Pragmatic but Principled: Background report on Integrated Water Resource Management

IWRM is about integrated and "joined-up" management. It is about promoting integration across sectors, applications, groups in society and time, based upon an agreed set of principles. IWRM has been widely applied and aims for more coordinated use of land and water and is divided into full (wholly integrated activities) and light (applying the principles at the local level). The main criticisms of IWRM are the failure to translate the theory into action and the lack of change on the ground. There is a need for both light and full IWRM, but future projects need to increase participation and engagement.Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poo

Working in decentralised service systems: challenges and choices for the Australian aid program

The report examined Australia’s support for service systems in decentralised contexts - the evaluation focussed on the health, education and infrastructure (water, sanitation and roads) sectors. Foreword Public services have been decentralised in most countries where Australia provides aid. This means Australia, like other donors, must be willing and able to engage effectively with developing country governments at all levels to improve service delivery. To ensure sustainable improvements, this engagement should carefully coordinate support for governance reforms with assistance to strengthen or expand service delivery systems. As the World Bank has observed, done well, decentralisation can result in more efficient and effective services for communities. However, done poorly, or where the context is inappropriate, decentralisation may have negative effects. This evaluation builds on the Office of Development Effectiveness’s 2009 evaluation of Australian aid for service delivery. It answers important questions about whether Australian aid has appropriately considered the role of subnational authorities, including specific issues identified in 2009. It assesses how well Australian aid has addressed the challenges of decentralisation, with a focus on the major sectors of education, health and infrastructure. This evaluation utilised a clear methodology, applied it consistently, and draws together a range of evidence to provide a balanced account of Australian aid performance. It concludes that Australian aid is beginning to respond to the challenges of supporting service delivery in decentralised contexts, but notes that results are mixed and there is room for further improvement. The evaluation suggests Australia needs to improve its country-level analysis, program planning and design to better address decentralisation. In particular, there is a need to carefully assess short-term service delivery needs against long-term structures and incentives for governments to achieve sustainable service delivery and meet sovereign responsibilities. Australia needs to get the right balance of engagement with different levels of government, and appropriately address both supply and demand aspects of service delivery, especially to improve equity.   &nbsp

Strategic analysis of water institutions in India: application of a new research paradigm

Water management / Irrigation management / Institutions / Water law / Water rights / Water policy / Cost recovery / Price policy / Private sector / Public sector / Privatization / Financing / Conflict / Groundwater / Water market / Farmers’ associations / Water users’ associations / India

Large scale three-dimensional modelling for wave and tidal energy resource and environmental impact : methodologies for quantifying acceptable thresholds for sustainable exploitation

We describe a modelling project to estimate the potential effects of wave & tidal stream renewables on the marine environment. • Realistic generic devices to be used by those without access to the technical details available to developers are described. • Results show largely local sea bed effects at the level of the currently proposed renewables developments in our study area. • Large scale 3D modelling is critical to quantify the direct, indirect and cumulative effects of renewable energy extraction. • This is critical to comply with planning & environmental impact assessment regulations and achieve Good Environmental Status

Sound mining in the North : a guide to environmental regulation and best practices supporting social sustainability

Julkaistu versi

The South African Local Government National Capacity Building Framework of 2011 : critical future considerations for 2016

D.Litt. et. Phil. (Public Management and Governance)This study focused on a literary analysis to determine critical future considerations required to position the South African Local Government National Capacity Building Framework (NCBF) of 2011. The study addressed, inter alia, the research question: What is the nature and scope of the NCBF in local government and which priority interventions could be taken at an institutional level to promote the objectives of local government as constructed within the Constitution? Although the former Department of Cooperative Governance (DCoG) (currently the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) and its key stakeholders compiled the NCBF by 2004 and reviewed it in 2008, no study has yet been made of the effectiveness of the NCBF to coordinate support, capacity building and training initiatives aimed at local government to ensure that the necessary impact is achieved. Much attention has been given to individual capacity building in local government however, their inter-relatedness to institutional and environmental capacity is not sufficiently addressed to improve each municipality’s capacity. It is widely acknowledged that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach adopted by the national and provincial government to implement legislation in terms of the fiscal, functional and planning arrangements for local government, has not assisted municipalities with varying legacies and backgrounds to deliver uniformly on their mandates and obligation. This ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach does not take into consideration the impact of major integration challenges compounded by spatial differences between municipalities in terms of capacity to raise revenue and to deliver services. The lack of capacity in local government is a recurring theme as is the lack of coordination and the impact on the current initiatives. There is also not yet at least one set of capacity indicators against which to measure local government’s capacity. A qualitative research methodology was followed in general and a conceptual and theoretical analysis in particular. The thesis contributed to understanding of capacity building and related concepts, theories, approaches and phenomena that influence the capacity of local government to meet its objectives. The study included a detailed exploration of skills development within the realm of capacity building. It also contributed to a specific level of understanding of the variables influencing the institutional, regulatory and policy framework of the South African government system and legislation and related frameworks relevant to local government, support, capacity building and training. The study provided an integration of the determinants influencing a differentiated approach to support, capacity building and training in the local government sector and developed a model to measure support, capacity building and training at local government level, by developing measureable capacity indicators to optimally implement the NCBF of 2011 to 2016 in the long term

