Last month, Dr Nick Voulvoulis and I visited the Netherlands to meet our GLOBAQUA partner, Dr Adriaan Slob, to develop a policy work plan involving stakeholder collaboration workshops to facilitate the bridging of the science and policy gap for the GLOBAQUA catchment case studies. The meeting concluded with the need to promote interdisciplinarity between researchers, water managers, policy-makers and other actors within the catchment in both the assessment of water quality and improving management decisions to meet the objectives of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
Why interdisciplinary knowledge is important in catchment management?
The management of water resources is becoming increasingly complex as it is deeply embedded within a diverse range of economic and cultural activities emphasising the need to understand how our society interacts with the natural water environment. Additionally, catchments are complex entities, composed of human and natural systems that are highly interdependent. With that said, it is important to diversify the evidence base in understanding these human-nature interdependencies to ensure a well-informed management decisions.
Proponents of catchment based approach emphasises the role of stakeholder collaboration and knowledge-sharing to develop an understanding of the evidence to determine environmental priorities. Understanding complex and unstructured problems resulting from those human-nature interdependencies within catchment settings should involve policy learning by identifying, confronting, selecting and, wherever possible, integrating divergent viewpoints and knowledge of various stakeholders. Organising participatory processes are therefore important in order to facilitate collaborative knowledge-sharing and production between all relevant actors.
Stay tuned for more updates.