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Making inroads towards adaptive water
management through stakeholder involvement,
the NeWater experience in the Upper Guadiana
basin, Spain.
Pedro Martínez-Santos
1
, Consuelo Varela-Ortega
2
, Nuria Hernández-
Mora
3
1
Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
2
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Agrónomos
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
3
Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, Spain
Abstract
Conflicts between intensive groundwater use and wetland conservation are
widespread throughout arid and semiarid regions worldwide. These have
become more significant wherever there has been a synchronism between
groundwater-based human development and the awakening of an
environmental awareness in society. The Upper Guadiana basin provides
an example of such an occurrence, which has given rise to noteworthy
social conflicts over the years. Uncertainty features high in the basin’s
water management practices, not only as to what the future may entail but
also in relation to basic water management data. Adaptive water
management is often advocated as means to deal with the uncertainties
inherent to the management process. From a conceptual standpoint,
adaptive management may constitute a potentially adequate approach to
the Guadiana setting, providing a series of basic principles that are largely
2 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
implicit within the demands of the EU Water Framework Directive. This
paper dwells on explaining the experience in the basin of the NeWater
project, an EU-funded initiative that aims at developing new approaches to
adaptive water management under uncertainty. NeWater work essentially
comprises the implementation of an informal public participation forum
that among other initiatives includes participatory modelling approaches.
These have served the purpose of identifying the key drivers for change in
the basin and developing coherent scenarios to be tested by the models.
1 Introduction
Over the last thirty years, rapid change and adaptation have been key to
water resources management in the Upper Guadiana basin. Much like in
other semiarid regions of the world, the generalization of intensive
groundwater use has virtually offset the effects of the region’s endemic
drought problems, thus supporting irrigation-based social and economic
welfare and acting as the main driver for prosperity (Garrido et al 2006,
Llamas and Martinez-Santos 2005). On the other hand, pumping has been
the catalyst for unwanted environmental effects such as wetland
degradation (Llamas 1988, Fornes et al 2001). The clash between human
development and environmental protection is currently at the heart of
widely voiced water conflicts, both at the inter and intra-basin scale, and
calls for further adaptation in the dawn of the Water Framework Directive
(WFD).
Since adaptive water management relies heavily on public participation,
one of the main objectives of NeWater work in the Upper Guadiana basin
is to support the transition to inclusive public participation processes. This
is largely an achievement in itself, given the climate of conflict that exists
among the main water actors, the lack of a participatory tradition in water
management and the demands established by the WFD.
The main objective of this paper is to analyse the stakeholder involvement
framework developed within the project, exploring its potential
contribution to adaptive management at the basin scale. The paper
provides an overview of the participation process, examining each of the
different stages involved. The focus then shifts to discussing the contents
of each of the five stakeholder meetings, all of which were held between
spring 2005 and the beginning of 2007.
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 3
Meetings contributed to identify the main stakeholder and policy-driven
aspects of water management. Key drivers were in turn used to devise a
series of vulnerability scenarios to be tested by means of hydrological and
agro-economic models. In addition, stakeholder meetings served the
purpose of facilitating a non-binding social learning forum for the key
stakeholders. This is perceived as a timely addition to the basin’s water
management framework, particularly since the NeWater stakeholder
process has run parallel to the development of the recently approved Upper
Guadiana Water Plan (UGWP).
2 Adaptive water management and its potential
application to the Guadiana setting
The adaptive management concept is not specific to the water policy
framework. It was first introduced to scientific literature by Holling
(1978), and originally focused on the use of system models to underpin
management decision-making for harvesting fisheries and forests. Since
the 1970s, adaptive management has become widespread, and is currently
applied to natural resources so diverse as grasslands, waterfowl or national
parks. Nevertheless, adaptive management is still referred to as a relatively
new concept, often more influential as an idea or as a fashionable word for
managers than as a practical tool per se (Lee 1999, Allan and Curtis 2003).
The adaptive management concept is manifold and difficult to capture in a
few words (Downs and Kondolf 2002). In general terms, it could be said
that adaptive management is a learning approach to handle ecosystems and
natural resources under uncertainty. In other words, it is a flexible form of
management, akin to a scientific experiment, which operates on a typically
iterative fashion while relying heavily on stakeholder input.
