Value landscapes and their impact on public water policy preferences

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd A growing body of research suggests that people's values may be important predictors of their preferences regarding water governance and policy. However, this assertion is rarely tested empirically. The present study summarises the results of a large-scale quantitative study on the link between public water policy preferences and people's values, based on data from a representative sample of the general population collected in a household survey in the Upper Paraguay River Basin, Mato Grosso, Brazil (n = 1067). Structural equation modelling is applied to represent the clusters of values, or ‘value landscapes’ that shape attitudes and water policy preferences, in this case, for or against the construction of the highly controversial Paraguay-Paraná Waterway across the Pantanal wetland. Results demonstrate that opponents of the waterway share a value landscape composed of closely related self-transcendence values, democratic governance-related values, and ecological and cultural water values, whereas supporters hold self-enhancement values, economic governance-related values, and economic water values. Beyond this individual case study and beyond water governance, our findings may explain the protracted nature of, and seeming impossibility to resolve, environmental conservation vs. economic development conflicts more broadly.Scottish Government Hydro Nation Scholars Programm

Economic valuation of ecosystem services trade-offs of tilapia cage culture farm and native capture fisheries in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia

Research on the effects of cage aquaculture on native fish populations has revealed its negative and positive impacts. However, a separate analysis of its ecological and economic effects creates incomplete information for the decision-makers. Moreover, the inadequacy of time series data has caused challenges to knowledge-based decision-making in establishing new cage aquaculture sites, especially in low-middle income countries. We use the ecosystem services (ES) framework to analyse the synergy and trade-off of cage aquaculture to a native fish species, Gobiopterus sp. in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia, as an effort to provide comprehensive information to support local decision-makers and to fill the information gap. We engaged some modelling techniques such as the Maximum Entropy Model (MaxEnt) validated with field survey data, Bayesian Networks (BN), and Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) in this research. The results show that cage aquaculture provides habitat services for the species and temporary forgone fish production due to the accelerated sulfur upwelling. The economic value of habitat provision reached 74,500 IDR per year per cage or 1,128 million IDR per year in 2017. Further, the average value of the forgone benefit of fish production in the current cage aquaculture business extends from more than 550 million IDR per year in the dry season to almost 600 million IDR per year in the rainy season. The results indicate that the negative impacts of cage aquaculture on the native fish population outweigh its benefit. The recommendation for management actions includes applying alternative aquaculture techniques and other technological interventions.</p

The Value Base of Water Governance: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. Some scholars promote water governance as a normative concept to improve water resources management globally, while others conceive of it as an analytical term to describe the processes, systems and institutions around the management of water resources and water supply. Critics often highlight how specific water governance scenarios fail to deliver socially desirable outcomes, such as social justice or environmental sustainability. While water governance is often perceived as a technical matter, its conceptual and practical components are in fact based on multiple values that, nonetheless, often remain implicit. The present paper seeks to uncover this value base and discusses existing research on values from multiple perspectives, using material from economics, philosophy, psychology, and other social sciences. In different disciplines, values can be understood as fundamental guiding principles, governance-related values or as values assigned to water resources. Together, they shape complex relationships with water governance, which from an analytical perspective is understood as a combination of policy, politics, and polity. Introducing a new conceptual framework, this study seeks to provide a theoretical foundation for empirical research on water governance processes and conflicts.Scottish Government Hydro Nation Scholars Programm