Adaptive Governance in Aquatic Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract

The projected rise of the global temperature is likely to lead to more extreme weather events like droughts, storms and floodings in many regions across the world. At the same time, the projected increase of the world population until the end of this century is likely to lead to a growing demand for water for food production, human consumption, hydropower and the production of goods. For water governance to handle these pressures on water consumption and thus on water resources, it needs to be adaptive. Adaptive water governance is understood as a structured process which improves its policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of implemented measures, while also considering the uncertainties and the complexity of the ecological system. Its aim is to enhance the resilience and the adaptive capacity of both the aquatic ecological system and the water governance process. In our panel, we want to discuss how adaptive governance plays out in the context of aquatic ecosystems. We want to focus on the dynamics specific to aquatic social-ecological systems and how these shape the adaptive capacity of current water governance structures. Specifically, in our panel we want to answer the following three general questions: • How can we both conceptualize and empirically study the adaptive capacity of existing water governance structures • How can adaptive governance address different degrees of complexity within aquatic social-ecological systems? • How do the characteristics of aquatic ecosystems influence the structures of empirically observed adaptive water governance structures? We welcome both contributions which assess adaptive water governance from a conceptual angle and such which study empirically observed structures of water governance in terms of their adaptive capacity. We are particularly interested in contributions which explicitly integrate features of the ecological component of aquatic social-ecological systems into both analysis and conceptual approaches. Examples include studies that apply the social-ecological system framework or social-ecological network models. Moreover, we are also interested in critical challenges to the concepts of adaptive governance within such frameworks, such as perspectives of social justice or the inclusion of marginalized stakeholders within water governance.

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