The adaptive approach does make some interesting points in regard to
natural resources and ecosystems management. Since rapid change has
become an inherent feature of the modern era, vulnerability and resilience
assessments are increasingly acquiring significance as indicators of risk
and of a system’s capacity to cope with uncertainty (Holling 2001). Thus,
adaptive capacity is often perceived as a key issue within current and
future water policy frameworks, not only in regard to potential climate
hazards, but also to political and legal constraints. From a conceptual
standpoint, adaptive management looks as though it may provide a
4 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
potentially adequate approach to the Guadiana setting, providing a series
of basic principles that are largely implicit within the demands of the EU
Water Framework Directive.
Adaptive management is participatory per se, as it advocates stakeholder-
manager interactions as a way to attain better understanding of the system
and a broader sectoral integration. In addition, the iterative nature of
adaptive management places a significant emphasis on empirical evidence,
which may constitute an important step towards transparency in water
management regimes. Adaptive management requires a periodic
evaluation of decision outcomes, and thus also encourages accountability.
Furthermore, by embracing uncertainty as an inherent part of the
management process, the adaptive approach may yield decision-making
more flexible, enabling systems to be better prepared to cope with external
hazards.
On the other hand, the adaptive approach is not free of the burden of
experience. Despite its potential appeal, the adaptive management concept
does not often translate well into practice (WWPRAC 1998, Lee 1999,
Stankey et al 2003), largely due to its requirement for a long-term
commitment as well as to commonplace stiff legal and institutional
frameworks. In particular, adaptive management attempts have seemingly
struggled in instances similar to the Guadiana, where socio-environmental
conflict often polarizes the water policy debate (Gunderson 1999).
This leads to a first issue of concern. Is adaptive water management
feasible in a world where political terms span only four to six years?
Contrary to other natural resources, water affects one hundred percent of
the population, and provides a key element in the livelihoods of strong
social lobbies, notably farmers. Thus, water often presents an emotional
dimension that other resources simply do not have, particularly in arid and
semiarid settings such as the Guadiana. In these regions, water easily
becomes a pivotal element in election campaigns, which may in turn make
it difficult to sustain an adaptive management programme over time. This
can pose a significant drawback to the concept, since adaptive
management typically requires long periods of time to yield results (Lee
1999).
On the other hand, the Guadiana setting presents a series of peculiarities
that currently pose a challenge to any type of management. As stated in the
introduction, illegal drilling and pumping is widespread, metering devices
are generally lacking, and uncertainties in regard to irrigation data are
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 5
significant. In such a situation, where conflict among stakeholders and
water authorities is also significant, attaining greater transparency in water
data is a paramount step before the adaptive approach can be implemented.
Furthermore, there is a considerable lack of experience on the participation
front. The Guadiana Water Authority has recently made significant inroads
in order to involve stakeholder collectives and has started to work on a
public participation plan to comply with the participation requirements of
the Water Framework Directive (WFD). However, aforementioned
conflicts may pose an additional difficulty in the first steps of the basin’s
public participation fora.
Last but not least, the Guadiana case shows how water policy may at times
become a direct function of agricultural policy. Given Spain’s current
institutional framework, water is dealt with through basin agencies (Water
Authorities), who in turn depend directly on Madrid’s central government.
On the other hand, agricultural and environmental policies are drafted by
autonomous regional governments. This mismatch essentially entails that
cooperation between basin agencies and autonomous governments does
not always flow adequately, since it is at times hampered by competing
political interests. Potential adaptive management approaches should
therefore allow for a cross-institutional dimension which is yet to be
explored.
Despite its limitations, adaptive management may prove an interesting
approach to handling the multifunctionality of water resources within the
Guadiana basin in the future. However, it does not seem realistic to
pretend that it can be implemented in the short term. On the other hand, the
rationale behind NeWater research is that inroads can be made towards a
more adaptive conception of water management (Pahl-Wostl et al 2005).
Thus, the NeWater project has focused on a two-fold objective, namely
fostering cross-sectoral integration and developing site-specific adaptive
management tools. These are further explained in the following sections.
2 Stakeholder involvement in the Upper Guadiana basin
As explained in the previous section, adaptive management embraces
uncertainty as part of the management process. Involving stakeholders is a
6 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
way to narrow down management uncertainties, and it also helps to
identify the key drivers for change and the most vulnerable units.
Therefore it is a feature of adaptive management regimes.
The participatory process in the Upper Guadiana basin was designed to
make sure that all relevant stakeholders took part in the discussions. This
was important given the climate of conflict that traditionally exists among
the main water actors in the area and the fact that participation in water
management has traditionally been limited to permitted water users, with
other stakeholders and the public at large excluded from formal
participation settings. Therefore there had been little opportunity for
conflicting views to be shared in a neutral and constructive setting.
