characterised by
increasing complexity caused by a multitude of stakes:
structural uncertainty about, for instance, the eects of
climate change, high stakes from increased population
densities and still growing economic development, and
steering problems that emerge from all this. A range of
anthropogenic pressures can be distinguished in water
management: agriculture, deforestation and forestation,
dams, industrial development, urbanisation, land recla-
mation and shoreline development, transportation,
recreation and leisure, overshing and aquaculture, etc.,
leading to water degradation and water depletion,
increased hypoxia, increased erosion and sedimentation,
saline intrusions, pollution by oil and contaminants,
wetland and ecosystem loss, extinct and reduced biodi-
versity, invasion of non-native species, loss of sustain-
ability options and an overall degradation of resources
and life systems. This non-exhaustive listing claries the
extent of stakes and problems that water management is
facing. Because of the complexity of the situation, solving
one problem may cause aggravation of other problems or
may have high impact on certain stakes. Therefore, these
types of problems are called persistent problems. The
rst paper by Van der Brugge and others argues that
these persistent problems cannot be handled by current
policies and current research and cannot be solved with
incremental changes. As a result we need structural
changes in mode of thought and action; transitions in
water management are needed towards a more adaptive
and participatory approach.
The paper by Timmerman and Langaas builds on this
notion and describes the role of information in water
management and the need for participatory approaches
in information production. They argue that even though
scientically better information may be produced now-
adays, the use of information will remain limited as long
as no account is taken of dierence in evaluation of
information by people with dissimilar mindframes (be-
liefs, values, norms, and dierent cultural habits),
asymmetric access to information by all actors, insu-
cient communication channels, and insucient coordi-

nation between the dierent levels and scales of gover-
nance. Moreover, cooperation, for instance in trans-
boundary water management is hindered by dierences
in legal frameworks, historical backgrounds, technical
abilities, and cultural backgrounds on either side of the
border. Cooperation in information production and
dissemination should therefore account for the dier-
ences between the countries. Strong boundaries also
exist between dierent disciplines that are not easily
overcome where expertise, simultaneously at the same
time limits the capacity to solve problems through its
bias. To improve this situation towards an integrated,
sustainable water management situation, participation is
inevitable. Participation of the relevant actors in den-
ing information needs to support decision-making will
support creating insight into the existing mindframes
and will create better understanding of the situation at
hand.
The objectives of participation can be to inform the
public or specic stakeholder groups about a problem,
but also to elicit knowledge by consulting the public or
stakeholder groups. Dierent participatory tools and
methods are applied to achieve the two objectives. The
paper by Ridder and Pahl-Wostl illustrates the dier-
ences of participation in local level planning and in
integrated assessment, and discusses the role of infor-
mation in this process. The purpose of participation in
integrated assessment is mainly to collect practical
information for scientic assessments and policy making
and is therefore science-driven. Participation in local
level planning serves to better adapt activities and
measures to local conditions, to include the people
concerned in the design process and eventually to raise
public acceptance. Here, the objective is clearly on
improving implementation. Both approaches are based
on the assumption that the topdown implementation of
policy measures or plans, for local development in many
cases, has to be replaced or at least complemented by
participatory processes.
Merrey and others, in their paper, describe how
poverty reduction, empowering poor people to improve
their livelihoods, and achieving long-term equitable
economic growth are the most important objectives of
developing countries to improve natural resources
163
management. Poverty has many dimensions, but lack of
access to a reliable water supply for households as well
as for productive purposes is one central feature of
poverty in developing countries. There is considerable
evidence to show that making even relatively small
amounts of water available for personal and productive
use to poor people can transform their lives. The concept
of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)
concentrates on coordinated development and manage-
ment of water, land and related resources, in order to
maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an
equitable manner without compromising the sustain-
ability of vital ecosystems. The authors argue that from
the perspective of poverty reduction this focus is too
narrow in the sense that it does not include improving
livelihoods of people. In addition to that, IWRM is not
embedded enough in the wider management of natural
resources. Use of water for agricultural purposes is, in
this narrow IWRM concept, often identied as the
problem, whereas this is essential from the viewpoint of
the poor people. Thus, this paper illustrates the impor-
tance of perspective and shows that an unintentionally
narrow perspective can be counter-productive for a
specic group.
In a participatory setting, leaders in developing and
developed countriesgovernment, private sector, and
civil societyneed timely and targeted environmental
indicators, to understand the value and use of ecosystem
goods and services, to analyse threats, and when com-
bined with socio-economic indicators, assess the trade-
os at stake. Revenga, in her paper, shows that new
technologies like remote sensing and geographic infor-
mation system (GIS) facilitate the development of indi-
cators of ecosystem condition and change. Remote
sensing technologies allow us to gather repeated obser-
vations about the surface of the Earth from satellites.
GIS allows for the combination of physical, biological,
and socio-economic data to analyse ecosystem condition
and change, making linkages between change and im-
pacts possible. Finally, complex messages and processes
can be easily communicated to a variety of audiences
through maps. In this way, a wider audience can be
supported in their participation in water management
processes.