Special Issue “Public Policy Analysis of Integrated Water Resource Management”

Abstract

Public policy analysis is interested in how policies emerge and develop in order to address societal problems. Issues related to water, such as the contamination of surface waters, floods, or plastic pollution in oceans are often highly complex, concern different jurisdictions, and require the collaboration of public and private actors. This complexity is addressed through integrated water management principles. However, these principles give room to open questions such as: what are the main challenges of policy analysis (research and practice) in terms of multi-level actor involvement (politics), cross-sectoral solutions (policies), and new institutional arrangements (polity)? To answer these questions, the seven papers of this Special Issue combine approaches borrowed from policy analysis with principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Each article tackles a complex, water-related problem and collectively, the papers present empirical evidence from case studies located around the world. We learn from all these analyses that adopting a policy perspective helps disentangling the procedural components of IWRM (the involvement of actors, the definition of the appropriate management area, the attribution of competences, etc.) from more substantial ones (like the development of a management plan and the implementation of measures). Addressing cross-sectoral and multi-level challenges is a difficult task, and policy analysis can help shedding light on both, the legitimacy of processes, and the effectiveness of their outputs and outcomes.

Pathways to policy integration: a subsystem approach

“…Policy integration is a political process that entails the coordination of actors and agencies across policy subsystems, the combination of instruments from different policy sectors, as well as arrangements for their consistent implementation and evaluation, as a response to a complex policy problem that not one policy sector, policy instrument, or agency can solve (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016 ; Cejudo & Michel, 2017 ; Trein et al, 2021a , 2021b ). This understanding has stimulated a growing strand of research in the policy sciences (Tosun & Lang, 2017 ; Trein et al, 2019 ), which has (re)discovered the importance of questions dealing with new and transversal policy goals when facing complex challenges, such as environmental protection, climate change, public health, gender equality, and migration, from established policy subsystems (Adelle & Russel, 2013 ; Daly, 2005 ; Ingold & Tosun, 2020 ; Jordan & Lenschow, 2010 ; Metz et al, 2020 ; van Breugel & Scholten, 2017 ; Varone et al, 2013 ).…”

Políticas públicas y la gestión de la calidad ambiental para la descontaminación de ríos

“…Los problemas del agua, como la contaminación de las aguas superficiales, las inundaciones o la contaminación por plásticos en los océanos, son a menudo complejos, implican a diferentes jurisdicciones y requieren la cooperación de actores públicos y privados. (Ingold & Tosun, 2020) Para Pulgarín (2019), las políticas públicas sobre la gestión del agua deberían guiarse por cuatro directrices; la primera es una directriz para la gobernanza del agua, relacionada con las acciones de la administración pública y la capacidad de tomar decisiones específicas sobre la gestión del agua; la segunda es una directriz para la gobernanza del agua, relacionada con la participación ciudadana para influir en las decisiones relacionadas con la gestión del agua y sus recursos naturales, así como la educación y la sensibilización ambiental. La tercera es la directriz sobre la conservación, protección y mantenimiento de los ecosistemas hídricos estratégicos, relacionada con las acciones de protección de los ecosistemas estratégicos en el ciclo del agua y con la adquisición de nuevos terrenos en zonas estratégicas; la cuarta es la directriz sobre el uso y la gestión de las unidades de cuenca, relacionada con la calidad y la cantidad del suministro de agua.…”

The controversial debate on the role of water reservoirs in reducing water scarcity

“…Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), formalized in the early 1990s, has attempted to integrate water with other policy objectives to respect the reproductive capacity of the resource systems, and to coordinate it in an integrative manner (Biswas, 2004(Biswas, , 2008. The challenge of IWRM is its own definition, which is cross-sectoral, multi-level, and often needs new institutional, governance, and management arrangements (Ingold & Tosun, 2020). This is reflected in the fact that despite its promotion in national and international policy arenas, IWRM has not been implemented on a broad scale (Pahl-Wostl, 2019;Pahl-Wostl et al, 2020).…”