SUPERVISOR: Gernot STÖGLEHNER

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Melissa HILTL

Governing river catchments for socioecological transformation requires effective coordination and strategic planning, especially regarding often conflicting land use interests. Since catchments encompass all relevant resources, these water systems are generic for the interrelatedness between nature and society, also known as the Water-Energy-Food Nexus (Moss and Hüesker 2019; Pahl-Wostl 2019). However, governmental structures entail administrative, political, and institutional boundaries, often neither fitting with the biophysical scale of catchments nor the interconnectedness of resource management (Thaler and Kaufmann 2024). These so-called spatial mismatches occur when there is a lack of fit between an ecological process and the scope of an institutional design. “This means a different type of management at one level, such as the spatial scale, may bring about unforeseen changes at another level or scale” (Buizer, Arts, and Kok 2011, 1).  Intensified by climate change, water-related crises such as drought, floods, and biodiversity extinction pose significant societal challenges, which entail the potential for environmental and social conflicts. Not only do water-related crises simultaneously threaten humans and the environment, but they also mirror failures in governance resulting from spatial misfits and deliberate decision-making. Consequently, understanding the interplay of spatial scales and policies becomes increasingly complex, which shows that additional, bottom-up implemented methods are necessary. Strategic planning approaches based on applied, bottom-up knowledge help tackle spatial misfits and sharpen an understanding of river catchments being coupled socio-ecohydrological systems (Moss and Newig 2010; Syed, Choudhury, and Islam 2020; Christmann et al. 2012). 

Based on transdisciplinary research, this dissertation project aims to conceptualize a land-water governance approach that discusses strategies to reconnect aquatic and terrestrial policies for socioecological transformation. The term socioecological transformation describes a coupled socio-ecohydrological (Hein et al. 2021) process towards an integrative perspective of the nature-human relationship, including “political, socioeconomic, and cultural shifts resulting from attempts to address the socioecological crisis” (Brand and Wissen 2017, 1). Following this conceptual and epistemic heading, the aim of this dissertation project is to

  1. Combine strategic planning approaches with governance mechanisms to develop a conceptual tool that addresses the linkages between water and land policies, spatiality, and governance mechanisms within river catchments.
  2. Investigate action strategies to implement land-water policies that reflect the interrelatedness of nature and society (cf. WEF-Nexus) concerning the socioecological transformation.
  3. Examine how and at which scales land-water-governance can be implemented based on applied knowledge and action research: Bridging the gap between theoretic concepts and the process of integrative land-water use. 

Therefore, the dissertation project is placed mainly within the HR21 Doctoral School research cluster “Governance and Planning” with connections to the clusters “Metabolism” and “Connectivity”. Methodologically, a mixed-method approach will be applied, consisting of qualitative expert interviews, action research, stakeholder workshops, and a quantitative GIS analysis.

 

References
Brand, Ulrich, and Markus Wissen. 2017. “Social-Ecological Transformation.” In International Encyclopedia of Geography, edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston, 1–9: Wiley.

Buizer, Marleen, Bas Arts, and Kasper Kok. 2011. “Governance, Scale and the Environment: The Importance of Recognizing Claims in Transdisciplinary Arenas.” Ecology and Society 16 (1): 21. www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol16/iss1/art21/. Accessed December 06, 2024.

Christmann, Gabriela B., Oliver Ibert, Heiderose Kilper, and Timothy Moss. 2012. Vulnerability and Resilience from a Socio-Spatial Perspective: Towards a Theoretical Framework. Working Paper No. 45. Erkner. Accessed October 21, 2024. https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-201208174763.

Hein, Thomas, Christoph Hauer, Martin Schmid, Gernot Stöglehner, Christine Stumpp, Thomas Ertl, Wolfram Graf et al. 2021. “The Coupled Socio-Ecohydrological Evolution of River Systems: Towards an Integrative Perspective of River Systems in the 21st Century.” The Science of the total environment 801:149619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149619.

Moss, Timothy, and Frank Hüesker. 2019. “Politicised Nexus Thinking in Practice: Integrating Urban Wastewater Utilities into Regional Energy Markets.” Urban Studies 56 (11): 2225–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017735229.

Moss, Timothy, and Jens Newig. 2010. “Multilevel Water Governance and Problems of Scale: Setting the Stage for a Broader Debate.” Environmental management 46 (1): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9531-1.

Pahl-Wostl, Claudia. 2019. “Governance of the Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus: A Multi-Level Coordination Challenge.” Environmental Science & Policy 92:356–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.07.017.

Syed, Tahira, Enamul Choudhury, and Shafiqul Islam. 2020. “An Assessment of Scale-Sensitivity in Policy Design and Implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive Within the Context of the Danube Basin.” Water Alternatives 13 (13): 634–58. www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol13/v13issue3/583-a13-3-1/file. Accessed November 06, 2024.

Thaler, Thomas, and Maria Kaufmann. 2024. “Implementing Catchment-Wide Flood Risk Management Plans: Futures and Justice Conflicts.” Futures 164:1–10. doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2024.103480.