Aiding multi-level decision-making processes for climate change mitigation and adaptation

Progress towards climate change aware regional sustainable development is affected by actions at multiple spatial scales and governance levels and equally impacts actions at these scales. Many authors and policy practitioners consider therefore that decisions over policy, mitigation strategies and capacity for adaptation to climate change require construction and coordination over multiple levels of governance to arrive at acceptable local, regional and global management strategies. However, how such processes of coordination and decision-aiding can occur and be maintained and improved over time is a major challenge in need of investigation. We take on this challenge by proposing research-supported methods of aiding multi-level decision-making processes in this context. Four example regionally focussed multi-level case studies from diverse socio-political contexts are outlined-estuarine management in Australia's Lower Hawkesbury, flood and drought management in Bulgaria's Upper Iskar Basin, climate policy integration in Spain's Comunidad Valenciana and food security in Bangladesh's Faridpur District-from which insights are drawn. Our discussion focuses on exploring these insights including: (1) the possible advantages of informal research-supported processes and specifically those that provide individual arenas of participation for different levels of stakeholders; (2) the complexity of organisation processes required for aiding multi-level decision-making processes; and (3) to what extent progress towards integrated regional policies for climate change aware sustainable development can be achieved through research-supported processes. We finish with a speculative section that provides ideas and directions for future research

Collaborative flood and drought risk management in the Upper Iskar Basin, Bulgaria

International audienceThis chapter outlines a recent collaborative water management project in the Upper Iskar Basin in Bulgaria, Europe, entitled ‘Living with Floods and Droughts’. Based on a participatory modelling methodology, the project aimed to build the collective capacity of the region's stakeholders to manage flood and drought risks. The chapter starts by presenting the regional water management context and how the project was designed to manage some of the key issues identified by the region's stakeholders. This is followed by a description of the implemented participatory process, including descriptions of the methods used and analyses of the content elicited and examined in the process. Lessons learnt from evaluation of the participatory process are presented and discussed, along with some considerations for future initiatives. Regional water management context Extreme climatic conditions such as large floods and extended drought periods have increasingly occurred over recent years in Bulgaria, including in the Upper Iskar Basin in the region of Sofia. Since the early 1990s, serious water shortages have led to rationing of water, and there were severe floods in 2005 and 2006. There is now debate on whether these ‘new’ conditions are a consequence of global climate change or merely normal climate variability (Knight et al., 2004; Kundzewicz and Schellnhuber, 2004). Water management in the Upper Iskar Basin presents many challenges, not just due to extreme flood and drought events or seemingly natural hazards, but also due to the transitory nature of the country's social and political spheres following the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 and the need to deal with its legacy of heavy industry, widespread pollution, and infrastructural system issues

Aiding multi-level decision-making processes for climate change mitigation and adaptation

International audienc