Hack, Jochen (2015)
Taking advantage of spatial interdependencies between providers and beneficiaries of ecosystem services in Integrated Water Resources Management.
5th International Multidisciplinary Conference on Hydrology and Ecology: Advances in Monitoring, Predicting and Managing Hydroecological Processes. Wien, Österreich (13.04.2015-16.04.2015)
Konferenzveröffentlichung, Bibliographie

Kurzbeschreibung (Abstract)

With Integrated Water Resources Management a new water management paradigm arose. Since the 1990s, most of the countries have started to establish enabling environments and defined new institutional roles to manage their water in a cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder and integrated way. This contribution uses the concept of fit and institutional interplay as an analytical framework to identify the problems of cross-sectoral integration and cooperation to find the right scale for both in a context-specific manner. In a next step, different management instruments are examined concerning their potential functional role in achieving institutional reform, providing incentives and behavioral change sensitive to prevailing constraints. Appropriate management instruments should be based on natural and human system’s contexts, considering people and ecosystems. The interdependence between the creation of an appropriate managing unit that reflects the characteristics of the natural resource to be managed (problem of fit) and a successful cooperation as well as coordination between different institutions (problem of interplay) has to be addressed through appropriate management instruments. This interdependence is very site-specific, thus, creating new spatial areas of governance and new institutions from top-down remains a challenge. Conventional prescribed solutions from top-down to solve problems of spatial fit and institutional interplay prove to not work well, especially in an environment where existing institutions are weak and lack resources (developing countries). While using traditional ‘command and control’ policies, usually bound to respective administrative limits, there is no incentive, neither for coordinated action to improve spatial fit, nor for cooperation for improved interplay. To achieve more context-specifity it is necessary to add complementary policy instruments to regulatory command and control instruments. Other instruments, especially economic instruments, are more flexible in: achieving different degrees of environmental targets, involving additional actors for instrument design and implementation addressing specific local contexts and in tapping additional funding sources. Complementary management instruments need to be flexible to match human and natural system context - address ecosystem characteristics and interactions of humans with the natural system at the right scale. These instruments should provide incentives for cooperation and collaboration across sectors and administrative boundaries at the identified scale. Furthermore, they should encourage social learning, self-regulation and participation. Management instruments have to be embedded in a diverse institutional and social system. The instrument of Payments for Hydrological Ecosystem Services has been identified to be suitable as a complement in order to address the specific problems of fit and interplay.

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