Integrated and adaptive water resources management: exploring public participation in the UK

Contemporary water management practices worldwide are informed by two leading paradigms: integrated water resources management and adaptive management. While previous scholarship has already studied the two paradigms, as well as their central principles, in isolation, there are few attempts only to theorise their interaction and to explore empirically their parallel implementation and coexistence. This article contributes to this emerging literature. Its ambition is to review and complement current frameworks conceptualising the impact of integrated water resources management on adaptive capacity. To this end, the article analyses the involvement of non-state actors in UK water and flood risk management, specifically in England and Wales. This is an exciting case to study: for many decades, environmental management in England and Wales had a reputation for being a technocratic exercise. In the past 15 years, however, environmental authorities undertook major efforts to lay the foundations for enhanced collaboration and stakeholder participation, amongst others encouraged by two European Union initiatives reflecting integrated and adaptive management principles: the Water Framework Directive and the Floods Directive. The empirical evidence suggests a spurious link only between the two paradigms. This contradicts conventional wisdom which, so I argue, tends to oversimplify a complex relationship. I introduce three theory-informed arguments—relating to conceptual diversity, path dependency, and the nature of the dependent variable—to address these shortcomings and to contribute to theory building

Mutual learning and policy transfer in integrated water resources management: A research agenda

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has become a global paradigm for the governance of surface, coastal and groundwater. International bodies such as the European Union, the Global Water Partnership, and the United Nations have taken the lead to promote IWRM principles, while countries worldwide have undertaken reforms to implement these principles and to restructure their domestic or regional water governance arrangements. However, the international transfer of IWRM principles raises a number of theoretical, empirical and normative questions related to its causes, processes and outcomes. These questions will be explored in our Special Issue ‘Governing IWRM: Mutual Learning and Policy Transfer’. This editorial briefly introduces IWRM and links this governance paradigm to theoretical and empirical scholarship on policy transfer. We then summarise the aims and objectives of this Special Issue, provide an overview of the articles brought together here and offer avenues for future research

Under which conditions does public participation really advance sustainability goals? Findings of a Meta-Analysis of stakeholder involvement in environmental Decision-making

Environmental governance on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly relies on the participation of non-state actors such as citizens and organized interest groups. Prompted by the U.S. Negotiated Rulemaking Act of 1990 and the Rio Declaration of 1992, which demands in principle 10 that “environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens”, followed by the Århus Convention of 1998, four recent European Union directives 1 have legally institutionalized access to information and public participation in environmental decisions..

The EU Water Initiative at 15: Origins, Processes and Assessment

This article examines the activities and achievements of the European Union Water Initiative, a transnational, multi-actor partnership established in 2002 by the European Commission to support water governance reforms around the world. Two regional components of the initiative – (a) Africa and (b) Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia – are studied with a focus on their organizational structures, activities, policies and achievements. The analysis provides evidence for improved regional dialogue and cooperation in the water sector, but also points to persistent weaknesses, in particular a lack of resources, ownership and mutual understanding as to the overall aims of the Initiative

The Appraisal of Policy Appraisal – Learning About the Quality of Impact Assessment

notes: This article is based on research carried out with the support of the European Research Council (ERC) grant Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance, ALREG, directed by Claudio Radaelli. Dunlop, Fritsch and Radaelli gratefully acknowledge the support of the ERC. A previous version was prepared for the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) workshop on ‘Theory and Practice of Regulatory Impact Assessments in Europe’ 10 June 2013. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Ioannis Lianos and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments on earlier drafts. The usual disclaimer applies.publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleFinal draftWhat do governments, international organizations and stakeholders mean when they say that proposals for new regulation should be systematically appraised? And do regulators really use the results of appraisal? In this article, we consider two dimensions of policy appraisal: the breadth and scope of the empirical analysis, and the utilization of impact assessment. We use these two dimensions to produce an explanatory typology with four types. The types enable us to review the literature systematically, exposing gaps as well as documenting the results. In the final part of the article we build hypotheses that link quality of analysis and utilization, thus showing how future research may become less descriptive and more inclined to test explicit hypotheses.European Research Council (ERC) grant Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance, ALRE

Narrating Impact Assessment in the European Union

This paper is based on research carried out with the support of the European Research Council grant on Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance, ALREG http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/ceg/research/ALREG/index.php. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the UK Political Studies Association (PSA) annual conference, Belfast 3-5 April 2012 and the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change conference, Berlin 5-6 October 2012. We are grateful to Mathias Delori and Anna Durnova for extensive comments on an early draft.publication-status: AcceptedSince 2003, the European Commission has produced analytical documents to appraise and support its policy proposals. These so-called impact assessments (IAs) are now quite common in the preparation of legislation in the member states of the European Union. Previous research has been concerned with the quality of the IAs in terms of evidence-based policy, especially in terms of economic analysis and other standards of smart regulation. In this article, we move from a different perspective. We draw on the narrative policy framework to explore impact assessment as text and discursive instrument. We consider a sample of IAs that differ by originating DGs, legal instrument, and level of saliency. The findings show that the narrative components of the IA are quite prominent in the sample. The Commission may use IA to produce evidence-based policy, but it also engages with IA to provide a presentation of self, to establish EU norms and values, and to create consensus around policy proposals by using causal plots, doomsday scenarios, and narrative dramatization

Magnetic and structural quantum phase transitions in CeCu6-xAux are independent

The heavy-fermion compound CeCu$_{6-x}$Au$_x$ has become a model system for unconventional magnetic quantum criticality. For small Au concentrations $0 \leq x < 0.16$, the compound undergoes a structural transition from orthorhombic to monoclinic crystal symmetry at a temperature $T_{s}$ with $T_{s} \rightarrow 0$ for $x \approx 0.15$. Antiferromagnetic order sets in close to $x \approx 0.1$. To shed light on the interplay between quantum critical magnetic and structural fluctuations we performed neutron-scattering and thermodynamic measurements on samples with $0 \leq x\leq 0.3$. The resulting phase diagram shows that the antiferromagnetic and monoclinic phase coexist in a tiny Au concentration range between $x\approx 0.1$ and $0.15$. The application of hydrostatic and chemical pressure allows to clearly separate the transitions from each other and to explore a possible effect of the structural transition on the magnetic quantum critical behavior. Our measurements demonstrate that at low temperatures the unconventional quantum criticality exclusively arises from magnetic fluctuations and is not affected by the monoclinic distortion.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Damped orbital excitations in the titanates

A possible mechanism for the removal of the orbital degeneracy in RTiO3 (where R=La, Y, ...) is considered. The calculation is based on the Kugel-Khomskii Hamiltonian for electrons residing in the t2g orbitals of the Ti ions, and uses a self-consistent pe rturbation expansion in the interaction between the orbital and the spin degrees of freedom. The latter are assumed to be ordered in a Neel state, brought about by delicate interactions that are not included in the Kugel-Khomskii Hamiltonian. Within our model calculations, each of the t2g bands is found to acquire a finite, temperature-dependent dispersion, that lifts the orbital degeneracy. The orbital excitations are found to be heavily damped over a rather wide band. Consequently, they do not participate as a separate branch of excitations in the low-temperature thermodynamics.eComment: 6 pages, 3 figure