Environmental policy making in highly contested contexts: the success of adaptive-collaborative approaches

This thesis examines the successes and failures of different approaches to environmental policy making in contexts where the level of conflict are significant, both in intensity and complexity. In this thesis the term policy making is used to cover three elements: the way that a policy is formulated, the decision making process to select the policy instruments, and the nature of the policy instruments used or proposed to be used. The research question here is “what policy making approach is most likely to succeed in highly contested contexts where levels of conflict are significant, both in intensity and complexity?” This research is built on the key proposition that some policy making approaches are, by their nature, better suited to highly contested contexts than others.The communicative/deliberative turn in planning was the starting theoretical framework for understanding how policy making can be carried out in highly contested contexts. It was argued that this framework has great value in understanding the processes involved in dealing with conflict, but that there are shortcomings. In particular, conflict is seen largely as a social problem, but conflict in environmental policy making often involves so-called wicked problems, where the conflict is deeper, more complex and involving longer timeframes than most planning conflicts. This thesis constructs a framework that describes the nature of conflict, with three broad themes being defined: social, governance, and science and information. It is argued that conflict is most likely where the resources at the centre of the conflict are scarce.Three types of scarcity are identified — decreasing quantity of a resource, increasing demand on a resource, and reducing quality of a resource.Four broad policy making approaches are defined: * The traditional expert-driven approach — a highly centralised approach dominated by the expert regulators using predominately science-based technical and statutory policy mechanisms; * The ecological modern approach — a more participative but still largely sciencebased approach, favouring the use of either market-based or voluntary policy mechanisms; * The collaborative approach — a highly participative form of policy making that does not necessarily favour a particular type of policy mechanism; and * The adaptive–collaborative approach — a special case of collaborative policy making where adaptive management measures are adopted to deal with the uncertainty of the science and information.These four approaches are analysed for their likely capacity to be successful in contexts where conflict is significant, and it is proposed that the first two are unlikely to be successful, whereas the two collaborative approaches, especially the adaptive– collaborative approach, would be successful where all the types of conflict are present.A qualitative multiple case study methodology was adopted to address the research question and to test the finding of the literature review, focusing primarily on the policy making of Western Australian (WA) Environmental Protection Authority (EPA - the peak environmental agency in WA). A specific methodology to determine policy making success or failure (evaluation) has been developed and applied in this study, involving the use of four evaluation criteria.The review of policy making by the EPA showed that whilst its policy making in cases where conflict was low were successful, it failed in cases where conflict was significant. It was noted that in all cases the policy making approaches adopted were either traditional expert– driven or ecological modern and not either of the two collaborative approaches, which, it was noted, was consistent with the finding of the literature review and would explain the policy failures in cases where conflict was significant.It was argued that recent policy making of the EPA shows some promise in dealing with conflict. This was because it has developed its Environmental Protection Policies (EPPs) more collaboratively, involving an additional complementary policy: the EPP sets high level objectives and deals with specific non–negotiable issues; and the more prescriptive implementation policy contains the detailed policy and management measures that would achieve the objectives in the EPP. These are called concurrent–complementary policies.A key part of this thesis is an in–depth analysis of a particular policy making exercise (major case study) set in a context where the three elements of conflict were significant, and the three resource scarcity types were present. The case study was Cockburn Sound, a large marine embayment approximately 20 kms south of Perth. Two concurrent–complementary policies were developed, and it was shown that the policy making approach of the implementation policy was adaptive–collaborative, and it was evaluated as being successful on all the four criteria. It was also noted that the draft EPP was a traditional expert–driven policy approach (although with a much improved level of participation) and that, it was evaluated as being unsuccessful on two of the four criteria — performance effectiveness and political support.The thesis concludes with a discussion of the broader implications for environmental policy making that can be drawn from this work, notably: that five policy making scenarios can be identified based on the nature and extent of conflict present, and recommendations made as to which policy making approach should be applied in each scenario