ABSTRACT. Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called "messes" or "wicked problems." The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods and processes being proposed to aid water planning and management, which include participatory forms of modeling, planning, and decision aiding processes. However, despite extensive scientific discussions, scholars have largely been unable to provide satisfactory responses to two pivotal questions: (1) What are the benefits of using participatory approaches?; (2) How exactly should these approaches be implemented in complex social-ecological settings to realize these potential benefits? In the study of developing social-ecological system sustainability, the first two questions lead to a third one that extends beyond the one-time application of participatory approaches for water management: (3) How can participatory approaches be most appropriately used to encourage transition to more sustainable ecological, social, and political regimes in different cultural and spatial contexts? The answer to this question is equally open. This special feature on participatory water management attempts to propose responses to these three questions by outlining recent advances in theory, practice, and evaluation related to the implementation of participatory water management. The feature is largely based on an extensive range of case studies that have been implemented and analyzed by cross-disciplinary research teams in collaboration with practitioners, and in a number of cases in close cooperation with policy makers and other interested parties such as farmers, fishermen, environmentalists, and the wider public. Key Words: adaptive management, collaborative decision making, evaluation, interactive planning, participatory modeling, participatory research, process design, public participation, social learning, stakeholder participation, water resources management FOCUS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE SPECIAL FEATUREMany current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called "messes" (Ackoff 1979) or "wicked problems" (Rittel and Webber 1973). These problems are increasingly encountered in the public policy sphere as resources become scarce, conflicts between water users and interest groups proliferate, and the ecological and social aspects of water planning become more prominent. As a result, it is increasingly rare that technical water managers have sufficient decision making authority and capacity to implement plans and water management actions by themselves. Furthermore, the realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods and processes being proposed to aid water planning and managem...

2010. Designing participation processes for water management and beyond. Ecology and Society 15(3): 1. [online] ABSTRACT. This article addresses the question of how to design participation processes in water management and other fields. Despite a lot of work on participation, and especially its evaluation, this question has received little attention in the research literature. However, it is important, because previous research has made it clear that participation may yield important benefits for humans and the environment but that these benefits do not occur automatically. One precondition is sound design. The design of participation processes has been addressed in detail in the so-called "craft" literature but more rarely in the scientific literature. This article helps close this gap by systematically analyzing and comparing five design guides to determine whether it is possible to combine them into a more robust guide. The article confirms that possibility and presents a preliminary outline for such a guide. Principles for participatory process orientation are presented, as well as numerous partially iterative steps. The adaptive process is laid out in a way intended to help designers determine the objectives of the participation process and the initial design context, and make preplanning choices that eventually lead to the selection of suitable participation mechanisms. There are also design tools that facilitate this work. We discuss how our findings are largely compatible with previous research on participation, notably the work on criteria for "good" or "effective" participation processes. We also argue that our article advances research on an important remaining question in the scientific literature on participation: What process should be chosen in which context? Ecology and Society 15(3): 1

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We compare two rationales for the management of social-ecological systems under uncertainty: control and resilience. The first focuses at system performance, the second at system capacity to cope with change. The two schools of thought promote their own legitimacy, but undertake little effort to transcend their own perspective. Though, different scholars have pointed at the necessity of combining control and resilience for managing a system. We review the literature on control and resilience, synthesize the work in these fields into one coherent conceptual framework and reflect on the question whether control and resilience strategies can be reconciled or whether inevitable tradeoffs are to be made. Based on a literature review, we develop a framework contrasting both rationales through their preferred (contrary) system attributes. Next, we discuss the operationalization of these system properties for policy development. Policies will generally reflect elements of both control and resilience. There will be trade-offs between preferred system attributes, where development of resilience restricts the development of possible control (and vice versa). The conceptual framework introduced provides a 'language' for contrasting and possibly (partly) reconciling the control and resilience rationales. Such a language is crucial for a meaningful policy discourse between actors, because it helps in understanding the implications of different rationales and in comparing alternative policies in terms of control and resilience.

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