Administrative coupling: Dealing with complexity in water management

Background

This project addresses the challenge for water management that stems from the quantitative and qualitative demands that are posed by problem pressures and the European Water framework directive. This leads to a large number of proposed projects that in turn pose huge demands on the financial and administrative capacity of water managers. A core problem that managers face is the need to combine multiple fields of interest and participation to complete each project, such as agricultural interests, renewal of the rural landscape, nature development, water safety issues, and water quality issues. Typically all these fields bring, in addition to new resources, new actors and procedures.

Objectives

The research addresses the calls upon water managers to exhibit great skills to merge (or “couple”) these streams, while remaining aware that a failure in any one of these fields could undermine the basis for an entire project.