Integrated, adaptive and domanial water resources management.
Abstract
Arising from concerns that integrated and adaptive water resources management (I/AWRM) may not be sufficiently tailored to certain kinds of environments, this article examines their design through a governmentality framework, positing that I/AWRM could be enhanced by increasing accountability and local appropriateness through citizen’s actions that address and are situated in three types of domains – spatial ‘holons’, hydrological regime ‘phases’ and problem-solving ‘tasks’ – an exercise termed ‘domanial’. As explained in the paper, the geo-economic scope of this paper are countries as in Sub-Saharan Africa where climatic variability and widespread irrigation dominates river basins that in turn have limited capacity for well-financed administration commonly seen in Europe. The need to recognize irrigation in adaptive water management is born from the great proportion of freshwater depleted by the sector and its effects on water shortages and behaviors in other sectors. Because of these characteristics, there is a risk that in irrigated semi-arid environments, IWRM (with a regulatory emphasis on managing water use to effect water allocation between sectors in large river basin units) or adaptive versions of IWRM (emphasizing iterative refinement and wider system complexity) will not engender satisfactory outcomes.
Citation
International Conference on Adaptive and Integrated Water Resources Management. CAIWA 12 – 15 November 2007. Basel, Switzerland.
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