ABSTRACT. The management of water resources is currently undergoing a paradigm shift toward a more integrated and participatory management style. This paper highlights the need to fully take into account the complexity of the systems to be managed and to give more attention to uncertainties. Achieving this requires adaptive management approaches that can more generally be defined as systematic strategies for improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of previous management actions. This paper describes how the principles of adaptive water management might improve the conceptual and methodological base for sustainable and integrated water management in an uncertain and complex world. Critical debate is structured around four questions: (1) What types of uncertainty need to be taken into account in water management? (2) How does adaptive management account for uncertainty? (3) What are the characteristics of adaptive management regimes? (4) What is the role of social learning in managing change? Major transformation processes are needed because, in many cases, the structural requirements, e.g., adaptive institutions and a flexible technical infrastructure, for adaptive management are not available. In conclusion, we itemize a number of research needs and summarize practical recommendations based on the current state of knowledge.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) challenge markets, regulators and practitioners to achieve multiple objectives on water, food and energy. This calls for responses that are coordinated and scaled appropriately. Learning from waterenergy-food nexus could support much-needed building of links between the separate SDGs. The concept has highlighted how risks manifest when blinkered development and management of water, food and energy reduce resource security across sectors and far-reaching scales. However, three under-studied dimensions of these risks must be better considered in order to identify leverage points for sustainable development: first, externalities and shared risks across multiple scales; second, innovative government mechanisms for shared risks; and third, negotiating the balance between silos, politics and power in addressing shared risks.

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Despite uncertainty pertaining to methods, assumptions and input data of climate change models, most models point towards a trend of an increasing frequency of flooding and drought events. How these changes reflect water management decisions and what can be done to minimize climate change impacts remains unclear. This paper summarizes and extends the workshop outcomes on ‘Climate Change Impacts on Watershed Management: Challenges and Emerging Solutions’ held at the IWA World Water Congress and Exhibition, Montréal, 2010, hosted by the IWA Watershed and River Basin Management Specialist Group. The paper discusses climate change impacts on water management of freshwater ecosystems and river basins, and illustrates these with three case studies. It is demonstrated through the case studies that engagement of relevant stakeholders is needed early in the process of building environmental flows and climate change decision-making tools, to result in greater buy-in to decisions made, create new partnerships, and help build stronger water management institutions. New alliances are then created between water managers, policy makers, community members, and scientists. This has been highlighted by the demonstration of the Pangani integrated environmental flow assessment, through the Okavango River Basin case study, and in the more participatory governance approach proposed for the Delaware River Basin.

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