Why Are Adaptive Approaches Important?
Adaptive strategies are essential because conventional approaches are
inadequate to respond to the dynamic and changing nature of society and
water resource conditions. The adaptive strategies concept takes socio-economic
change, natural resource variability, and human organizational limitations
as a starting point. It is based on the view that:
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Socio-economic change is inherent in the human condition. The economic basis of livelihoods is changing rapidly in many areas. Mobility and migration are increasing and reshaping both urban and rural areas (The distinction between urban and rural may, in fact, become less and less relevant over coming years as much of the world becomes ‘peri-urban’ – economically and socially linked across an urban-rural continuum). New developments in information access and communications are altering perspectives and aspirations. Political systems are fluid. Because of this change process, water use patterns and equally importantly the incentive for individuals, groups, communities and governments to manage water on a long-term basis are subject to relatively rapid change.
Water
resource system variability often cannot be controlled. Conventional
water management approaches assume stationarity – that
water availability, river flows, sediment loads, infiltration
rates and other key hydrologic parameters fluctuate about
some stable and scientifically identifiable mean. This assumption
underlies many of the basic approaches in conventional water
management such regulating extraction from aquifers on a sustained
yield basis and attempts to regulate rivers using reservoir
and embankment systems. In many parts of the world the scientific
information essential to identify basic hydrologic parameters
is unavailable.
Furthermore, the assumption of stationarity is almost certainly invalid (at least in a practical management sense). Even disregarding the increasing evidence of climatic change, extreme events that are rarely captured by hydrological monitoring systems are increasingly recognized as dominant factors shaping hydrologic system dynamics.
In the Yellow River of China, for example, 50% of the total sediment movement over the past 150 years occurred in just eight events. Unless flows and long term water availability can be quantified at least within reasonable bounds, designing physical systems to eliminate inherent hydrologic variability will not be possible. Overall, as a result, the scientific basis for managing aquifers on a sustainable basis or controlling floods is lacking in many locations.
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Society often can not resolve key human organizational limitations: Whatever the ‘need’ to directly manage aquifers and rivers to meet desired objectives, human organizational constraints often represent fundamental obstacles. As the literature on common property institutions demonstrates, for example, the number of individuals involved has a significant influence on the ability of communities to organize group management systems. In the groundwater overdraft case, the number of individual well owners tapping a given aquifer often numbers in the tens of thousands.
As a result, attempts to create a common property management organizations – or for the government to regulate water use – may not be realistic. While it may be possible to organize management in high priority locations (such as the aquifer supplying a major urban area or on major rivers) management organizations are unlikely to be possible to develop in many locations. Overall, the ‘social space’ within which conventional management organizations can be developed and operate effectively may be limited to a small set of very high priority locations.
The above factors, we believe, represent inherent limitations
on the ability of conventional water management strategies to respond
to the water related problems now emerging in many parts of the world.
An expanded, more adaptive, response pallet is, as a result, essential.