Since most of the area’s current conflicts seem to arise from the overall
lack of agreement on water data and the related uncertainties (e.g. how
much water is available, how much is abstracted, how much can be
abstracted in a sustainable way), the seminars were designed to enable
managers and stakeholders to sit down together and discuss these issues in
an informal, non-binding forum. In order to facilitate participation, it was
made clear from the beginning that the role of the research team was to
provide an unbiased framework for discussion and social learning, rather
than to influence sensitive aspects of decision-making. In fact, according
to the external evaluation of the participatory process (Correa 2007a and
2007b) it is precisely the non-binding character of these meetings that
allowed for a climate of cooperation and minimal conflict. On the other
hand, the active participation of the Guadiana Basin Authority in the
project enabled the results of the process to serve as a basis from which to
build the official public participation plan.
Figure 1 illustrates the key stages of the participatory process. A first
introductory meeting was designed to establish contact with the main
actors, present the project to them and obtain their willingness to
collaborate. In this initial stage, actors were identified by the research team
as representatives of the main stakeholder groups based on over 30 years
of research experience in the area. Participants in that first meeting were
also invited to identify other stakeholders that should be present, and that
were invited to subsequent meetings. Once this was achieved, a second
meeting was organized in order to determine needs for research, tools and
capacity building, as well as to help determine how to break down and
discuss water issues during the participatory process. From these
discussions three key issues were identified that were the focus of the next
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 7
thematic seminars: agro-economic, legal-institutional, and hydrological
aspects of the area’s water policy.
Fig 1. Schematic representation of the case study approach for the first two years
of the project (Martínez-Santos 2007).
Figure 2 illustrates the basic structure of each meeting. Meetings were
organized around a questionnaire developed by the research team on the
basis of their experience in the area and the main issues that emerged in
meetings #0 and #1. The questionnaires were divided into thematic blocks
that served to break down the day-long meetings into discussion sessions.
Between 20 and 30 stakeholders participated in each meeting, representing
a wide range of interest groups and management agencies: farmers,
national and local environmental groups, Guadiana Basin Authority,
regional agricultural regulatory agency, farmer unions, etc. Meeting
participants were divided into smaller discussion groups, where an effort
was made to guarantee that a diverse set of viewpoints was represented.
The break out into smaller groups was key to ensure that everyone had
ample opportunity to participate in the discussion. Additionally, the small
group format was more conducive to build trust among different
stakeholder groups, one of the goals identified by stakeholders in meeting
#0. A group moderator/reporter was responsible for guiding the discussion
8 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
in each break out group and reporting back to the main group in plenary
sessions.
Fig 2. Schematic representation of the stakeholder meeting process (Martínez-
Santos 2007)
The results of the plenary sessions and the written answers to
questionnaires were gathered in meeting reports prepared by the
coordinators of each meeting. The reports have been used for several
purposes, including driver analysis and scenario design, as well as inputs
to build and validate socio-economic and hydrological models, as will be
discussed in the following section. They are also being used by the
Guadiana Basin Authority as a basis from which to develop the public
participation process required by the WFD for the elaboration of the new
basin management plans.
Participation throughout the entire process was fairly consistent, with
representatives from the main stakeholder groups attending every thematic
meeting and participating actively in them. Perhaps it was those groups
that do not have a seat at formal participatory structures within the
Guadiana Basin Authority that considered they benefited most from this
process, since they had access to decision-makers and other interest groups
and were able to discuss issues and build alliances that may not have been
possible in more formal settings. This observation allows for optimism as
water planning and decision-making in the basin becomes more open and
participatory in the context of the new WFD regulatory framework.
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 9
A few general conclusions can be drawn from the meetings. First, there is
a widespread feeling that there need to be more effective and broader
information and participation initiatives. These initiatives need to include
all relevant stakeholders, not only permitted users, and be based on open
and easy access to relevant information.
A second conclusion is that there is more agreement among different
groups than is apparent, particularly in what pertains to the main
challenges and possible alternatives to tackle them. In fact, many of the
conflicts that exist result from a lack of commonly shared information on
basic management parameters (recharge rates, total abstractions, economic
impacts of different policy scenarios, total number of permitted and illegal
water users, etc).
