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This paper characterises some of the main issues confronting water-catchment managing in a climate-changing world and addresses wide-spread concerns about the lack of connectivity between science, policy making and implementation. The paper's arguments are 'framed' within a paradigm of systemic and adaptive governing, regulating, planning and managing understood as a nested systemic hierarchy. It is argued that climate change adaptation is best understood as a coevolutionary dynamic, principally, but not exclusively between human beings and the biophysical world. Two forms of 'knowledge brokerage' based on mode 1 (knowledge) and mode 2 (knowing) are distinguished with practical implications. Drawing on extensive research by the authors, eight modalities for enacting 'knowledge brokerage' are introduced. The conditions for or against success in employing these modalities are described. Consistent with the views of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Report 2007, it is argued that water managing is a paradigmatic domain for making climate change adaptation 'real' and a systemic issue of global concern at the core of sustainable development.

The European Water Framework Directive provides a new impetus to manage river catchments in more integrated, joined-up ways. This article looks at the role of stakeholders in integrated catchment management. Taking the work of the Environment Agency as a case study, the article begins by looking at recent successes at managing water related issues and the role of stakeholders in this. It then looks at ways in which water environments continue to be vulnerable, particularly to diffuse pollution, some development practices and climatic changes. It argues for the need for more integrated management responses, characterised by collaborative and inter-disciplinary learning to manage the interdependencies, complexities and uncertainties of catchments as integrated systems. This will require both the strengthening and streamlining of current approaches to stakeholder engagement, as well as the development of new approaches. The article concludes by outlining recent work by the Environment Agency to shape these new arrangements for stakeholder engagement, and by reflecting on the lessons learned from this.