Collaborative approaches to water management and planning

Abstract

Despite the popularity and rhetoric of collaborative approaches, the successes of such initiatives are not widespread and remain elusive. Some commentators argue that without ‘the noise of participation’,a return to centralised governance should be reconsidered. Whilst this conclusion may be premature given the lack of rigorous analysis of collaborative approaches, it calls for a closer examination of contexts and processes that are conducive to the success of collaborative initiatives. This paper evaluates the scope of collaborative watershed management and planning in the Howard River Catchment in northern Australia. The findings depict the challenges of collaborative planning in a nested hierarchy with multiple institutions. The existing institutional apparatus can potentially constrain the collaborative initiatives towater planning. They include the normsof agen- cy authority, administrative inflexibility and power structures in a nested institutional hierarchy. Delegating deci- sionmaking responsibility to decentralized structures should be backed up by the development of the capacity of such structures. Considerable transaction costs exist in overlaying collaborative approaches across a nested hierar- chy ofmultiple institutions. ©