Thirdly, disinformation and lack of participation allows for manipulation
of the public opinion in an issue, such as access to water, that is highly
emotional in a semi-arid region as is the Upper Guadiana basin. Again,
transparency in decision-making could help bring down the level of
conflict and facilitate cooperation among different stakeholders and
decision-makers. In this sense, the experience of the participatory process
in the Upper Guadiana shows that participation in the building of tools and
decision-making scenarios can help build consensus as the different
management alternatives, and the consequences of those alternatives, are
shared and discussed by all.
Finally, it is significant that the concept of management under uncertainty,
which is at the core of the adaptive management rationale, is not easily
understood by stakeholders. In fact, issues such as the potential impacts of
climate change are seen as distant preoccupations in the face of more
pressing issues and interests. Once again, information and participatory
frameworks can help involve stakeholders and the public at large in this
effort.
4 Development of site-specific adaptive management
tools
The other main feature of the project is the development of site-specific
tools to make inroads towards a more adaptive water regime. These
essentially comprise economic and hydrological models to underpin
10 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
participation in decision-making (Figure 3). Both types of models were
requested by the stakeholders and developed from scratch in order to
facilitate their understanding and foster stakeholder participation (Varela-
Ortega et al 2007a and 2007b; Martinez-Santos et al 2007). The
stakeholder meetings explained in the previous section contributed to
identify the main drivers that are likely to affect present and future water
management. These were in turn used to devise a series of plausible
scenarios to be tested by the models. Models ultimately aim at identifying
the likely impacts of each of the different scenarios on the main
stakeholder collectives. In the case of the Guadiana Basin Authority or the
environmental conservation groups, these refer to the possibility of
recovering the aquifer and its associated wetland ecosystems within the
deadlines of the WFD; on the other hand, farmers are more interested on
income-related effects or on an eventual exhaustion of the groundwater
resources.
Fig 3. Methodological framework for stakeholder participation in the development
of scenarios and tools for agro-economic modelling (Varela-Ortega et al 2006a)
Given the share of irrigation in the area’s water consumption, there is a
need to integrate the agricultural and water sectors within the policy
context. This implies a recognition of newer developments on the policy
front, which include the WFD and the different reforms of the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP). The need for a joint interpretation of water and
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 11
agricultural policies stems from the Guadiana’s long-lasting lack of policy
integration, which has resulted in disruptive, non-coherent outcomes.
These include remarkable ecological impacts on internationally-reputed
wetlands, aquifer depletion and social unrest in the rural communities.
Within the present social context, adaptive management strategies can be
an advantage for selecting efficient and socially-accepted instruments that
will seek to assure the environmental requirements of the WFD, while also
maintaining the socio-economic viability of the rural livelihoods at
tolerable social costs.
Water policies have traditionally been based on the imposition of a strict
water quota regime with no compensation to the farmers for their derived
income loss. These policies have created long standing social conflicts,
while also giving rise to free-riding behaviour among irrigators and
uncontrolled well-drilling. The Guadiana Basin Authority has not been
capable of enforcing these policies to its full application, due to the large
social costs implied. In turn, the new CAP programs have evolved to
progressively include environmental regulations into the direct payment
scheme. These are cross compliance mechanisms that seek to assure a
competitive and environmentally-concerned multifunctional agriculture.
Seeking synergies between these two main policies remains crucial and is
still not fully explored.
Integration between policy drivers is therefore important (Mejias et al
2004). There are, however, other drivers to take into account in order to
devise plausible scenarios. Aside from providing an informal participation
framework, stakeholder meetings have prepared the grounds for selecting
such policy-relevant drivers. These are based upon the discussions and
participation of the key water actors. The scenario-building capacity of the
stakeholders’ participatory process is one of the clear advantages offered
by the adaptive management approach. This is in turn reflected in the
modelling tools and outcomes. Active stakeholder involvement has
substantially enriched the prediction and simulation potential of the agro-
economic and hydrological models.
Policy drivers have been used in the context of the NeWater project to
elaborate a set of simulations based on the public policies currently in
place in the Upper Guadiana basin. As stated above, these include the
WFD or the CAP programs alongside with the national water policies
under different types of policy instruments. Take for instance water quotas,
agri-environmental programs, CAP subsidies, single-farm payments or
cross-compliance schemes (Varela-Ortega 2007).
12 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
On the other hand, those drivers identified by the stakeholders have also
played a part in the simulations. In the case of agroeconomic models these
include the establishment of a water rights’ markets, legalizing illegal
wells (Blanco et al, 2007), selling water rights to a public water
distribution agency (Carmona and Varela-Ortega, 2007), the capacity of
the water authority to enforce the legally established water quotas and the
vulnerability of the different types of farmers (Varela-Ortega et al, 2007b).
Hydrological modelling work caters for the most relevant of these for
groundwater conservation purposes, while it also includes other potentially
important drivers such as climate change or the reallocation of an existing
water transfer into the region (Martinez-Santos 2007).
Figure 4. Implementation process of the stakeholder meetings for agro-economic
modelling (Varela-Ortega et al 2006a).
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 13
Figure 4 summarizes the steps involved in the scenario building process.
As shown, successive stakeholder meetings allow for an iterative
approach. Modelling tools and baseline information were discussed during
the initial meetings, while subsequent encounters served the purpose of
validating the results of modelling work. Note that stakeholder
involvement was not limited to the meetings, but also took place through
individual interviews. Thus the scenario-design process comprised several
steps. This comprises an initial study of the general framework, including a
hydrological, agronomic, socio-economic and political framework
analysis. Fieldwork and stakeholder analysis in the study area ensued,
providing a knowledge base about characteristics of farms and crops in the
Upper Guadiana Basin, and about stakeholder interests and potentials. This
knowledge base allowed to develop a series of questionnaires for each of
the different thematic meetings, aimed at guiding the discussion on
socioeconomic, institutional and hydrological aspects of water
management. Discussion outcomes were used to elaborate a matrix of
results. Outcomes were put to the stakeholders for validation, and led to
the elaboration of a final report for each of the meetings.
While the hydrological and agroeconomic models are yet to be coupled,
separate simulations already allow to draw a series of meaningful results.
These can be summarized as follows:
(1) Recovering the area’s ecosystems within the deadlines established
by the Water Framework Directive will be difficult, if possible at
all.
(2) Illegal pumping may offset the effects of water-saving policies
even if limitations on water consumption are imposed on legal
users.
(3) If strictly enforced, water-saving policies may also inflict
significant farm-income losses. Small farmers, whose ability to
diversify the crop is lower, will be the most vulnerable to the
Common Agricultural Policy single-farm payment. This is in turn
likely to result in farm extensification throughout the study area.
(4) Farmers located in the western and boundary areas of the aquifer
appear the most vulnerable to potential water shortages derived
from aquifer exhaustion.
14 P. Martinez-Santos et al.
In practice, these essentially mean that win-win solutions for the region are
highly unlikely. As a result the group did not reach unanimous policy
recommendations. This is by no means perceived as a failure of the group,
since solutions looked unlikely from the very outset. Rather, the purpose of
the work was to take steps down the right road by letting the stakeholders
address their own vulnerability under different scenarios. Moreover, the
very implementation of an informal forum for public participation is
perceived in itself as an achievement given the basin’s conflictive nature
and the participatory requirements of the WFD.
5 Conclusions
The Upper Guadiana basin provides an example of the conflict between
socioeconomic development based on intensive groundwater irrigation and
the conservation of valuable wetland ecosystems. This paper exemplifies
how adaptive management may, despite its limitations, constitute a
potentially adequate approach to deal with these issues.
From the practical viewpoint, the work carried out aims at making inroads
towards adaptive water management. A pivotal element in this endeavor is
stakeholder involvement, carried out through a series of meetings in which
all key players were represented. Stakeholder meetings served a three-fold
purpose. First, to provide an informal framework for public participation,
which was perceived as an achievement in itself given the area’s long-
standing conflicts and the lack of a participatory tradition in water
management; secondly, stakeholder involvement established the need to
develop a series of site-specific tools (namely hydrological and
agroeconomic models); and thirdly, stakeholder meetings identified the
area’s key drivers for change, which were in turn put into scenarios to be
tested by the models. Modelling work ultimately identified the most
vulnerable units of the system in the face of plausible future waer
management scenarios.
P. Martinez-Santos et al. 15
Acknowledgements
This paper has been elaborated under the EU-funded NeWater project
(GOCE contract 511179). The authors would like to thank the research
teams from the Department of Geodynamics of the Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, the Department of Agricultural Economics of the
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Geological Survey of Spain, for
their ongoing involvement in the project and their unfailing willingness to
help in all aspects of everyday work. Our gratefulness is extensive to the
Guadiana Water Authority, the Agriculture Department of the Castilla-La
Mancha Autonomous Government, the Water User Association of the
Mancha Occidental aquifer, the World Wildlife Fund-ADENA Spain and
every other collective and individual who may have contributed to the
success of the project.
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